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.