“From St. Paul to Minneapolis, All The Hands Clap For This”: Hip Hop in the Twin Cities

Here’s a draft of my nearly 10,000 word essay on the Twin Cities hip hop scene. It’s going to go into the Greenwood Guide to American Regional Hip-Hop, a collection of 24 essays that will, for the first time, bring an in-depth look at all of the hip hop scenes across the country in one book. Each essay is going to follow the same plan. First there’s a history of the scene and what makes it distinct. Second, there is a series of artist profiles. Finally, there is a section about the future of hip hop in that particular location. In addition to these three main sections, there will be a section to discuss 5 “Landmarks” of Twin Cities hip hop, which will be located throughout the essay.

The whole collection’s not coming out, though, for another year and a half and I’d like to get some feedback. I know there are things that I missed or omitted, either due to lack of knowledge or lack of space. Let me know what you like, what you don’t like, what I left out, what needs to be talked about more, anything you want. You can either use the “comments” section below each post, or email me at schel115 [at] umn.edu.

Thanks for reading and a big thanks to all the folks who helped me put this thing together.

peace

justin

Part 1 – Overview of Twin Cities Hip-Hop

The #16 bus runs along University Avenue, one of the main corridors between the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul. As I am riding it one day, I hear a fellow passenger start freestyling rhymes in the back. “I defy any rapper on the East Coast” is one of the lines. This chance moment crystallizes the Twin Cities hip hop scene: hip hop is produced everywhere, from Minneapolis to St. Paul and back. And while the ability of my fellow bus traveler to challenge “any rapper on the East Coast” may be in question, there should be little doubt that the Twin Cities possesses one of the most vibrant and multi-faceted hip hop scenes in the country.

The Twin Cities possess a degree of isolation from the larger national hip hop scene. According to artist Toki Wright, the scene’s “too far North to be part of the Midwest, too far west to be part of the East Coast, and too far East to be part of the West Coast.” Artists and writers have called it everything from the “Midwest coast” to “no coast,” as the Abstract Pack rapped in 1998 on the song of the same title: “We got 10,000 lakes but no coast.” Indeed, much writing on hip hop that focuses on the Midwest omits the Twin Cities all together and many people are surprised that Minnesota has hip hop at all.

Given that the Twin Cities share a border, there is considerable overlap in the hip hop scene, which makes any strict geographical division nearly impossible. There are, however, distinctions between the two cities. Minneapolis hip hop divides into three more or less distinct neighborhoods: North, South, and, to a lesser extant, Northeast. St. Paul is usually considered as a single geographic unit. Most of the concert venues for Twin Cities hip hop are located in Minneapolis, and some artists from St. Paul even refer to themselves as from Minneapolis to writers and fans outside of the Twin Cities.

History

The origins of Twin Cities hip hop go back nearly three decades, as the four elements of hip hop have existed there since the early 1980s. While the Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight,” the first nationally-popular rap record, could be found in record stores like Minneapolis’s Electric Fetus, and numerous DJs were rocking parties around the Twin Cities a la Afrika Bambaataa and Kool Herc, it is Travis Lee that can be considered the “godfather” of Twin Cities hip hop. Coming to Minneapolis from Brooklyn to attend the University of Minnesota in 1981, “Travitron,” as he came to be known, brought not only records with him, but also the style of hip hop, the gold ropes, record-scratching, and nearly-indecipherable show flyers with wildstyle lettering. Indeed, the histories of graffiti and breakdancing intertwine with the history of rap in the Twin Cities.

Travitron, as well as other DJs like Brother Jules, Delite, Verb X, Freddy Fresh, Tim Wilson, LST, Big Funk, Billy Bump, Kansas City, Farrow Black, Cowboy, Plaz, King IXL, and others began spinning records at Twin Cities clubs like Oz, the Fox Trap, Daddy’s, Club Hip Hop and Duffy’s, where both Kurtis Blow and Grandmaster Flash performed in 1982. Blow also had performed a year earlier in North Minneapolis’s Northgate Roll-Arena. These DJs also threw parties at various parks and community centers, especially a number of Twin Cities YMCA and YWCA, and even the University of Minnesota. Soon, the 7th Street Entry began holding “Club Wild Style,” a weekly, all ages hip hop afternoon named after the seminal early hip hop film.

There is some historical discrepancy as to the first rap record to emerge from Minnesota. Ice-T can be credited with the first hip hop record produced in Minnesota, recording “The Coldest Rap,” and its b-side, “Cold Wind Madness” for Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis in 1983. Two records from Twin Cities artists were released soon afterwards: a song by Kyle Ray that was based on “Rapper’s Delight” and T.C. Ellis’s “Twin Cities Rapp.” These and other hip hop records hit the Twin Cities’ airwaves around this time. Travitron hosted the Cities’ first hip hop show on KMOJ in 1984, “The Hip Hop Shop,” although radio DJs like Allen Freed, Pharaoh Black, Mike “Wax Attack” Mack, and MC “Kid” Delight had begun playing hip hop as part of the station’s regular rotation.

Already at this early stage, however, rivalries emerged between the various geographic locales, with specific artists representing St. Paul, North, and South Minneapolis, rivalries that sometimes led to violence at shows. The differences were exacerbated by the influx of crack into the Twin Cities, as well as numerous national gangs, including the Bloods and the Crips, beginning in the mid-1980s. Some remnants of these rivalries, with less overt gang allegiances, still persist today, but for the most part there is a fluid interchange between Minneapolis and St. Paul artists.

Hip hop emerging from the Twin Cities at this time received relatively limited national exposure, with a few notable exceptions. The I.R.M. Crew put out the Cities’ first nationally-distributed single, “Unh Baby,” on K-Tel records, which was also distributing some of Gangstarr’s early records. They went on to release a number of other 12 inches, as well as a short EP, before the group disbanded in 1987. Other groups like Soul Purpose and Style Posse were signed to Jerry Sylver’s Wide Angle records, which represented the early 1980s electro group, The Information Society.

One of the members of Soul Purpose, Derrek Stevens, better known as Delite, was chosen by Paula Abdul to voice the character of Skat Kat, the animated feline that appears in the video for “Opposites Attract” at the end of 1989. (Wide Angle previously released a hip hop EP in 1984 that did very well on Twin Cities charts and radio stations.) Rapper DMG, short for Detrimental Gangxta, participated in an MC battle which included Scarface as a judge; eventually, he signed DMG to his Houston-based label, Rap-A-Lot.

Around the same time as DMG moved to Houston, the Micranots formed out of different crews. Out of the Metro Unit came DJ Kool Akiem and Self One (now known as I Self Devine), while Truth Maze came out of the Mixed Breed. Both Self One and DJ Kool Akiem moved to the Twin Cities from California in the late 1980s, part of a larger immigration to the Twin Cities, due in part to available jobs and social welfare programs. As part of the Universal Vibe Squad, the group began performing around the Twin Cities, especially at the 7th Street Entry. Truth Maze soon left the group, however, and Self One and Akiem relocated to Atlanta in 1994, citing the lack of adequate infrastructure and support to nurture artists.

One person who worked with the Micranots before they left was Brent Sayers, known then as Stress, and now known as Siddiq. Working mainly as a concert promoter, he organized a number of regular hip hop nights, including the Microphone Checks and the Universal Parliament of Hip Hop. A large number of young hip hop artists began regularly attending and performing at these nights, and they eventually formed a crew called Headshots. The original members of the mixed-race crew—The Abstract Pack, Urban Atmosphere, Phull Surkle, Black Hohl, and Beyond (now known as Musab)—consisted of MCs, DJs, and producers, as well as being managed by Siddiq. Later, artists like Extreme, Illusion, The Native Ones, and the Sixth Sense (later Eyedea and Abilities) would join the crew, bringing the crew’s total number to over 20.

