East Coast of the United States

The "East Coast," "Eastern Seaboard," or "Atlantic Seaboard" are terms referencing the easternmost coastal states in the United States of America. 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. It may especially refer to the highly urbanized strip along the coast from Boston, Massachusetts to Washington, D.C, the so-called "BosWash megalopolis".

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 The Notorious B.I.G (of Brooklyn, New York) and Tupac Shakur (of Oakland, California).

See also: Geology of the Appalachians