Curated playlist
Midwest hip-hop musicians
- EminemEminem performed with Elton John at the 43rd Grammy Awards while GLAAD protested outside.
- Kanye WestKanye West recorded "Through the Wire" with his jaw still wired shut. A 2002 car accident had shattered it.
- Janet JacksonJanet Jackson was seen at the 1983 American Music Awards wearing a hoop earring with a key attached to it. She has worn variations of that earring in music videos and live shows ever since. The pair she wore between 1987 and 1990 is now on…
- Kid RockKid Rock, born Robert James Ritchie in Romeo, Michigan, was 17 when he signed with Jive Records. Years later, his album Devil Without a Cause sold 14 million copies. Both facts belong to one career, and little else about that career is…
- Tom MorelloTom Morello, the American guitarist behind Rage Against the Machine, once made an entire festival crowd listen to nothing but noise. At Lollapalooza in 1993, his band walked onstage naked. Their mouths were covered with duct tape, and…
- Lupe FiascoLupe Fiasco finished an album in 2010, but his record label refused to release it.
- Kid CudiKid Cudi was born Scott Ramon Seguro Mescudi in Cleveland on the 30th of January 1984. One day, while he was working at the BAPE store in New York, Kanye West came in and bought a few jackets. Cudi had forgotten to remove a security sensor…
- MGKMGK, born Colson Baker and known for years as Machine Gun Kelly, took his original stage name from a gangster. The nickname belonged to George Kelly Barnes, a criminal of the Prohibition era. The man who borrowed it became a rapper,…
- Quincy JonesQuincy Jones taped a sign to the entrance of a recording studio in 1985, and it read "Check Your Ego at the Door." Behind that door waited most of the major American recording artists of the day. Jones needed every one of them to work as…
- Tech N9neTech N9ne rapped the letters of his own name to remember how to spell it.