The origin of the name is a combination of a nickname given by the crew to St. Paul (“Shots Paul”), and the group’s desire to reach the true hip hop fans, or “heads.” They released a series of Headshots cassettes the first of which, WBBOY Sessions, was released in 1993 and is comprised of a series of freestyles. Later versions (the last was released 1999) incorporated not only more freestyles, but also 4-track recordings by different members of the Headshots collective, as well as various bootleg concerts of national rap acts, including the Fugees and the Roots.

The difficulties of maintaining a 19-person crew eventually led to the dissolution of Headshots. In 1995, however, before the crew dissolved, Sean Daley (Slug), Anthony Davis (Ant), Sayers (Siddiq), and Derek Turner (Spawn) formed Rhymesayers Entertainment. (The name arose from a play on Siddiq’s last name.) While the other, non-Rhymesayers members of the Headshots crew supported the early Rhymesayers records, such as Beyond’s Comparison (1996), some members, such as the Abstract Pack, struck it out on their own, while others, such as the Native Ones, joined Rhymesayers.

There was other hip hop occuring in the Twin Cities at this time, as well, including a minor hit by Lil’ Buddy called “What’s the Haps,” as well as music by the Eloquent Peasants and School of Thought, but it was the success of Rhymesayers made people take notice of the Twin Cities hip hop scene. Slug and Siddiq appeared on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered in October of 1996 to discuss not only their own work, but also the current state of hip hop, especially the focus on violent lyrical imagery and the corporate control of the music. They also performed at Jesse “The Body” Ventura’s inauguration in January of 1999. Rhymesayers also made connections with many of the more established underground record labels, including Anticon, Def Jux, and Fat Beats records, with which it signed a vinyl distribution deal. Numerous other groups worked with Rhymesayers acts at this time, including Kanser, Oddjobs, which has now become Kill the Vultures, and Heiruspecs. It was at this time, at the end of the 1990s, that the scene around Dinkytown’s Bon Appetit coalesced, marking the first time that all parts of the Twin Cities hip hop scene could come together in one place.

Since 2000, hip hop has exploded in the Twin Cities. In any given week there are five to six shows per week, usually with three or four artists or groups per show, at venues throughout the metropolitan area. This is due to a number of factors both internal and external to the Twin Cities. Internally, many artists and groups saw the success of Rhymesayers, and began attempting to emulate it in their own work, as well as take advantage of the many doors that the Rhymesayers had opened. Local bars and clubs recognized the monetary potential for hip hop and began booking hip hop shows much more regularly, given newer artists valuable exposure.

At the same time, national trends in hip hop’s popularity affected the Twin Cities. One of the first major hip hop events after the closing of Bon Appetit was a weekly MC battle at the Loring Pasta Bar, just down the street from Bon App. By the time the series had run its course, the lines stretched around the block, with many of the participants inspired by the freestyle scenes in Eminem’s 8 Mile. New developments in music production software, as well as the ubiquity of MySpace, have allowed more people than ever to record and distribute music. In turn, more record labels have sprung up, including Interlock, which began in 1997, Hecatomb, Loonatix Productions, Doomtree records, and others. Such an expansion of the scene, however, is not without its tension. Many of the more established and older MCs, while welcoming the new blood, also want them to recognize and respect the history of Twin Cities hip hop, to pay their dues along the paths that people before them opened up for them.

Given the wealth of hip hop talent in the Twin Cities, and the ever-increasing national presence of hip hop that has come out of Minnesota, there are a number of features that help to mark Twin Cities hip hop. These range from the spaces and places of the Twin Cities to much more indeterminate questions of artist identity, musical style, and verbal content. Possessing a variety of local strategies of representation offers artists a way to both represent their home, as well as make a larger contribution to the hip hop nation (and, to a great extent, the world.)

City Names, Area Codes, Streets

Twin Cities hip hop is marked by signifiers of the towns themselves. MCs will often work the area codes “612” and “651” into their rhymes (Minneapolis and St. Paul, respectively), as in Atmosphere’s “Sound is Vibration,” (“612, my present location”). There is even a clothing company which produces hats emblazoned with one of the two area codes, in addition to the ubiquity of the Minnesota Twins’ “TC” logo on hats, jerseys, and shirts. The Cities’ main thoroughfares are often referenced in songs, like Lyndale, Broadway, Hennepin, Nicollet, Franklin, and Lake. The artist Emazin even named a mixtape after the local alternative weekly, The City Pages.
Minneapolis DJs and producers will often find obscure snippets of recorded text, culled from various archaic audio recordings, that contain the Cities’ names. Similarly, MCs employ a number of nicknames for the Twin Cities over the years by its MCs. For Minneapolis these include “the Minneap” and the more infamous “Murderapolis,” which even made it to the pages of The New York Times in 1996 when the murder rate in Minneapolis skyrocketed. Around the same time, the Headshots crew coined the term “Shots Paul” to describe St. Paul. All of these terms are still in use today.

Another element that artists mold into their material is the Twin Cities bus system, known as Metro Transit. The extensive bus line criss-crosses all parts of the Twin Cities, as well as extending into the nearby suburbs; in addition, there is a light rail that runs from the Mall of America to downtown Minneapolis. Brother Ali on “Five Line King” talks about taking the #5 bus back to North Minneapolis after a show and finding a number of his fans making the journey with him. On Atmosphere’s “The Number One,” Slug reminisces about riding the bus to the suburb to meet his high school sweetheart. Some artists, however, make a more metaphorical use of the bus. Beyond, on his song “Growth,” uses a bus ride to downtown Minneapolis as a time for introspection on his life and goals, and how he doesn’t want to end up “like these people on the bus.”

Midwest Stereotypes – Minnesota Nice and the Weather

Many artists in the Twin Cities also incorporate, play with, and subvert various stereotypes of Minnesota and, more generally, the Midwest. The most employed trope is that of Minnesota’s legendary winters. I Self Devine, on “Ice Cold,” plays more metaphorically with different degrees of coldness, as he raps from “live from the ice cold streets of the Minneap,” relating the cold winter to cold-blooded murder on the streets of Minneapolis, by both citizens and police officers. Others ironically play with the concept of “Minnesota Nice,” part of the supposed abnormal Midwestern kindness and generosity. Maria Isa does this most explicitly in “MN Nice,” where she shows how people in her Twin Cities “ain’t so nice.” Brother Ali’s “Room With A View,” a sonic snapshot of his former home in North Minneapolis on a warm summer day, shreds any fantasy of a supposedly pure American heartland, as Ali tells of drugs, violence, prostitution, and the shame of parents forced to raise their children in such an environment.

Minnesota Styles and Musical History

There are numerous stylistic variations within the Twin Cities hip hop scene. Slug in particular, has often been tagged as epitomizing the “backpack” genre of hip hop, named after the backpacks that the mainly white college-age fans carry to shows. Harder, more gangsta-oriented hip hop can be found all over the Twin Cities, but especially in North Minneapolis. Also, the Southern sounds of crunk can be heard in the music of artists like Contac and others. Doomtree, whose members emerged out of a punk and hardcore background, often archive a punk-rap hybrid; on member P.O.S.’s two records, he samples local hardcore band Song of Zarathustra. There are also numerous diasporic artists who make musical connections to where they come from while also establishing their musical presence in the Twin Cities.

