 | | An influential alternative rap quartet from South Central Los Angeles, the Pharcyde was formed by MCs/producers Tre "Slimkid" Hardson, Derrick "Fatlip" Stewart, Imani Wilcox, and Romye "Booty Brown" Robinson. |
 | | Handsome Boy Modeling School was a teaming of quirky super-producers Prince Paul (best-known for his work with De la Soul and Stetsasonic) and Dan "The Automator" Nakamura (fresh off his underground success with Kool Keith's Dr. |
 | | Dan "The Automator" Nakamura is a San Francisco-based hip-hop producer whose work with "Kool" Keith Thornton on the latter's Dr. |
 | | If skills sold, Talib Kweli would have been one of the most commercially successful rappers of his time. |
 | | While a member of the New York City duo Organized Konfusion, Pharoahe Monch developed a reputation as one of underground hip-hop's preeminent lyricists, crafting intricate and intelligent raps with partner Prince Poetry. |
 | | After single-handedly redefining "warped" as the mind and mouth behind the Bronx-based Ultramagnetic MC's, "Kool" Keith Thornton -- aka Rhythm X, aka Dr. |
 | | At the time of its 1989 release, De La Soul's debut album, 3 Feet High and Rising, was hailed as the future of hip-hop. |
 | | The underground hip-hop supergroup Deltron 3030 features Deltron Zero (Del Tha Funkee Homosapien), the Cantankerous Captain Aptos (producer/remixer Dan "The Automator" Nakamura) and Skiznod The Boy Wonder (turntablist Kid Koala). |
 | | Though there's actually six of them, Jurassic 5 got everything else right on their self-titled debut EP. |
 | | Patterning his persona and logo after the Marvel Comics super villain Dr. Doom, the man behind MF (Metal Face) Doom's iron mask is actually Daniel Dumile, aka Zevlove X, a member of former Big Apple hip-hoppers K. |
 | | Initially regarded as one of the most promising rappers to emerge in the late '90s, Mos Def turned to acting in subsequent years as music became a secondary concern for him. |
 | | The Oakland-based Hieroglyphics are an underground rap collective who, at their best, combine an offbeat sensibility with a strong grounding in battle rhyming, freestyling, and other hip-hop traditions. |
 | | Though popular success has largely eluded the Roots, the Philadelphia group showed the way for live rap, building on Stetsasonic's "hip-hop band" philosophy of the mid-'80s by focusing on live instrumentation at their concerts and in the studio. |
 | | Rising from the rugged streets and rich musical tapestry of Detroit, Slum Village were poised to carry on the old-school, funk, and soul-filled hip-hop torch of genre pioneers A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, and the Pharcyde. |
 | | After single-handedly redefining "warped" as the mind and mouth behind the Bronx-based Ultramagnetic MC's, "Kool" Keith Thornton -- aka Rhythm X, aka Dr. |
 | | Common (originally Common Sense) was a highly influential figure in rap's underground during the '90s, keeping the sophisticated lyrical technique and flowing syncopations of jazz-rap alive in an era when commercial gangsta rap was threatening to obliterate everything in its path. |
 | | Without question the most intelligent, artistic rap group during the 1990s, A Tribe Called Quest jump-started and perfected the hip-hop alternative to hardcore and gangsta rap. |
 | | Quasimoto is the utterly bizarre alter ego of production wizard/MC Madlib (born Otis Jackson, Jr.), one of the leading underground producers on the West Coast hip-hop scene. |
 | | With just a few (mostly underground) releases, Dilated Peoples energized the rap underground in similar fashion to fellow West Coast crew Jurassic 5. |
 | | Cousin of renowned gangster rapper Ice Cube, Del tha Funky Homosapien (real name Teren Delvon Jones) was born in Oakland, California on August 12, 1972, and got his start with Ice Cube's backing band, Da Lench Mob. |
 | | The East Oakland backpacker crew are members of the loose underground hip-hop consortium known as Hieroglyphics. |
 | | Part of the new millennium resurgence of alternative rap, Little Brother drew from atypical inspirations for Southern hip-hop: classic Native Tongues outfits like De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest, as well as more recent torch-bearers like the Roots and Black Star. |
 | | When he began releasing singles in the late '90s, party rap and gangsta rap were the dominant styles most MCs favored, but Mr. |
 | | The Genius, aka the GZA, was the most cerebral MC in the Wu-Tang Clan, as well as perhaps the most acclaimed. |
 | | Brooklyn MC J-Live first garnered notice with the release of his 1995 single "Bragging Writes." Delivering his thoughtful lyrics with confidence and ease, J-Live's rapping was strong and his soul-inflected grooves immediately appealed to fans of underground hip-hop. |
 | | Like a few other West Coast rap acts, including the Pharcyde and Jurassic 5, Blackalicious has generally favored what hip-hoppers call the "positive tip"; in other words, its lyrics have often been spiritual and uplifting rather than violent or misogynous. |
