The 411 On The 313: A Brief History of Detroit Hip-Hop

For much of the initial half of hip-hop’s first three decades, Detroit was a missing player on the national stage. Despite being perhaps the most important city in the musical history of the 20th Century, there were remarkably few rappers that managed to break free of municipal limits until the late 1990s.
The music industry had treated Detroit as flyover territory ever since Motown Records departed for L.A. in the mid-’70s. With few opportunities for major label deals, no consistently successful local independent record companies, and scant radio airplay, the deck was stacked against any artist being heard much beyond 8 Mile Road (the infamous northern boundary line between the predominantly black city and its predominantly white suburbs).
Today, of course, any hip-hop head is familiar with the legacy of the producer J Dilla and the high-octane hijinks of motor-mouthed Motor City MCs—from Eminem to Big Sean to Danny Brown. But it takes a little deeper digging in the crates to unearth the fuller story of Detroit hip-hop’s truly flavorful history. This is The 411 On The 313: A Brief History of Detroit Hip-Hop.

Though a distant spectator, Detroit was actually a willing participant at rap's inception, thanks to the city's embrace of electro, one of the rhythmic sources from which early hip-hop flowed. Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force (as well as his sampling inspiration, Kraftwerk) were staples of the late-night sets by the influential FM radio DJ the Electrifying Mojo, along with the early recordings by Cybotron, a local duo featuring a young synthesizer enthusiast named Juan Atkins. But where New York DJs and producers concentrated on the verbal gymnastics of MCs, Detroit remained focused on the music's sleek electronic instrumentals and driving drum-machine beats, and soon a generation of African-American producers and beat-makers would speed up the tempos to create the futuristic-leaning sound of techno instead.
Cybotron "Clear" (1983)

MC Pioneers

Detroit's earliest relatively successful rappers were probably the Jheri-curled duo Felix & Jarvis, who had a local hit with their 1982 single "Flamethrower Rap" (co-produced by Don Was), which borrowed its music wholesale from the J. Geils Band's "Flamethrower" (itself a staple of Mojo's WGPR-FM sets). Further cementing their local fame, the pair provided the theme song for the daily dance-party TV show The Scene on African-American-owned UHF station Channel 62: "It's 6 o'clock and it's time to rock/We rock non-stop til 7 o'clock . . ."
Felix & Jarvis The Scene theme song/"Flamethrower Rap,"WGPR-TV (1983)

The Re-Emergence of Detroit Rap

Felix & Jarvis had posed the eternal question "Are you ready to throw down?" But while audiences enthusiastically answered "Yes we are!" it would prove to be several years before Detroit's rap scene was heard from again. When the music resurfaced in the late '80s, the call to party-hearty had been replaced by post-Public Enemy black consciousness and post-N.W.A street-corner reportage.
The image of the MCs themselves had hardened as well, influenced in no small way by the headline-grabbing exploits of local gangsters like the Young Boys Incorporated drug cartel (who devised many of the organizational innovations later employed nationwide in the '80s crack trade) and the aggressive persona of the "Bad Boys"-era Detroit Pistons.
Prince Vince and the Hip Hop Force "Gangster Funk" (1988)
Awesome Dre & The Hardcore Committee "Frankly Speaking" (1989)
Awesome Dre & The Hardcore Committee "You Can't Hold Me Back" (1989)
Kaos & Mystro, "Mass Confusion" (1989)
Kaos & Mystro "Mystro On the Flex" (1989)
Merciless Amir (as Ameer Stein) "A Day Without A Rhyme" (1989)
Detroit's Most Wanted "City of Boom" (1990)

Image via Getty Images/Paul Warner

Hip-house Pioneers

Given its affinity for both electronic music and hip-hop, Detroit was a prime breeding ground for the short-lived "hip-house" sound, which combined accelerated rapping with up tempo dance beats. Detroit techno originator "Magic" Juan Atkins dabbled in hip-house, the pioneering radio DJ Jeff Mills spun the music during his frenetic WJLB-FM shows as "the Wizard," while Mills' politically incendiary group Underground Resistance featured rapping by Robert Hood in their live shows.
Magic Juan (Juan Atkins) & Normski ""Yeah, Yeah, Yeah," (1988)
Underground Resistance & Robert Hood "Panic" (1991)

Detroit Storytelling (and The Controversy That Came With It)