Such stylistic dimensions cannot be heard outside of the musical history the Twin Cities, with Bob Dylan, the Replacements, Hüsker Dü, the Jayhawks, and, above all, Prince representing just a few of the Cities’ seminal artists. Prince himself used a number of MCs in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including Tony Mosley (better known as Tony M) and David “T.C.” Ellis, both rapping as part of The New Power Generation. Mosely can be seen in Prince’s follow up to Purple Rain, Graffiti Bridge. Prince even tried to rap himself, with mixed results, on the so-called Black Album (1987), on the songs “Dead On It” and “Bob George.”

Rap artists often reference Prince, as well as other elements of Twin Cities musical history. Purple Rain is also a touchstone for many artists: in a song by members of the Interlock Record label, they talk about Minnesota as the land where they right songs about “purple rain” and Los Nativos has a song entitled “When Jaguars Cry,” not far removed from Prince’s “When Doves Cry.” Similarly, on Kanser’s “Heard It From Here,” New MC/Big Zach imitates the chorus from the global mega-hit “Funkytown,” which was written by Minneapolitan Stephen Greenberg (as Lipps, Inc.) and sung by a former Miss Black Minnesota Cynthia Johnson. In doing so, he not only stylizes the Twin Cities, but also invokes its distinct contribution to musical history.

Lyrics

While many Twin Cities MCs creatively write about their own lyrical ability, the so-called “rapping about rapping style,” a general trend within the textual content of Twin Cities hip hop is an emphasis on storytelling that utilizes subject matter far outside what is normally found in hip hop. The Heiruspecs’ “Meters” is a semi-abstract tale of a taxi-cab driver. Eyedea and Abilities’ “Powdered Water Too,” imagines and explores life as a fish, with the aquarium serving as a metaphor for Eyedea’s own mind. Slug has become famous for his lyrical introspection and self-deprecation; such content has often earned artists like Slug and others who explore similar lyrical themes the unfair epithet “emo-rap.”

Artists who rap about more stereotypical subjects associated with hip hop (drugs, gun violence, sexually objectified women, etc), are far outweighed by artists who either do not partake in such subjects, or turn these subjects around to make more subtle statements about themselves and/or the world around them. A key distinction for many artists is how to discuss drugs and violence, whether it is a glorification of these topics, or if it is a call to not only identify those responsible for community problems, but also proposing and advocating solutions. That being said, there are many artists who invoke the traditional ideas of hyper-masculinity, gun violence, the sexual objectification of women, and the bashing of homosexuals.

Hip hop and Race in the Twin Cities

Oftentimes, many lyrical and musical differences are organized around racial identity, with more “street” lyrics coming mainly from North Minneapolis and from parts of St. Paul. Yet another distinctive feature of the Twin Cities hip hop scene is the wealth of racial identities that make the music. While it may have started out mainly within the African American subcultures in its beginnings, Latinos, African Americans, Africans, Caucasians, Asian Americans can all fall under the banner of “Twin Cities hip hop.” What’s more, there is much greater openness to cross-racial collaboration, with many of the artists forming multi-racial groups, which counters the racial essentialism that marks so much of hip hop.

This is not to say, however, that there is not tension along racial lines, especially in terms of audience. The majority of most Twin Cities hip hop audiences are white, which is standard for much of American independent hip hop circuit. There is, however, less suspicion of such white participation in hip hop, be it on the stage or behind it. This is partially due to many artists’ beliefs that such divisions cannot be solely reduced to questions of race, that class questions of opportunity and infrastructure also plays a role in the local hip hop scene. The south side of Minneapolis, for example, is generally regarded as having much greater opportunities for performance than the generally more impoverished north side. What is more, these alliances often are used to enact concrete social change.

Attempting to understand the all of these distinguishing features of the Twin Cities hip hop scene, as well as the artists who comprise it, can ultimately be accomplished by recognizing that these artists look well beyond the Twin Cities, albeit as they lyrically and musically mark themselves within the local culture. This is not only true of artists who attempt to find success in hip hop’s more traditional stylistic categories, to make it big in other markets besides the Twin Cities, but also of groups normally considered marginal to hip hop’s normative identities within America. In this way, the both participate in their local musical culture, building the necessary musical and social infrastructure to support a scene, as well as recognize that they are part of the larger hip hop nation.

Part 2 – Artist Profiles

Atmosphere
If you’ve heard of only one hip hop artist out of the Twin Cities, it’s probably Atmosphere. The core members of the group are MC Slug (Sean Daley, 1973-) and producer Ant (Anthony Davis), although many artists from the Twin Cities have performed under the “Atmosphere” name. The group began as “Urban Atmosphere” in the early 1990s as part of the original Headshots crew, and included another MC, Spawn (Derrek Stevens), who is no longer associated with Rhymesayers and now goes by the name Rek the Heavyweight. Over the years, Eyedea and Abilities have performed as part of Atmosphere, as have members of Heiruspecs and other backing musicians in recreating Ant’s beats on live instruments.

Atmosphere has released five full-length albums, Overcast (1997), Lucy Ford: The Atmosphere EPs (2001), Godlovesugly (2002), Seven’s Travels (2003), You Can’t Imagine How Much Fun We’re Having (2005), as well as numerous EPs, including the 9-volume Sad Clown Bad Dub series, the latest of which was released in the summer of 2007. The next full-length, titled When Life Gives You Lemons, is to be released in 2008. (These records have regularly outsold many national artists within the Twin Cities music markets.) There are also many unofficial Atmosphere compilations of rarities and bootlegs. The various incarnations of Atmosphere have toured all over the United States, as well as the world, including Japan, Sweden, Denmark and the 2001 All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in England. They have also brought many lesser-known Twin Cities and Rhymesayers groups as supporting acts, including Brother Ali and Los Nativos.

With a distinctive baritone and a lyrical flow that can run the gamut between relaxed conversation to frenetic hyperactivity, Slug is undeniably the most famous hip hop artist from Minnesota. Over a career that spans more than 20 years, Slug’s lyrics changed from a boasting, battle-focused MC to one exploring more introspective and self-deprecating themes. Further, as the son of a white mother and an African American father, he, like many other artists within the Twin Cities, trouble simplistic racial conceptions of hip hop.

As writer Peter Scholtes points out, Slug’s name explores this dual nature of confidence and self-loathing: not only could it mean the slug that comes from a gun, but also one of the slowest-moving forms of life on the planet (“Rhyme Out of Joint”). On songs like “WND,” he deflates the masculinity evinced by so many MCs through gun violence, as he spends the entire song vowing revenge, yet discovers that he doesn’t even have a gun. For much of the early Atmosphere records, Slug obsessively deployed a character trope of “Lucy,” who could embody a young girl to an ex-lover; on “Fuck You Lucy,” he simultaneously hates himself as much as hates his ex-lover for still being in love with her.

Slug has collaborated with numerous artists both within and beyond the Twin Cities. These include not only Rhymesayers labelmates but also some of the harder MCs in the Twin Cities such as Moochy C and Muja Messiah. Slug has also established his presence on the national hip hop underground by working with El-P, Aesop Rock, Molemen, Living Legends, Sage Francis, and Murs. Slug’s collaboration with Murs has proved to be extremely fruitful for both: as Felt, they have released two albums together and they also started their own record label, Women Records.

