Midwest Hip Hop

Midwest hip hop is the rap music produced across the American Midwest — Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Cleveland, Kansas City, Minneapolis and Milwaukee — from the late 1980s onward. It is less a single sound than a regional field: *Eminem* and *J Dilla* defined Detroit through battle rap and soul-sampled production, *Kanye West* and *Common* gave Chicago a soul- and jazz-based alternative, *Bone Thugs-n-Harmony* brought rapid melodic flows from Cleveland, *Nelly* took St. Louis bounce to pop scale, and *Tech N9ne* built an independent Kansas City institution on chopper-speed technique.