Forced to reckon with an overwhelming onslaught of urban maladies—economic deprivation, rampant crime, government corruption, crumbling city services, failing schools—Detroit MCs have historically been among hip-hop's feistiest and filthiest, truly putting the "hard" into "hardcore."
Few were fouler than Esham, who helped pioneer the fusion of rap and metal in the early 1990s, welding hard-rock riffs to increasingly lurid subject matter on a series of records on his own independent label Reel Life Productions. Esham would later join up with Mastamind and T-N-T to form the "acid rap" trio Natas (Nation Ahead of Time and Space, but, yeah, Satan spelled backwards), who generated their own sensational headlines in 1992 when a Tennessee teenager killed himself playing Russian roulette after listening to their Life After Death album while stoned.
Esham "Redrum" (1990)
Esham "Judgement Day" (1992)
Natas "Fuck the World" (1995)
The 411 On The 313: A Brief History of Detroit Hip-Hop

Image via Getty Images/Johnny Nunez

Straight Outta Flint, MI

Flint's MC Breed was the first Midwestern rapper to enjoy commercial success nationally, creeping into the Billboard album and singles charts after his 1991 collaborative debut with his cousin Al's group DFC (who would later split off on their own and sign with Atlantic). The cousins' records sound more like they came straight outta Compton than Genesee County, however, and aside from the backdrops in their videos, there's not much to distinguish their G-funk as distinctly 313.
MC Breed & DFC "Ain't No Future In Yo' Frontin" (1991)
DFC f/ MC Breed & Nate Dogg "Things In Tha Hood" (1994)

Image via Getty Images/Debra L. Rothenberg

Kid Rock

Long before he was the poor man's Bob Seger, Kid Rock was a teenage breakdancer, DJ, and rapper with the Beast Crew (along with Champtown and The Blackman) who signed a solo deal with Jive Records at age 17. Despite selling 100,000 copies of his debut album, his career tanked in the wake of the post-Vanilla Ice backlash against white MCs, and he'd already been dropped by Jive before he achieved his greatest pre-rap-rock notoriety: in 1993, WSUC-FM at SUNY-Cortland was fined $23,750 for playing Kid's profanity-laced ode to cunnilingus "Yo-Da-Lin In the Valley," the FCC's largest-ever penalty against a college radio station at the time.
The Beast Crew "Got Drawls" 1990
Kid Rock "Yo-Da-Lin In the Valley" (1990)
The 411 On The 313: A Brief History of Detroit Hip-Hop

Image via Getty Images/Michel Linssen

Putting On for Detroit

Champtown, Kid Rock's former Beast Crew collaborator, never managed to gain any national attention himself, but he proved to have an impressive knack for spotting potential stars. After splitting with Rock, he would nurture the early career of Detroit's other most famous white rapper; look closely in the background of 1992's "Do-Da-Dippity" clip for a cameo appearance by a young Marshall Mathers making his music video debut. Mathers, then a member of Bassmint Productions and still known known as M&M, would later work with Champtown while a member of the group Soul Intent.
Champtown, "Do-Da-Dippity" (1992)
Champtown, Check It (1996)
Bassmint Productions with M&M (Eminem) "Steppin' On To The Scene" (1990)
Soul Intent (Champtown/Chaos Kid/M&M) "What Color Is Soul" (1992)
Soul Intent "Biterphobia" (1995)
Soul Intent f/ Proof "Fuckin' Backstabber" (1995)

Image via Getty Images/Catherine McGann

The Hip Hop Shop

The mid 1990s are fondly remembered as Detroit hip-hop's Golden Age, with a thriving scene revolving around Friday night club parties at St. Andrew's Hall downtown and Saturday afternoons at the Hip Hop Shop on 7 Mile Road in the city's northwest side, a store run by budding fashion designer Maurice Malone.
During the the Hip Hop Shop's 1993 to 1997 lifespan, the Saturday evening MC battles hosted by Proof provided a golden opportunity for a budding MC to become a local legend, most notably allowing a skinny white kid from a trailer park to channel his inner Slim Shady and begin morphing into the industry-transforming force named Eminem.
Eminem vs. Kuniva "Freestyle Battle" (February 17, 1996)
Eminem "Infinite" (1996)
Eminem & Proof MTV Freestyle (March 13, 1999)

Image via J Dilla on Facebook / Photography by Raph Rashid

Before Jay Dee & After Dilla

Production-wise, Detroit hip-hop can be divided into two eras, BJ (Before Jay Dee) and AD (After Dilla). The late James Yancey blazed a trail over his too-short life, impressively raising the artistic level of beat-making during his stints in the groups 1st Down and Slum Village, his productions for the likes of A Tribe Called Quest, Erykah Badu, and Common (as well as with local MCs like Phat Kat and Frank-N-Dank), and his later solo work.
1st Down "A Day Wit the Homiez" (1995)
Slum Village "Forth & Back (Rock Music)" (1997)
J Dilla "Featuring Phat Kat" (2001)
Frank-N-Dank f/ Tammy Lucas "Ma Dukes" (2003)
J Dilla f/ The Roots "Workinonit" (2006)