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Chicago’s new hip-hop scene (Sunday Story)
With big names like Kanye West, Common, Lupe Fiasco and Twista emerging from the Windy City, Chicago has long been known for its hip-hop music. The only thing most of these artists have in common, however, is their hometown, and there’s been no defining Chicago sound in the hip-hop world for a long time.
Until now, that is.
A new wave of music is coming out of the Chicago hip-hop scene, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed. Combining electronic dance beats with hip-hop music, a new crew of rappers and DJs has been gaining credit with critics and mainstream music-lovers alike and making the Chicago scene stand out above the rest.
There’s no name for it yet, but the sound takes the best of both music scenes and mixes them together. DJs, who have been taking a backseat to rappers in mainstream hip-hop culture lately, now take the limelight as they cut up-tempo beats from popular electronic dance songs and mix them with quick raps.
And it all revolves around the party. Nothing revolutionary has come out of the Chicago scene since the emergence of the disco-influenced, electronic-driven sound of house music in the mid-1980s, and Chicago artists have now just started to create this new hybrid of music that again makes people really want to dance and have a good time.
“It’s more about keeping an upbeat rhythm,” said local rapper, producer and DJ Jeremy “Young Live” Davis, 22. “It’s real energetic and fun. That’s the basis of it – have fun with it.”
Chicago rapper Vincent Peters could not agree more. He says the new sound really started with DJs on the scene that took the music from one song and mixed it with the vocals of another, creating mash-ups.
“Here in Chicago, the DJs are the ones that have the huge following, and they’re defining it,” he said. “They started doing their mash-ups, which created a whole ‘nother subculture of music.”
Peters and other artists on the scene credit a lot of the movement to DJ duo Flosstradamus, also known as 24-year-old Josh Young and 26-year-old Curt Cameruci. According to the group’s MySpace music page, the two DJs met in Chicago in 2005 through a mutual friend who said they should hook up because they played the same kind of music. After they met, Young and Cameruci decided to just start spinning together, and soon the two were playing regular gigs at clubs and bars around the city, like Subterranean in Wicker Park and Town Hall Pub in Boystown.
Photo courtesy of Daniel Gomez
Name: Flosstradamus – Josh Young and Curt
Cameruci
Age: 24 and 26, respectively
Occupation: DJs
Years Active: 2005-Present
Label: Koko B. Ware
Associated Acts: Kid Sister, The Cool Kids,
Matt and Kim
Website: www.myspace.com/flosstradamus
According to Bill Bucholtz, proprietor of Town Hall Pub on north Halsted Street, Flosstradamus’ “Get Outta the Hood” nights every third Wednesday of the month at the local bar used to get so packed that they had to start denying people access at the door. Young, college students, who make up most of the group’s fan base, would wait in lines outside the pub, dressed in skinny jeans, brightly-colored t-shirts and their coolest pair of high-top sneakers.
“It turned out to be one of the best shows in the city,” Bucholtz said. “They would mix up so much different music, playing classical music and then jumping into the hip-hop. The enthusiasm they spill over, the energy they have – it just flows out into the crowd.”
Since then, Flosstradamus has gained national attention and are now DJing shows around the world. They’ve used their success to bring other artists on the scene in the spotlight too, like The Cool Kids and rapper Kid Sister, who both used to perform with the group at their gigs across the city. They each now have full-length albums due out later this year.
“All we ever wanted to do was throw a party, and the party blew up,” Young told URB last November. “As a result, we’re bringing people up with it. As long as we all keep doing that, we’ll have something, and right now, everyone is trying to put everyone on their shoulders.”
Kid Sister, aka Young’s real older sister 27-year-old Melissa Young, has had just as much success as her brother’s group. In the past year she has made URB magazine’s list of the next 100 artists of 2007, gracing the magazine’s cover with Flosstradamus last April. Her single “Pro Nails”, featuring Kanye West, has received critical acclaim in the music world, as Melissa Young raps about looking good and feeling cool over a light, poppy beat: “I’m looking sharp you can’t compete with a champ / Steady flickin’, I’m holding down that lawaway rack.”
“I certainly think there was a need for something here in Chicago, and we all provided that,” she told URB last November. “At the time when we started doing our stuff, I think there was a real need for carefree, unpretentious fun. And I have to say that I do feel partly responsible for bringing that here.”
Chicago-based producer James “Jimmy Con” Wineman says it’s these artists who really started the scene. Chicago partygoers were just ready for the change, making it more mainstream and popular.
“People were just searching for something different,” he said. “People wanted to change…and this gave them people the perfect opportunity.”
Either way Chicago artists agree that the new sound is here to say and will only keep growing.
“As of now, I see it expanding even more,” said Columbia College student Jeffrey Shafer, a local rapper and president of the Columbia Urban Music Association.
Davis agrees, saying that with veterans in the game here in Chicago becoming more and more popular, this new sound will set a place for Midwest hip-hop in the music world
“I see it growing, and it’s growing faster than I thought it would,” Davis said. “The Midwest didn’t have a particular sound and you know, it’s coming up nowadays.”
W.C. 973
Source List
Jeremy “Young Live” Davis, Rapper/Producer/DJ
Interviewed over the phone on 5/10/08 at 4 p.m.
(312)545-6387
Vincent Peters, Rapper
Interviewed over the phone on 5/5/08 at 7 p.m. and 5/6/08 at 9:30 p.m.
(202)294-4222
Bill Bucholtz, Proprietor of Town Hall Pub
Interviewed over the phone on 5/13/08 at 1:40 p.m.
(773)472-4405
James “Jimmy Con” Wineman, Producer
Interviewed over the phone on 5/6/08 at 9:45 p.m.
(248)885-0530
Jeffrey Shafer, Rapper/President of Columbia’s Urban Music Association
Interviewed over the phone on 5/11/08 at 10 a.m.
(312)523-6702
Richard “DJ Moptop” Furniss, DJ
Interviewed over the phone on 5/12/08 at 11:30 p.m.
(203)240-2541
“The DJs full job is to make remixes off of song, and now people are starting to realize that the can make bank off it. It’s becoming an art form.”
“People who like rap music can now listen to it in a different medium and now it’s being offered.”
URB Magazine, “Juke All Night, Play All Day”
http://www.urb.com/features/427/JukeAllNightPlayAllDay.php?PageId=1
Flosstradamus MySpace Music Page
http://www.myspace.com/flosstradamus