Ant, who is originally from Oklahoma and moved to the Twin Cities at the age of 20, makes beats for a number of Rhymesayers artists besides Atmosphere, including I Self Devine and Brother Ali. While his beats on the early Headshots series, as well as Beyond’s Comparison and Atmosphere’s Overcast, are sparse constructions of eerie drums and instrumental samples—see for instance, Atmosphere’s “Aspiring Sociopath”—over the years he has expanded his palette to include samples of soul, funk, reggae, gospel, and rock on songs like Atmosphere’s “Get Fly” or Brother Ali’s “Whatcha Got.” Countering the trend of moving away from samples in hip hop, Ant not only foregrounds his sampled material, but inventively combines multiple sources into seamless musical textures. He only recently began performing as a DJ with Slug, overcoming his social anxiety to perform at Atmosphere’s eight-night stand of sold-out concerts at the 7th Street Entry and continues performing live today.

Travis Lee
Travis Lee, better known as “Travitron,” is generally considered to be the godfather of Twin Cities of hip hop. Coming to Minneapolis from Brooklyn in 1981 to study at the University of Minnesota, Lee brought the style of hip hop with him, the clothes, the jewelry, scratching records, and the graffiti-style promotional flyers. He hosted some of the first hip hop parties in the Twin Cities, ran the important early venue Club Hip Hop, and formed his own crew, the TNT Breakout Crew in 1984, which prominently featured the female MC Sugar T. Lee also began the first all-hip hop radio show in the Twin Cities, “The Hip Hop Shop” on KMOJ. Today, Lee lives in North Minneapolis where he is intimately involved in neighborhood activism.

I.R.M. Crew
The I.R.M. Crew, which stood for “Immortal Rap Masters,” was the first Twin Cities hip hop group to release a nationally-distributed single. The group came out of North Minneapolis and consisted of Devastating Dee (Doug Shocklee), Kel-C (Kelly Crockett), TLC (Curtis Washington), and Cuttin’ Kal (Calvin Jones). It also featured the beat-boxing of B-Fresh, also known as I.B.M. (William Harris), who would later become Truth Maze. They were managed by Charles Lockhart, who owned his own record label, Cchill Productions, based in St. Paul. The group released an EP entitled The I.R.M. Crew (1986), which featured the songs “I Dream of DJs,” “Diseased America,” “Unh Baby, and Let’s Dance.” “I Dream of DJs” incorporates the “I Dream of Jeannie” theme song a year before DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince sampled it for “Girls Ain’t Nothing but Trouble,” while nationally-distributed record company K-Tel picked up “Unh Baby” as a single. They also released two 12 inches, “Baseball” b/w “The Cchill Cut” (1987); “R U Ready 2 Change the World?” b/w Who Said Our Dee Jay Couldn’t Cut?” (1988). Due to internal burnout and the bungled distribution and management of K-Tel, the I.R.M. Crew broke up soon afterwards.

Truth Maze
Truth Maze (William Harris, 1968 – ) is a poet, MC, multi-faceted drummer, and social activist, and is widely considered to be one of the legends of the Twin Cities hip hop scene. He began his career in hip hop beat-boxing with the I.R.M. Crew, and it was at this time that he formed the Minneapolis B-Boy Organization, a group dedicated to countering the surge of violence that crack and various national gangs brought to the Twin Cities. This act has made some refer to him as the “Afrika Bambaataa of the Twin Cities.” After his father’s murder in North Minneapolis in 1985, as well as his own desperate situation after the dissolution of the I.R.M. Crew, living on the streets, he rechristened himself “Truth Maze.” He formed the Micranots in 1991 with I Self Devine and DJ Kool Akiem, but broke with the group before the release of any of their widely-available albums. Moving to Atlanta, he began to study other musical and belief traditions, including the Yoruban traditions. Returning to Minneapolis in 1996, he worked with a variety of groups, as well as performing as part of the spoken word scene as part of the group TrúRúts. His first solo record, Expansions + Contradictions (Psoems 1:1) (2006), mixes blues, jazz, Yoruban drumming traditions, with hip hop; one song, “In This City,” was recorded live on the streets of Minneapolis, discussing the problems of the streets, who’s at fault, and what can be done. The album ends with “Universal Shout Outs,” a testament to all his influences, his family tree, prior hip hop artists, both in the Twin Cities and beyond, as well as victims of police brutality.

I Self Devine
I Self Devine (Chaka Mkali) was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles and moved to MPLS in the late 1980s. There he formed the seminal early 1990s hip hop crew The Micranots, along with Truth Maze and DJ Kool Akiem. This group was responsible for popularizing hip hop in the Twin Cities on a wider scale than had previously been accomplished. After leaving the Twin Cities for Atlanta in 1994, the group recorded two cassette-only EPs, Hoods Pack The Jam and The Catacomb Files, after which Truth Maze left the group. I Self and Akiem went on to release three more albums, Obelisk Movements (2000), The Emperor and the Assassin (2003), and Return of the Travellahs (2003). In addition to I Self Devine’s first solo record, Self-Destruction (2005), he has performed as Semi-Official with DJ Abilities on The Anti-Album (2003) and with Slug, Musab, and Gene Poole on The Dynospectrum (1998). On all of these records, as well as in his life, I Self brings not only militancy to his rhymes, but also solutions, as he is a youth organizer for a Minneapolis non-profit organization, Hope Community, Inc. as well as an advisor for the B-Girl Be Summit.

Abstract Pack
The Abstract Pack was a St. Paul-based hip hop crew that formed in 1993 that consisted of members Glorius L, MSP, Knowledge MC, Gambino, Eklipz, RDM (Roosevelt Darnell Mansfield III) and Sess (Herbert Ford Foster IV). With the exception of Eklipz, originally from Colorado and attending college in the Twin Cities, the rest of the Pack were at Central High School when the group formed. Performing at first on school talent shows, the group then formed part of the original Headshots collective. A pivotal point for the entire crew was when Sess, considered by everyone in the group to be its best MC, was killed by a drunk driver in 1996. His death made many of the members of the Headshots crew take hip hop more seriously; the fourth Headshots cassette, entitled History, was dedicated to Sess, and the first and last songs on the Abstract Pack’s one and only record, Bousta Set It (For the Record) (1998) contain some of Sess’s recorded verses. The album, which has become a classic of Twin Cities hip hop, is filled with an array of eclectic, Native Tongues-style samples and lyrics which creative deploy and transform both local and national references on songs like “For the Record,” “Let Me Show You,” and “No Coast.” Much like the breakup of Headshots in general, the Pack soon broke up after the release of Bousta Set It, yet many of its members are still involved in hip hop. Glorius, Rasta, and Eklipz formed the group Braille Method and relocated to Los Angeles; Knowledge MC has released a Christian rap CD in 2005; and RDM has produced a number of solo albums, as well as serving as producer for other Twin Cities MCs.

DMG
DMG, which is short for “Detrimental Ganxta” (H. Armstrong), is a St. Paul rapper who was discovered by Scarface during a 1991 MC battle in the Twin Cities. Soon afterwards, the Houston-based Scarface signed DMG to his Rap-A-Lot label. While with Rap-A-Lot, he recorded his own album, Rigormortiz (2003), which reached #40 on the Billboard hip hop chart, which made it the highest-selling hip hop record from a Twin Cities artist up to that point. DMG guested on albums by the Geto Boys, Facemob, and Devin the Dude, and his most recent release is Black Roulette (2003).

T.C. Ellis
David “T.C.” Ellis put out one of the first rap records in Minnesota, entitled “Twin Cities Rapp.” Later, he joined Prince and began to rap with the New Power Generation, one of Prince’s side-projects, along with Tony Mosley. He is briefly featured in Prince’s film Graffiti Bridge. Ellis also founded the High School for the Recording Arts in St. Paul, which provides opportunities for youth to learn basic and advanced sound recording skills. In 1991, Ellis released a more R&B-style album, True Confessions, on Prince’s Paisley Park records.

