Search results
Feb 16, 2023 · Discover the hottest emerging hip hop talents from across the US, from Kota The Friend to D The Flyest. Learn about their styles, influences, and plans for 2023 in this article by ONE37pm.
Playlist · Best Underground Rap 2024 · 71 items · 2.4K likes.
Underground hip-hop (also commonly known as indie hip-hop or underground rap) is an umbrella term for hip hop music that is outside the general commercial canon. [1] It is typically associated with independent artists, signed to independent labels or no label at all.
- Madvillain – Madvillainy (2004) Sprawling, ambitious, dense, funny, and consistently refreshing, MF Doom and Madlib’s 2004 collaboration Madvillainy represented the crescendo of an amorphous movement, capturing the inventive spirit of the American underground through a set of uncompromisingly weird and adventurous sounds.
- Cannibal Ox – The Cold Vein (2001) Though released in months prior to 9/11, Cannibal Ox’s seminal Cold Vein may as well have sonically predicted the disastrous days ahead.
- Aesop Rock – Labor Days (2001) Shouldering high expectations after his touted signing to Def Jux, Long Island wordsmith Aesop Rock delivered a career defining statement in Labor Days, an album that expanded on his trademark abstraction while dipping further into his favorite themes (modern labor, the effects of city living on the psyche, artistic creation) and a kind of lucidity nonexistent on previous releases.
- Company Flow – Funcrusher Plus (1997) Before El-P took the reins of Def Jux and assaulted listeners as a solo artist, he and cohorts Bigg Jus and Mr. Len crafted one of independent Hip-Hop’s most aggressive and indelible statements, an anti-mainstream screed that expressed its dissatisfaction in every ounce of its being.
- Busdriver – Temporary Forever. The Project Blowed member’s debut was full of the most humorous and mind numbing free-associative rhymes one will ever hear.
- Quasimoto – The Unseen. Madness is the pleasure of the unseen, and Madlib’s pig-nosed hippo with the brick is everyone’s unseen. The lost thoughts of a rambling stairwell dweller, or the undine styled under-thoughts of a producer living in a basement studio, Lord Quas was our one and only pleasure of pure id.
- Little Brother – The Listening. For many, The Listening could be considered one of the most groundbreaking underground Hip Hop records of the modern era.
- Brother Ali – Shadows On The Sun. Mr. Ali Newman really hit his stride on his sophomore album Shadows On The Sun. Besides Brother Ali’s way better than average beat selection, the album proved how lyrically far the Rhymesayers Entertainment emcee.
Listen to the Underground Hip-Hop Essentials playlist on Apple Music. 101 Songs. Duration: 6 hours, 18 minutes.
Playlist · Underground Hip Hop Mix · 50 items.
