Underground Hip-Hop

Welcome to the cutting edge of hip-hop: that dimly lit utopia where genius, creativity, and invention thrive. Here in the rap underground you'll find everything the mainstream can't handle: a force-field of brains, sounds, and rhymes that gives convention the runaround, from the warped Dangerdoom to the monster talents of Jurassic 5.

Some of the artists with mighty underground reputations were forced into the margins by shoddy treatment at the hands of the conventional record industry: take Freddie Foxxx (aka Bumpy Knuckles), who uses his independence as a platform for eloquently delivered rage. Others (e.g. Madvillain's MF Doom) are just too far out there to reel in.

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 for company: the Definitive Jux stable star pushes rap to its limits on 2003's Bazooka Tooth. We've also got Styles and Jadakiss, the childhood friends who united in LOX before hitting the solo trail.

Underground Hip-Hop 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 paid) 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. This is the real deal.