50 Fun Facts About Underground Hip Hop

Which future superstar began as a roadie and backup dancer for the Oakland group Digital Underground?

Tupac Shakur carried gear and danced on tour in 1990, then made his recorded debut as 2Pac on the group's January 1991 single Same Song.

Which rapper, rarely seen in public without a metal mask, also released albums as Viktor Vaughn and King Geedorah?

MF DOOM borrowed the mask from Marvel's Doctor Doom and sometimes sent stand-ins to perform in it, which angered audiences.

Atlanta rapper Killer Mike and Brooklyn producer El-P released a self-titled 2013 debut album as which duo?

Run the Jewels once released Meow the Jewels, a light-hearted remix album made entirely from cat sounds.

Danger Mouse's 2004 mashup The Grey Album set Jay-Z's Black Album vocals to samples of which band?

The Beatles' White Album supplied the music, and their label EMI tried to halt its distribution even though Jay-Z and both surviving band members approved of it.

Pharoahe Monch's underground anthem Simon Says is built on an uncleared sample of which movie monster's theme?

Godzilla's studio Toho sued Monch in 2001 because the sample came from Akira Ifukube's score for a 1992 film in the series.

Which member of the original Hamilton cast is also the rapper in the experimental hip hop trio Clipping?

Daveed Diggs joined in 2010, writing raps over noise pieces made by his elementary-school friend William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes.

Brockhampton, the self-styled boy band, grew out of a collective recruited on a fan forum devoted to which rapper?

Kanye West's fan forum is where 13-year-old Kevin Abstract recruited the collective AliveSinceForever in 2009, which reformed as Brockhampton in Texas in 2014.

Smokepurpp and Lil Uzi Vert built early followings in a lo-fi rap scene named after which streaming platform?

SoundCloud made publishing so easy that Smokepurpp recorded his first uploads on a simple headphone microphone.

Fans of which face-painted Detroit rap group, founders of Psychopathic Records, are known as Juggalos?

Insane Clown Posse staged the first Gathering of the Juggalos in 2000, a festival of concerts, wrestling, games and sideshows.

Del the Funky Homosapien, the Oakland rapper heard on Gorillaz's Clint Eastwood, is a cousin of which N.W.A member?

Ice Cube gave his cousin a start writing lyrics for his group Da Lench Mob before Del struck out with the Hieroglyphics crew.

Which independent artist's mixtape Coloring Book became the first streaming-only album to win a Grammy?

Chance the Rapper won Best Rap Album at the 2017 Grammy Awards with a mixtape that had no record label behind it.

Which rapper's Blue Slide Park was the first independently distributed debut album to top the Billboard 200 since 1995?

Mac Miller sold 144,000 copies in a week on Rostrum Records, the first independent debut at number one since Tha Dogg Pound's Dogg Food.

A 2014 data study of unique words in lyrics found which rapper had the largest vocabulary in hip hop?

Aesop Rock's first 35,000 lyrics held more unique words than any other rapper's and, by the same measure, more than Shakespeare or Moby-Dick.

Which name is given to the drum-heavy golden-age East Coast production style associated with DJ Premier and Pete Rock?

Boom bap imitates a kick drum followed by a snare, and T La Rock used the phrase on the 1984 song It's Yours.

Mos Def and Talib Kweli released a celebrated 1998 debut album together under which duo name?

Black Star took the name from the Black Star Line, the shipping company founded by the Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey.

Which fast-rhyming Kansas City rapper co-founded the independent label Strange Music with Travis O'Guin?

Tech N9ne got his name from the TEC-9 handgun, a nickname another rapper gave him for his rapid-fire chopper style.

Which Harlem-raised rapper, born in a military hospital in Lima, Peru, recorded the Revolutionary album series?

Immortal Technique was a toddler when his family moved to New York in 1980 to escape the conflict in Peru.

Which Odd Future rapper was sent by his mother to a boarding school in Samoa shortly after his debut mixtape?

Earl Sweatshirt spent a year and a half at the school for at-risk teens, unable to record, and came home to Los Angeles in 2012.

Which Long Island-raised emo rapper took his stage name from his mother's childhood nickname for him?

Lil Peep had been called Peep by his mother since he was a baby, and he first uploaded music in 2013 under the name Trap Goose.

Which Bay Area rapper, formerly of the Berkeley group The Pack, styles himself the BasedGod?

Lil B's old group scored a surprise hit with Vans at the peak of the Bay Area's hyphy movement before he went solo.

Rapper Slug and producer Ant make up which Minneapolis duo, co-founders of the label Rhymesayers Entertainment?

Atmosphere started the other way round: a third member, Spawn, did the rapping while Slug worked as the DJ.

Which Los Angeles label founded by Peanut Butter Wolf released Madvillainy and J Dilla's Donuts?

Stones Throw Records began in 1996 so that Wolf could release the songs he had recorded with his late rapping partner Charizma.

Which Oxnard-raised producer sped up his own deep voice to rap as the high-pitched alter ego Lord Quas?

Madlib disliked his deep voice, which friends compared to Barry White's, so he rapped slowly over a slowed recorder and sped the tape back up as Quasimoto.

Which New York label co-founded by El-P released Cannibal Ox's The Cold Vein as its first full-length album?

Definitive Jux started life as Def Jux until Def Jam Recordings sued over the similar name in 2001 and the case was settled out of court.

El-P first made his name in which Brooklyn trio behind the 1997 album Funcrusher Plus?

Company Flow put out their debut EP, Funcrusher, on their own Official Recordings label in 1995, two years before the full album.

Which independent rap label behind the Soundbombing compilations was bankrolled by Rupert Murdoch's son James?