 | | A founding member of Freestyle Fellowship, Aceyalone played an important role in the evolution of left-field hip-hop on the West Coast during an era when hardcore gangsta rap reigned. |
 | | As well as being one of the ablest solo turntablists on the globe, Cut Chemist is also a member of two highly rated crews: underground rap kings Jurassic 5 and the Los Angeles Latin funk band Ozomatli. |
 | | Although they predated the jazz-rap innovations of De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, and Digable Planets, the Jungle Brothers were never able to score with either rap fans or mainstream audiences, perhaps due to their embrace of a range of styles -- including house music, Afrocentric philosophy, a James Brown fixation, and of course, the use of jazz samples -- each of which has been the sole basis for the start-up of a rap act. |
 | | Brian Burton, the man better known as artist/producer Danger Mouse, was born to a schoolteacher father and a social worker mother in White Plains, NY, but spent much of his childhood upstate in Spring Valley. |
 | | Another fantastic collaboration in the partner-heavy rap underground, Danger Doom brought together producer Danger Mouse (Gorillaz, plus his own heavily publicized production career) with rapper MF Doom (owner of a half-dozen aliases, all with full-length releases). |
 | | A longtime friend of Definitive Jux leader El-P, rapper Murs first appeared as a solo artist in 2003, after nearly a decade of working with various groups in the underground. |
 | | Rjd2's music is a collage of cut-and-paste hip-hop that combines disparate elements to make for soulful, moody portraits of the world. |
 | | The Wu-Tang Clan's chief producer, the RZA (aka the Abbott, Prince Rakeem, the Rzarector, Bobby Steels, and Bobby Digital) was born Robert Diggs. |
 | | The most influential MC-and-DJ tandem of the 1990s, Gang Starr set new standards for East Coast rap with a pair of early-'90s touchstones, Step in the Arena (1991) and Daily Operation (1992), whose appeal has only grown over the decades. |
 | | El-P, aka El Producto, is one of hip-hop's most obstinate and adventurous pioneers, combining a lo-fi old-school aesthetic with a progressive rock musician's inclination to push boundaries. |
 | | Mt. Vernon, New Yorkers Pete Rock (a producer/DJ) and rapper C.L. Smooth emerged in 1992 as both a powerhouse performance duo and as prolific producers. |
 | | Mix Master Mike (born Michael Schwartz in 1970) first attracted attention as a member of the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, one of the most acclaimed DJ collectives of their era -- three-time winners of the annual world scratching competition, they were eventually barred from entering as a result of a lack of any solid competition. |
 | | Describing himself as "a DJ first, producer second, and MC last," Madlib is one of the many aliases of Otis Jackson, Jr. |
 | | The longtime MC with pioneering alternative hip-hop trio A Tribe Called Quest, rapper Q-Tip was born Jonathan Davis in New York City on November 20, 1970. |
 | | The Coup were one of the most overtly political bands in rap history. Formed in the early '90s, the Coup were obviously influenced by the black power rhetoric of "conscious" rappers like Public Enemy and KRS-One, but they were perhaps even more inspired by a heavy-duty, leftist reading list that included Marx and Mao. |
 | | Speaking out against what he saw as a decline in rap during the mid-'90s, Jeru the Damaja came to the fore as a self-proclaimed prophet and the savior of hip-hop, much as KRS-One had done almost ten years before. |
 | | Marcus Garvey, founder of the united Negro Improvement Association manifested his ideas by creating the Black Star shipping line, designed to repatriate blacks to Africa. |
 | | As one of the original members of the seminal '90s rap crew the Wu-Tang Clan, Ghostface Killah (aka Tony Starks) made an impact before he released his debut album, Ironman, late in 1996. |
 | | The Gnarls Barkley collaboration didn't bring producer Danger Mouse to the top of the British charts for the first time, but it did mark his debut as the pilot of a hit record. |
 | | Building on the rapping style of eccentrics Kool Keith and Del the Funky Homosapien, Def Jux headliner Aesop Rock became one of the hottest MCs in the post-millennial underground. |
 | | Gift of Gab made his name as the technically adept MC in the vaunted underground rap duo Blackalicious, in partnership with producer/DJ Chief Xcel. |
 | | Rapper/composer Guru (real name Keith Elam) first rose to prominence as the "lyrical half" of the hip-hop duo Gang Starr, one of the first outfits that attempted to fuse jazz with rap. |
 | | The Five Percent Nation of Islam was a popular inspiration for numerous thinking-man's rap groups during the early '90s, and Brand Nubian was arguably the finest of the more militant crop. |
 | | Among the true talents in the late-'90s new skool of old-school hip-hop, Peanut Butter Wolf began DJing as a teenager and became quite an entrepreneur at his San Jose, CA, high school, selling mix tapes of his turntable work. |