Eyedea and Abilities
Eyedea (Micheal Larson) and Abilities (Gregg “Max” Kelten) are two of the best-known artists to come out of the Twin Cities hip hop scene. Both grew up in St. Paul and attended Highland Park High School. Two years his senior at 16, Kelten moved in with Larson’s family after leaving home and the two soon began working together after Kelten acquired turntables. While still a teenager, Larson began winning some of the most high-profile MC battles in America. These included the Scribble Jam MC Battle in 1999, RockSteady Crew MC Battle in 2000, the 2000 Blaze-Battle in Chicago 2000, and the nationally televised, HBO Blaze-Battle World Championship in 2000. Larson took the prize money from his victories and built his own studio, E&A Studios. Not to be outdone, Abilities won the 2001 DMC Championship, the most prestigious turntablist competition. They also came to prominence by touring with Slug as part of Atmosphere.

Eyedea and Abilities have released two albums together, First Born (2001) and E&A (2004). In addition, Larson crafted The Many Faces of Oliver Hart or How Eye One The Write Too Think (2002). Abilities released a mixtape entitled Finally (1999), which has been re-issued on CD by Rhymesayers, as well as …For Persons with DJ Abilities. He also performed all of the scratches for El-P’s debut album Fantastic Damage (2002). On both of their records, the duo have tried to push the boundaries of what constitutes hip hop, as Eyedea crafts abstract, cerebral lyrics, while Abilities explores sonic combinations far outside the mainstream of hip hop. While both have been pursuing outside projects for the last three years, including Larson’s explorations in improvised jazz and rock with his groups Face Candy and Carbon Carousel, Eyedea and Abilities reunited to perform for the first time in over three years for the 6th Twin Cities Celebration of Hip Hop in August of 2007.

Kanser
Kanser is one of the most established and influential crews in Twin Cities hip hop. Formed at Minneapolis’ South High School in 1992 as part of the Interlock crew, the group has changed members over the years, and now consists of MCs Big Zach (Zacharia ?) , aka New MC, and Unicus (REAL NAME, 1975—), who is originally from Haiti, first moving to Connecticut and then to the Twin Cities in 1992. A number of producers and DJs have worked as part of Kanser, including Mesh, DJ Elusive, Big Jess from Unknown Prophets, and, on their early records, Ant. Rocking numerous house parties on 14th Avenue in South Minneapolis, as well as the limited clubs that played hip hop at this time, they released two cassettes, Network (1997) and Now (1999). In 1998, Big Zach began the weekly Headspin series at Bon Appetit in Dinkytown, and soon afterwards the weekly MC battle at the nearby Loring Pasta Bar. Unicus has booked hip hop for the Dinkytowner for the last three years, as part of a series called “The Hook Up,” which has helped build the venue into one of the most important sites of Twin Cities hip hop. The group has released four full-length CDs, Inner City Outer Space (2000), Quintessential (2001), It Wrote Itself (200?), and Self-Titled (2005). Big Zach’s first solo album, White Jesus, is scheduled to be released in November of 2007. The group’s lyrics have changed over the course of their albums, from the more party-oriented themes of their first records to exploring ideas of violence, religion, and politics on Self-Titled.

Brother Ali
Brother Ali (Ali Newman, 1978—) is a legally-blind, white Albino Muslim MC. He was born Jason Newman in Madison, WI, yet converted to Islam in his teens as his parents moved to North Minneapolis in 1992. His first album, the cassette-only Rites of Passage (2000), was completely self-recorded and self-produced; it caught the attention of Rhymesayers, who released it in 2000. It was around this time that Ali achieved the attention of the larger underground hip hop community by upsetting Eyedea at the 2000 Scribble Jam MC battle. Ali has toured with Rakim, MF Doom, GZA from the Wu-Tang Clan and most recently as part of the Paid Dues Independent Festival, a touring festival of independent hip hop artists including Slug, Sage Francis, Murs, and others. Ali has since released two albums, Shadows on the Sun (2003) and The Undisputed Truth (2007) as well as The Champion EP (2004). The latest album has garnered Ali national media attention and even a spot in The Source’s prestigious “Hip Hop Quotable” section. On the album, Ali confronts not only his own problems, such as the breakup of his marriage and his homelessness after the release of Shadows on the Sun, but also the joy his son Faheem brings, as well as lambasting the socio-economic inequalities in America. He engages explicitly with questions of race and hip hop on “Daylight,” as well as his Muslim in the larger context of American politics and culture.

Carnage the Executioner
Originally from Chicago, Carnage (Terrell Woods, 1975 – ) originally came to Minneapolis in 1978. Growing up in a series of group homes around the Twin Cities, he formed The Overlords in 1992 with DJ X-Caliber, which then morphed into NEMNOCH and later, after the addition of two more MCs, Pagne and Concentrate, into the futuristically-themed group S.W.E.E.P.S. (Sub-Terrestrial Wordsmiths Exhibiting Extraordinary Poetic Structure). Following in the footsteps of Rhymesayers, he started his own crew and record label, Hecatomb in 2004, as well as developing a mutually influential relationship with Eyedea, appearing on a number of each other’s records. Currently, the other artists with Carnage on Hecatomb include Concentrate, Illusion, X-Caliber, Desdamona, Fundamentalist, Capaciti, and Project 13. He sold 3000 copies of a solo EP entitled The Carnology Vol. 0.5 (2004) single-handedly out of his backpack, and has gained much exposure by beatboxing with Desdamona as Ill Chemistry. (His use of a live looping mechanism to record himself beat-boxing and then rhyme over his own loops sets himself apart from many other beat-boxers, both within the Twin Cities and beyond.) His first full-length album, The Sense of Sound (2007) features production by Booka B, as well as DJ and turntablist Jimmy2Times. Possessed with an astonishingly quick and versatile vocal delivery, both in his rhymes and his beatboxing, Carnage uses hyper-quick changes in vocal inflection and rhythmic syncopation in his rhymes, with words that engage subjects outside the stereotypes of woman and homosexual bashing. These range from the African slave trade to monster narratives; if MF Doom channels The Fantastic Four’s nemesis Dr. Doom for his identity, then Carnage, with his XXXL frame, is the Incredible Hulk.

Heiruspecs
Heiruspecs is a live hip hop band that began in 1997 while all of its members were attending St. Paul Central High School. The name is derived from “haruspex,” which was a Roman soothsayer who predicted the future by examining the entrails of sacrificed animals. The two original members are Felix (Christopher Wilbourn, 1979—), one of the groups MCs, and Sean “Twinkie Jiggles” McPherson (1981—), the group’s bassist. While playing shows at Central as well as various coffee shops and community centers around, they released two albums, Live From the Studio (1998) and Antidisestablishmetabolism (2000). After the release of their third album, Small Steps (2002), on the St. Paul-based Interlock label, they group hit the road as a backing band for a variety of underground hip hop artists, including Atmosphere, Aesop Rock, and Sage Francis. Their last record, A Tiger Dancing (2004) was released on the nationally-distributed Razor & Tie record label, and brought the group national attention. After a van accident in the winter of 2006, the group took a break from touring and have worked on numerous side projects, as well as their next full-length album.