Rawkus Records was started in 1995 by two of James Murdoch's high school friends, and Rupert Murdoch bought a majority of the label a year later.

Westside Gunn and his brother Conway the Machine made which New York State city the home of Griselda Records?

Buffalo's best-known rap label was founded in 2012 and takes its name from the drug lord Griselda Blanco.

Bun B and Pimp C of the duo UGK came from which Texas city, also the hometown of Janis Joplin?

Port Arthur's duo called themselves the Underground Kingz because they thought their slang-heavy country rap was inaccessible to outsiders.

Rapper Freddie Gibbs was born in which Indiana steel city, also the hometown of the Jackson family?

Gary offered so few outlets that, by Gibbs's account, the producer he met while working at a local mall was the only person in town with a studio.

Mac Dre, a key figure in the Bay Area's hyphy movement and founder of Thizz Entertainment, came from which city?

Vallejo's Mac Dre recorded the 1992 release Back n da Hood over the phone while locked up in Fresno County Jail and Lompoc Prison.

Which subgenre built on old Memphis rap vocals spawned a cowbell-heavy drift offshoot in Russia in the late 2010s?

Phonk's Russian offshoot spread so fast on TikTok that many listeners took the faster drift style for the original genre.

Producer Clams Casino helped pioneer which internet-born subgenre, given its name by a music blogger in 2010?

Cloud rap got its name when blogger Walker Chambliss used the phrase for the music of Main Attrakionz member Squadda B.

Which rap subgenre counts Gravediggaz, Flatlinerz and Brotha Lynch Hung among its originators?

Horrorcore pushes violence past street realism into the gruesome and ghoulish, and Violent J has named a Geto Boys track as the first song of its kind.

Which rapper's 2021 single Miss the Rage gave its name to an entire rap subgenre of the 2020s?

Trippie Redd titled the song for the concert mosh pits he longed for during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

Ken Carson and Destroy Lonely both signed to Opium, the Atlanta label and collective founded in 2019 by which rapper?

Playboi Carti signed Ken Carson in 2019 and Destroy Lonely in 2021, filling the label's roster with fellow Atlanta natives.

Which Swedish rapper went viral on YouTube in 2013 with the song Ginseng Strip 2002?

Yung Lean grew up in Stockholm as the son of a poet and of a human rights activist who later became Sweden's ambassador to Albania.

Cousins known as Scrim and Ruby da Cherry founded which New Orleans rap act in 2013?

Suicideboys own and operate their label, G*59 Records, and put out only EPs and mixtapes for years before a 2018 debut album.

Which Florida rapper's debut single Look at Me premiered online in 2015 and reached the Hot 100 two years later?

XXXTentacion's song first appeared on the account of its co-producer Rojas and became a sleeper hit, peaking at number 34 in 2017.

Vocalist MC Ride and drummer Zach Hill formed which experimental hip hop band in Sacramento in 2010?

Death Grips signed to Epic Records in 2012, then leaked their own second album as a free download and were dropped by the label.

Boots Riley, who directed the film Sorry to Bother You, fronts which political hip hop band from Oakland?

The Coup made an album called Sorry to Bother You in 2012 because Riley had finished the screenplay but had no way to get the film produced.

Japanese producer Nujabes, called the godfather of lo-fi hip hop, co-scored which 2004 anime series?

Samurai Champloo, directed by Shinichiro Watanabe, dropped graffiti and rapping into feudal Japan, and tracks Nujabes wrote for it became touchstones for later beatmakers.

Das Racist rose to internet fame in 2008 with a song about a combined Taco Bell and which other chain?

Pizza Hut completes the title, Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, and the Brooklyn group followed it with the 2010 mixtapes Shut Up, Dude and Sit Down, Man.

Daniel Radcliffe recited Alphabet Aerobics, a tongue-twister by which California rap group, on The Tonight Show?

Blackalicious paired the multisyllabic rhymes of rapper Gift of Gab with the soulful production of Chief Xcel.

Brooklyn rapper Ka, who released albums on his own label Iron Works, spent twenty years in which other profession?

Firefighter was his day job: Ka rose to the rank of captain in the New York City Fire Department while making records on the side.

Which Ultramagnetic MCs co-founder reinvented himself in 1996 as a time-travelling alien gynecologist from Jupiter?

Kool Keith created the character, a homicidal surgeon named Dr Octagon, for his debut solo album, which was also praised for DJ Qbert's scratching.

Chicago rapper MC Juice beat a pre-fame Eminem in a 1997 freestyle battle at which Cincinnati hip hop festival?

Scribble Jam, co-founded by the makers of a graffiti magazine, ran contests for MCs, DJs, breakdancers, graffiti writers and beatboxers until 2008.

New York rappers Billy Woods and Elucid record together under which duo name, shared with an American oil tycoon?

Armand Hammer the tycoon made a fortune in pharmaceuticals and whiskey before taking control of the failing Occidental Petroleum in 1956.

Denzel Curry and Xavier Wulf came up in which South Florida collective founded by SpaceGhostPurrp in 2008?

Raider Klan wrote its name and messages in a hieroglyph-inspired style, swapping most vowels for V or X in capital letters.

The Good Life Cafe, whose open mic nights nurtured 1990s Los Angeles rap, was mainly what kind of business?

Health food store by day, the Good Life enforced a strict no-cursing policy at its open mic, which some rappers said made rhyming more challenging.

Which producer joined rapper Del the Funky Homosapien and DJ Kid Koala in the sci-fi trio Deltron 3030?

Dan the Automator played the Cantankerous Captain Aptos on the trio's 2000 debut, a concept album set in the year 3030.