Hip-hop heartland Nelly and Eminem make the Midwest a rap hot spot
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Chronicles)

When St. Louis rapper Nelly bumped Detroit native Eminem from the No.
1 slot on Billboard's Hot 200 chart in July, he did more than make
good bank. He made history: For the first time, two rap artists
hailing from America's great untapped Midwest battled for national
sales supremacy and left competitors in the dust.
Nelly's "Nellyville" and Eminem's "The Eminem Show" were the smash
hits of the summer; months later they remain, back to back, in
Billboard's Top 10.

Thanks to the Nelly-Eminem juggernaut, 2002 has turned out to be a
banner year for Midwestern music as major labels begin to take
unprecedented notice of St. Louis, Detroit, Cincinnati, Indianapolis,
Chicago and other cities scattered through the overlooked heartland.
Thanks to the rise of the Southern sound epitomized by Atlanta
artists like OutKast and Ludacris, regional rap is all the rage --
and the region at the center of the map right now is, both culturally
and geographically, miles from hip-hop's traditional East and West
Coast strongholds. Even if St. Louis isn't the next Atlanta, the
Midwest is already being touted as the next Dirty South.

"I think what Nelly's done for St. Louis overshadows what Eminem's
done for Detroit," says Sherell Scarbriel of Digable Records NMA, who
helped break Nelly and his St. Lunatics crew on MP3.com. "Now, when
people think of the Midwest, they think of Nelly and his St. Lunatics
crew. He single-handedly put it on the map."

The Midwest has had stars before. In the '90s, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony
put Cleveland on the charts, and Chicago rapper Common remains a
force in the national conscious hip-hop scene. But none have had the
commercial impact of Nelly, Eminem and rising stars like Detroit's
Slum Village, whose "Tainted" video is a BET favorite.

With his Motor City slang and regional rhyming, Eminem writes another
chapter in Detroit's rich but often overlooked musical history, which
ranges from Motown to heavy metal and garage rock. But in Nelly's St.
Louis turf and in other Midwestern cities, the music scenes have been
more desolate -- in part because ambitious talent has been too busy
trying to leave town to concentrate on creating an indigenous sound.

"Before Nelly blew up, rappers didn't .25 want to be associated with
the Midwest," Scarbriel says. "Everyone tried to sound like the East
Coast or the West Coast, then the South. Nelly was the first to make
it sound cool to be from the Midwest. He took a liability and made it
an asset. The way he pronounces his words, the way his raps come out,
doesn't sound like anyone else. It's a Midwest country accent."

Being at the geographical nexus of a country has its ups and downs.
Rappers in Midwestern cities incorporate elements from the East, West
and South to create a unique fusion with a potentially broad appeal.
At the same time, each Midwestern city assembles its influences
differently, and the result is artistically rich but commercially
problematic. Rather than an identifiable "Midwest sound," there are
instead multiple sounds from artists whose ties are regional, not
stylistic: The rapid-fire rhyming of Chicago's Twista bears little
resemblance to the laid-back bounce of St. Louis' Pretty Willie
Suella.

Scarbriel, whose Digable Records label and Stlhiphop Web site
(www.stlhiphop.com) promote Midwestern music, thinks rap's
traditional territorial pride is another factor. "It's about
representing where you're from. People in Chicago represent their
city; people in Indianapolis represent theirs."

If there's a link between the Midwest's diverse scenes these days,
it's shared optimism. With Nelly and Eminem boasting two of the
year's best-selling albums, crews like Slum Village on the rise and
the music industry looking for the next Atlanta-like explosion, their
turf seems poised to become the new rap heartland.

"People are encouraged by Eminem's, and particularly Nelly's,
success," says Scarbriel. "When Eminem and Nelly came out, there was
nothing like them on the scene -- Eminem was the first serious white
rapper to really blow up, and Nelly was the first to see his Midwest
roots as a plus. They were the pioneers, and people will come up
after them. You have to figure that if it could happen in St. Louis,
it could happen anywhere."