Underground Hip-Hop

Welcome to the cutting edge of hip-hop: that dimly-lit rap utopia where genius, creativity, and invention thrive. Here in the underground you'll find everything the mainstream can't handle — a force field of brains, sounds, and rhymes that gives convention the runaround, from Canberra's funk-laden Koolism to the monster talents of Jurassic 5. After the intro, head for our Next Steps.

Some artists with mighty underground reputations were forced into the margins by shoddy treatment at the hands of the conventional record industry. Take Freddie Foxxx (a.k.a. Bumpy Knuckles), who uses his independence as a platform for eloquently delivered rage. Others, like Brisbane's Butterfingers, have emerged from the shadows on the strength of street support. In Deep Cuts, we dig even deeper into our underground hip-hop crates.

Now, we're so far into the underground that you may never see daylight again. And why would you want to, when you've got the likes of Aesop Rock ("Super Fluke") for company: The Definitive Jux stable star pushes rap to its limits on 2003's Bazooka Tooth. We've also got Styles, who takes the biographical route on the title track from A Gangster and a Gentleman.

Underground rap is a curious place, once home to Eminem (until he catapulted himself into ultra-stardom), a breeding ground for the ambitious, but also a place for those mercurial talents who know that the shadows offer far more freedom than the (highly lucrative) spotlight. One of the defining features of the movement is its cross-pollination of genius, as the major players move between projects, alter egos, and collaborators like wraiths. Make no mistake: this is the real deal.