Doomtree
Doomtree is a mixed gender and mixed-race crew hip hop crew that emerged in the late 1990s. Past and current members include P.O.S., Dessa, Cecil Otter, Marshall Larada, Mike Mictlan, Sims, Emily Bloodmobile, Emynd, Lazerbeak, Paper Tiger, Tom Servo, and Turbo Nemesis, a mixture MCs, DJs, and producers. While there has only been one officially-released full-crew album, many of the artists have released albums under the False Hopes series; the first was a 2002 CD-R featuring P.O.S. and Cecil Otter, and Sims, Dessa, and Mictlan have also released installments. The best-known member of the crew is P.O.S. (Stefan Alexander), who has released two albums for Rhymesayers, Ipecac Neat (2004) and Audition (2006), the latter of which received critical acclaim in magazines like Spin and Vibe. He has performed alongside Sims on the Vans Warped Tour and also plays with a hardcore band named Building Better Bombs. Many of the members, in fact, emerged from the Twin Cities punk and hardcore scenes, and a number of Twin Cities hardcore bands are sampled on Audition. Lazerbeak is also in the indie rock band The Plastic Constellations. While there are occasional full-crew shows, especially the yearly “Blowouts” that have taken place at venues across the Twin Cities, individual members perform solo or in groups under the “Doomtree” label. Dessa, who has become a substantial presence in both the hip-hop and the spoken word scenes, recently was given the Sound Unseen Film Festival’s “Artist of Distinction” award.

Toki Wright
Toki Wright one of the most active MCs within the Twin Cities hip hop scene. Born in North Minneapolis, he began like many hip hop artists, rapping and dancing at school talent shows. Eventually, he met Adonis D. Frazier in 1998, with whom Wright formed The C.O.R.E. (shortened from The Children of Righteous Elevation). Frazier’s father ran the Circle of Discipline boxing gym in Minneapolis’ Powderhorn neighborhood, one of the more economically depressed sections of South Minneapolis, and it was here that Frazier and Wright began hosting hip hop shows the gym. The C.O.R.E. has released one album, Metropolis (2003), and continue to perform as part of The Chosen Few, a Twin Cities super-crew that incorporates some of the harder, more gangsta-themed MCs of the Twin Cities, as well as Scribble Jam beatbox champion DJ Snuggles. He also has another group, Aphrill, which is a collaboration between Wright and Nomi from the Twin Cities group Kill the Vultures, with production by Benzilla. Wright has also released a number of solo EPs, in advance of his forthcoming debut full-length, A Different Mirror.

Wright’s work in hip hop has taken him to Africa. While writing for The Source on hip hop in Africa, he conducted a hip hop workshop between Tutsis and Hutus and has also performed with a number hip hop groups in Uganda. The recorded result of these trips can be heard on his song “Kyendi Kyendi,” which means “I Am What I Am,” with Ugandan artists Sylvester and Abramz. Most recently, he toured with Brother Ali as his hype man, not only on Ali’s nationwide tour, but also on the Paid Dues Independent Festival.
Wright’s other hip hop activity is with Yo! The Movement and he is instrumental in organizing not only the group’s many community activities and projects, but also the annual Twin Cities Celebration of Hip Hop. Toki Wright, then, is not just one of the most established and active Twin Cities hip hop artists, but he is also instrumental in shaping the present and future of it through his community action.

Cheap Cologne
Cheap Cologne (John K.), is a Minneapolis-based DJ and producer who has worked with a number of artists both within and beyond the Twin Cities. He has also performed multiple times as part of the Vans Warped Tour. He received national attention in 2004 when he created his own remix of Jay-Z’s The Black Album, combining it with Metallica’s eponymous Black Album, thus creating the Double Black Album. The album received national acclaim, standing out from the slew of remixes created after the notoriety of Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album. Even James Hetfield expressed his admiration for the album. It also attracted the attention of the Recording Industry Association of America. After receiving threatening letters from the RIAA, he went on MTV and said it was a joke and, amazingly, the RIAA relented. Since then, Cheap Cologne has released two albums Just A Little Sample (2003) and Something Random (2005).

Muja Messiah
Muja Messiah (Robert Hedges, 1970—) is an MC who was born in North Minneapolis and first came to prominence in the late 1990s with the group Raw Villa. The group released an EP entitled Rebellion (2000) and have finished work on another album called The Way Things Should Be that is awaiting release. Muja Messiah’s solo work aims at producing a harder, more gangsta-oriented sound from the Twin Cities, a sound that has historically been less accepted in the Cities. His first solo record, The Adventures of the B-Boy/D-Boy was released in the fall of 2007 and features collaborations with I Self Devine, Slug, and The Roots’ Black Thought. A member of the 5 Percent Nation, he does not shy away from oppositional politics in his music. On “Patriot Act,” he muses why he should be afraid of Al-Qaeda when he “was already afraid of America first.” Elsewhere, on songs like “You Betcha” and “Get Fresh,” he proudly affirms his Minnesota home, yet in a way that brings light to the violence that plagues parts of the Cities. At the same time, however, he embodies the so-called “No Coast” sound by drawing on musical styles emerging from all over the country; “Get Fresh,” for instance, draws on the synth-laden beats of Dirty South snap music.

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One characteristic of Twin Cities hip hop is that it is home to many artists that fall outside normative categories of hip hop. The numerous female hip hop artists that make the Twin Cities their home have attained a level of success in the Twin Cities that equals and often surpasses the recognition enjoyed by their male counterparts. There is a strong contingent of so-called “homo hop” artists, queer figures in hip hop that buck the pervasive homophobia that dominates so much of hip hop. Finally, there are numerous diasporic artists that have come to the Twin Cities from places like Laos, Ghana, Puerto Rico, Vietnam, Iran, Mexico, and Liberia, artists whose music makes connections between their old home and their new home. For the most part, these artists are not ghettoized into a limited subculture: some are founding members of the scene, while others collaborate with the Cities’ more established artists. The ones discussed below are only a handful of those working in the Twin Cities today.

Desdamona
When Desdamona moved from Iowa to the Twin Cities in the summer of 1996, she found an exciting scene just starting to coalesce, though one that was overwhelmingly male. The multi-talented vocalist, expertly adept at vocal styles ranging from spoken word, singing, as well as straight-up, boom-bap MC, can largely be credited with changing that. Winning the Minnesota Music Association’s “Best Spoken Word” award five times, she caught the attention of the wider hip hop scene in 2000 with her song “We Will Always B,” which Brother Ali included on Rites of Passage. Touring with MC and beat box marvel Carnage as Ill Chemistry as well as on her own, she was eventually signed to the nationally-distributed FS Music label. Her music often critiques the historic exclusion of women in hip hop as well as carving out her own space within that history. In “I Wanted 2 Be an MC,” she tells the tale of her own journey through hip hop, how she was forced to “call all her rhymes poetry” when people told her she couldn’t be an MC. Desdamona also actively works to foster new spaces in which women can not only participate in hip hop, but succeed. She took part in organizing the Encyclopedia of Hip Hop Evolution concert series, which morphed into B-Girl Be.

