It includes all thirteen original colonies, as well as such selected places as Washington, DC, Florida and Vermont. People elsewhere in the United States sometimes refer to the East Coast colloquially as "back east".
The East Coast may often more commonly be associated with the Northeastern United States, in part because the Southeast coast is more associated culturally with the larger American South.
In the rap music community the term has been embraced in a sense of regional loyalty to New York City. The terms "East Coast" and "West Coast" are often used as metonyms for New York and Los Angeles, respectively. There has been animosity and violence between rappers from each of these groups, though the controversy has waned in recent years. Perhaps the two best-known cases of this animus are that of the murders of Biggie Smalls (of Brooklyn, New York) and Tupac Shakur (of Los Angeles).
