Have you ever had a moment where youâre trying to describe an artist, and you call them an âunderground rapper,â only for the conversation to turn into a debate about what âundergroundâ actually means in 2021?
Some people may call Westside Gunn âundergroundâ because of Griseldaâs gritty, lyrical style, but heâs not exactly under the radar. Heâs a former Shady Records signee whoâs sat front row at Paris Fashion Week and boasts close relationships with superstars like Jay-Z, Drake, Kanye West, and Tyler, the Creator.
Jay Electonicaâs music is considered to be in the lineage of underground cult heroes like Killah Priest and Dead Prezâbut he just did a whole album with Jay-Z. MCs like R.A.P. Ferreira, Earl Sweatshirt, and Billy Woods create abstract, left-of-center work that would have found a natural home at a label like Rawkus Records in the â90s, but the internetâs direct-to-consumer model now allows them to access millions of potential listeners in a way underground artists at indie labels have long had a hard time doing.
At one point, the underground rap community was an easily recognizable scene of acts and labels that couldnât get the same distribution for their CDs that major label acts could. But the internet revolutionized music distribution at the click of a button. The digital evolution allowed artists to operate with a direct-to-consumer model, eliminating many of the corporate barriers that kept certain acts obscure. And now artists who make music thatâs unabashedly crafted for mass appeal are utilizing the same stratagem as avant-garde artists who donât even put hooks on their songs. And theyâre all a TikTok trend away from a platinum single. Are they all âundergroundâ in the same way? Itâs difficult to explain exactly what the phrase means today.
Renowned A&R and executive Dante Ross thinks âunderground rap means everything thatâs not mainstream and has a somewhat determined ceiling.â Legendary indie rapper Slug says âthe concept of underground rap is an identity thing [for] the advocate, the fan, all of us, to give us a sense of belonging.â Drew âDru Haâ Friedman, co-founder of underground mainstay Duck Down Records, once saw the â90s underground scene as music where âyou could just tell it wasnât going to be mainstream.â Industry veteran Jonathan Tanners says underground rap was once âa cultural signifier of a code of conduct,â and believes now that the method of âhow [music] reaches people has changed more so than some of the ideologies.â
Rising Charlotte rapper Mavi feels that the idea of underground rap is a more âdescriptive than prescriptiveâ notion, and a âjudgment made on the mix or the reach or styleâ of music. Griselda signee Rome Streetz calls the underground âthe purest form of hip-hop, because it doesnât really have any of those industry politics with it.â But Spotifyâs Carl Chery is unsure if thereâs even such a thing as underground rap in 2021. âBecause when I think about the original definition and all the raps that made up underground rap in the â90s and the 2000s, the structure doesnât exist now,â he explains.
t wasnât always like that. In the â90s, the underground rap scene was a network of artists, indie labels, DIY venues, zines, and college radio stations that operated below what Ross deemed the âceilingâ of mass distribution.