Maria Isa
Maria Isa (Maria Isabelle Perez Vega, 1987—) was born on the West Side of St. Paul to Nuyorican parents. Both her parents were involved in the Young Lords; her mother, Elsa Vega-Perez, began a number of Latino and Latina organizations and has become one of the most important and community activists in the Twin Cities. Isa has performed Puerto Rican bomba since she was five, but made her hip hop debut in 2005, opening up for Los Nativos. Work on her first album, M.I. Split Personalities (2007) began almost immediately. Traversing bomba, hip hop, and reggaetón on the album, Isa adopts three personae on the album to explore her diasporic identity, Moochie, Lolita, and Maria Isa. “Sabrosa” (roughly translated as “tasty”) encapsulates much of the vocalist’s work. Entwining multiple strands of history, not only does it share a title with a song from the Beastie Boys’ Ill Communication (1994), but the song is based around a thundering bomba by Raices (“Roots”), an Afro-Puerto Rican music and dance ensemble based at El Arco Iris (“the rainbow”), a community organization where Isa teaches. Affirming her “Sota Rican” identity in these numerous ways, Isa simultaneously affirms the inclusiveness of the hip hop scene in the Twin Cities, as well as the many cultural influences that go into the art form as a whole.

M.anifest
M.anifest (Kwame Tsikata, 1982—) was born in Accra, Ghana and moved to the Twin Cities in 2001 to attend Macalester College in St. Paul and study economics. The grandson of legendary ethnomusicologist J.H. Nketia, he grew up with all of his grandfather’s records. M.anifest foregrounds his Ghanaian identity through his hip hop, not only by including Ghanaian drumming patterns in the beats of his songs, but also by rapping in the Ghanaian language Tre, as well as engaging in Tre call-and-response with his audiences, and dressing in the red, yellow, green, and black color scheme of the Ghanaian flag. He has performed with Carnage, Desdamona, and I Self Devine, among others. His first solo album, M.anifestations, was released in September of 2007, in which he “represents Africa with a spectacular street vernacular.”

Los Nativos
Los Nativos consists of MC and Producer Xilam Balam, MC and Drummer Felipe Cuauhtli (1976 – ), and DJ Tekaptl. The group originally was known as “The Native Ones” and were original members of the Headshots crew. Their first show, recorded at First Avenue, can be heard on the second Headshots cassette. They have released one full-length album, Dia de Los Muertos (2004), and a EP entitled Red Star First (2005). They have toured Mexico on their own, as well as touring with Atmosphere and Eyedea and Abilities, travels that have taken them as far as Japan. Their work has earned them praise from The Source. Their lyrics and music combine the various cultures, races, and ethnicities that make up their identities (Felipe, for instance, is Chicano and Black) and incorporate traditional Mexican music and languages, especially the Nawat language, into their beats and rhymes. Unabashedly oppositional in their politics, Los Nativos attempts to unite the indigenous Indian communities from across North and South America, wherever they may be. They have organized an Anti-Columbus Day event for the past five years, and Felipe co-founded the Multicultural Indigenous Academy in St. Paul, which aims to teach students of different cultures through culture, not just about culture, as well as building understanding and alliances between groups that may not normally interact with each other.

Tori Fixx
Tori Fixx (1974 – ) is one of the most important figures in the nation-wide queer hip hop, or “homo hop,” movement. Raised in Minneapolis, the MC, DJ, and producer, Fixx got his start DJing with Prince at Paiseley Park, before moving out to San Francisco and joining one of the first homo hop groups, Rainbow Flava. After returning to Minneapolis to work as a DJ and producer, he also founded US2 Records, which represents other national queer hip hop artists. Fixx actively works to foster a musical community beyond the Twin Cities, evidenced by an event he organized last summer. After a screening of Alex Hinton’s documentary Pick Up The Mic, which examines the past and present of American homo hop, Fixx helped organize a concert with many of the artists from the film, including Deadlee, the Aggracyst, and Katastrophe. He has released six albums that have traversed hip hop and house music; the title song of his latest album Code Red (2007), was written in response to Tim Hardaway’s comments against homosexuality. Fixx, however, has had little collaborative contact with the rest of the Twin Cities hip hop scene, in no small part on account of the pervasive hetero-normativity that marks nearly all hip hop, including anti-homosexual feelings within the Twin Cities hip hop scene itself.

Part 3 – The Future of Twin Cities Hip Hop

Like everything else pertaining to Twin Cities hip hop, the future of it lies both inside and outside the Cities themselves, not only how the music is viewed by the larger nation (and the world), but also how the scene itself continues to thrive.

In terms of exposure, the Twin Cities hip hop scene, represented especially by Rhymesayers, is in a position to gain more exposure than ever before. In March of 2007, Rhymesayers Entertainment signed a major distribution deal with the Alternative Distribution Alliance (ADA), run by Warner Brothers’ Independent Label Group. The ADA has become a leader in independent music distribution, both physical and digital, with hip hop artists such as Madlib, Sage Francis, the RZA, as well as artists and groups outside of hip hop, including Spoon, Arcade Fire, and The New Pornographers, in its ranks.

Rhymesayers has never been associated with a major label before, although every one has came calling to sign Atmosphere. This deal is unique in that it allows Rhymesayers to buy the promotion and distribution services of a major label if desired, and even sign a Rhymesayers artist to a major-label contract, but they are not tied to the label on a daily basis whatsoever, creatively or otherwise. Such a deal offers Rhymesayers the ability to remain as independent as they want to be, yet gives them the opportunity to distribute its records to more places than ever before.

While national and international visibility is a goal for many Twin Cities artists, many also recognize the necessity of building and supporting younger artists who will continue and develop the scene. Artists such as I Self Divine, Desdamona, Maria Isa, Felipe Cuauthil, Carnage and others teach hip hop classes to children ranging from grade school to high school, both in schools and community centers across the Twin Cities. Such programs encourage participation and fosters greater understanding of hip hop and what it (and its practitioners) can do for the communities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Such an emphasis on building a community ties in more generally to the strength of local neighborhoods within the Twin Cities. A number of organizations use hip hop to help the communities of the Twin Cities, as well as its residents. One of the most prominent is Yo! The Movement. The organization, begun in 1995 by Dick Mammen, facilitates a number of youth-based programs in the Twin Cities, but is best known for the annual Twin Cities Celebration of Hip Hop, now in its sixth year. Featuring performances by acts from the Twin Cities and across the country—past performers have included Slick Rick, Jean Grey, and Naughty By Nature—the festival also includes roundtable discussions about issues within and beyond hip hop, including the myths of street credibility, the generation gap between generation hip hop and the civil rights era, and ways to end youth violence. The third hip hop festival, held in 2005, was even declared a “Hip-Hop Weekend” by Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak. (A emphasis on the larger communities of the Twin Cities was also on display following the collapse of the I-35W bridge on August 1, 2007, as many artists and venues coordinated benefit concerts to help victims and victims’ families.)

Focusing on communities outside of the mainstream geographic axes of the hip hop nation such as the Twin Cities can say much about where that nation’s been and where it might be going. It not only shows the rapid spread of hip hop, as well as the internal tensions that such expansion brings with it, but also the ability of hip hop to affect and influence more people than ever before, as well as create the conditions for concrete social change. All of these elements of hip hop are present within the Twin Cities, and despite all of the changes in the Cities hip hop, however, the undeniably multi-talented and broad scene has proven that its sounds and messages can reach hearts and ears well beyond the shores of the 10,000 lakes.

5 Landmarks of Twin Cities Hip Hop

Landmarks

First Avenue
Made famous by Prince’s Purple Rain in 1984, downtown Minneapolis’s First Avenue began its life as a Greyhound bus depot in the 1937, before being opened as a club under the name The Depot on April 3, 1970. It went through a number of name changes until it was christened “First Avenue” in 1981. Since that time, the venue has become the pinnacle of success for Twin Cities artists. According to Tim Wilson, DJ and owner of Urban Lights Music, “that’s the spot, that’s where we all aspire to get to.”

The club is divided into two spaces, the Mainroom, which holds around 1500 people, and the smaller 7th St. Entry, which holds roughly 250. Numerous hip hop groups have played First Avenue, including memorable concerts by Run D.M.C. and Public Enemy. Jam Master Jay’s turntables were suspended from the ceiling, since the stage moved so much that the records skipped; when Public Enemy performed, they had to literally tiptoe on the stage to avoid making Terminator X’s records skip. Other groups to perform at First Avenue are The Roots, Wu-Tang Clan, both in total and individually, Aesop Rock, and an Ice Cube concert in 1992 that ended with a riot and temporality suspended hip hop shows at the venue.

The 7th Street entry, while also hosting smaller national acts, is often a space for less-known or new Twin Cities hip hop artists to get exposure to a wider audience. One of the most memorable events with Twin Cities hip hop occurred in January of 2005 when Atmosphere performed a sold-out eight-night stand, reminiscent of a similar series of shows performed by the Replacements in 1985. First Avenue also hosts the Twin Cities Celebration of Hip Hop, in which the 3-day festival not only takes over the club’s two venues, but also the surrounding streets for workshops and performances.

Dinkytown

Dinkytown is the area adjacent to the University of Minnesota’s East Bank in Minneapolis, a dense enclave of bars, restaurants, clubs, bookshops, and cafes. In previous musical generations, Dinkytown was the neighborhood of Bob Dylan. Beginning in the 1990s, however, and continuing today, Dinkytown is one of the epicenters of Twin Cities hip hop. The Varsity Theater, originally built in 1915 as the University Theater, ran into controversy with the surrounding neighbors and businesses for hosting hip hop shows, called “Peace Parties,” in the early 1990s. In an act of defiance after local businesses attempted to ban hip hop from Dinkytown, the owners booked 2 Live Crew in 1991. That show turned out to be the last hip hop performance in Dinkytown for nearly fifteen years. In the late 1990s, a weekly hip hop night began at Bon Appetit, or Bon App for short, a small sandwich shop run by a Lebanese immigrant. Known as Headspin, the series served as the first time that artists and fans of hip hop from across the Twin Cities could meet and perform in a single, neutral space. Organized by Big Zach from Kanser, it featured numerous artists, including Brother Ali, Atmosphere, Heiruspecs, Kanser, Unknown Prophets, and many other artists who got their first break at Headspin, as well as breakdancers and graffiti artists, all crammed into the restaurant’s small back room. The series ran for 50 straight Sunday nights, before being shut down by the building’s owner. Soon after, however, Zach began a weekly night of MC battles at the nearby Loring Pasta Bar. By the time that series ended, the lines to participate stretched around the block. Today, the Dinkytowner (just across the street from the former Bon Appetit) has taken over the mantle of hip hop in Dinkytown. Booked for the last three years by Unicus from Kanser, it hosts at least four shows every week, including a weekly series called “The Hook Up,” and a production battle once a month hosted by the group Run Ya Jewelz.

The Fifth Element
The Fifth Element is the storefront of Rhymesayers Entertainment. Located in Minneapolis’ Uptown area on Hennepin Avenue, it was opened in August 1999 and has become one of the best places for hip hop in the Twin Cities, along with St. Paul’s Urban Lights Music. Not only does the Fifth Element stock Twin Cities, regional, and national artists, both on CD and vinyl, they also sell hard-to-find DVDs, t-shirts, DJ gear, books, and magazines, including the essential graffiti and all-around culture magazine from the Twin Cities, LifeSucksDie. The store also has a large selection of mixtapes that can only be found a select Twin Cities record stores. The Fifth Element is not only concerned with recorded music, however; they also have hosted numerous in-store performances by artists from around the country, including Rhymefest, Evidence, Alchemist, Strange Fruit Project, DJ Pam the Funkstress, and others. Album release parties for Rhymesayers artists are always packed, with lines stretching down Hennepin Avenue for blocks. Before moving in to new offices in downtown Minneapolis, the main office of Rhymesayers was located in a small room off the back of the store, yet on a given day, you’re still likely to see Slug, Ant, Siddiq, and other Rhymesayers artists floating around.

B-Girl Be
Held annually at Minneapolis’ Intermedia Arts, the B-Girl Be Summit brings
together women not only from the four elements of hip hop, but also the four corners of the world, combating combats the limited and often degrading representations that mark women in hip hop. Desdamona believes that the impetus for B-Girl Be is that “you have to make your community strong before you can go to the larger community. If you’re not strong, you don’t know what you want, you don’t know your identity, you don’t know who you are.”

The Summit began as the Encyclopedia of Hip Hop Evolution concert series in 1999, organized by Jamaica Del Mar, Desdamona, Toki Wight, and Larry Lucio. First there were monthly concerts that featured performers from all over the Twin Cities, as well those outside of hip hop. For one show a year, they decided to have an all-female lineup, and it became their most popular show. Soon, they had four all-female shows per year, with workshops in between. Ultimately this morphed into B-Girl Be, which was begun in 2005 by a number of women: Desdamona, hip hop scholar and filmmaker Rachel Ramist, Deanna Cummings, Leah Nelson, manager and hip hop scholar Melissa Rivieré, and Intermedia Arts director Theresa Sweetland.

The Summit not only features performances by many of the most important female artists working in hip hop, including Lady Pink, Collective 7, Ursula Rucker, DJ Pam the Funkstress, DJ Shortee, Asia One, it has also brought in a number of female hip hop scholars for keynote addresses, including Gwendolyn D. Pough, Roxanne Shante, and Rosa Clemente. The outside of the building is re-painted with aerosol art during each festival, and there is a special art exhibit inside the gallery, entitled “The Art of T&A: Truth and Activism.”

Women from all over the world come to Minneapolis for B-Girl Be, and it was featured in Martha Cooper’s collection of photographs and stories from b-girls around the world, We B*Girlz. A mix of activism and education, celebration and inspiration, the Summit strikes a balance between celebrating women in hip hop without validating the often patronizing labels such as “female MC.” While foregrounding past and present achievements of women in hip hop culture, it seeks to understand and overcome the obstacles that women face participating in hip hop.

DUNation.com
A virtual landmark of the Twin Cities hip hop scene, DUNation.com was begun in the summer of 2001 by Robbinsdale, MN native Lars Larson. The site originally began as a techno web community called “Division Underground,” but was shortened to “DU” when it become more hip hop oriented. The site is the online place to go for information on the Twin Cities hip hop scene, with an updated show calendar, artist profiles, music, videos, a forum for extended writing, links, the Twin Cities Hip Hop Directory, and a message board. It is this last element that gives DUNation its special place in the Twin Cities scene. The board consists of five sections: “Events,” where people can post show announcements, “Beats and Rhymes,” which is the space to discuss the Twin Cities scene, “The Life,” a free-for-all advice section, “Sportscenter,” discussions of sports happenings, and “City Hall,” DUNation’s political dimension. It encompasses the best aspects of the Twin Cities hip hop scene, serving as a place for artists and fans to discuss hip hop, share songs, as well as find information on upcoming concerts, as well as the worst, as inane internet wars on the boards reduce people to petty name calling. DUnation has also released a compilation of Twin Cities hip hop, DUNation.com: Volume Won, with otherwise unreleased songs by Brother Ali, The C.O.R.E., Unknown Prophets, Sims, Desdamona, and others. In March of 2003, however, Larson sold the site to Vital Vinyl, a Twin Cities record store that specializes in 12-inch techno, house, and hip hop music. The owners of Vital Vinyl have assured users of the site that it will continue in much of the same way as before, with only a few minor changes, yet specific plans have not been revealed.