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✶✶ Welcome to the Chicago Hip-Hop History Project ✶✶

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About the Project

Launched in 2024 with support from The 2024 UIC Awards for Creative Activity and in collaboration with the Chicago Hip-Hop Heritage Museum, the Chicago Hip-Hop History Project aims to provide context and connections for all elements of Chicago hip-hop history using the MediaWiki platform.

Canonical List

The first step in our research was to create a canonical list of figures, organizations, and cultural entities that define the history of Chicago hip-hop. This list is ever evolving and functions as the project’s foundation.

'The List' is a verified and structured dataset built from archival research, community consultation, and student-led research/documentation. Each entry represents a recognized element of Chicago’s hip-hop ecosystem, from artists and producers to collectives, venues, and cultural institutions, songs, recordings, etc.

Alongside this growing knowledge base, we are developing computational methods to examine the scope and structure of hip-hop scholarship already published on Wikipedia.

By comparing patterns between our curated data and Wikipedia’s existing content, we can identify coverage gaps, evaluate the quality and reliability of cited sources, and map where Chicago’s contributions remain underrepresented. These findings directly inform a prioritized plan for Wikipedia editing, guiding students and collaborators as they work to expand, correct, and strengthen hip-hop scholarship across open-knowledge platforms.

Disambiguation

The next phase involves disambiguating and matching those entities across multiple public platforms, with Wikipedia as the primary platform. Many artists and organizations appear under slightly different names or share names with unrelated subject so this stage focuses on verifying that each record in our dataset aligns with its correct digital representation.

Using both manual curation and computational matching techniques, we link every canonical entity to its corresponding pages and profiles on platforms such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Discogs, Spotify, Genius, and the Chicago Hip-Hop Heritage Museum’s internal archives. This process includes:

• Resolving ambiguous or duplicate names through contextual metadata (e.g., genre, collaborators, active years).

• Mapping entities across platforms using consistent identifiers and verified links.

• Creating semantic relationships within our wiki to track where each entity appears (or is missing).

• Documenting cases where no corresponding entry exists, which informs future research and Wikipedia editing priorities.

By completing this step, we transform the canonical list into an interoperable network of verified identities that can be used for large-scale analysis of representation, visibility, and cultural bias across digital knowledge systems.

Bibliometric Survey

At the core of the project is a bibliographic survey of Wikipedia, designed to quantify how Chicago’s hip-hop history has been represented—and where it remains invisible.

Here we are looking quantitatively at counts of articles, citations, and link structures on Wikipedia and the CHHHP.

This site currently has 1700 total unique pages on emcees, DJs, producers, street dancers, graffiti artists and many others members of the Chicago hip-hop community including 367 unknown artists that we are trying to identify.

Comparing CHHHP with Wikipedia

   180 of the pages in the CHHHP also have a corresponding article on Wikipedia, while 417 do not have a corresponding article.
  We are currently developing apps to incorporate additional statistics for Wiki article including views, length and number of contributors. 

Citation Counter

   In-Progress

Top Pages by 30-Day Wikipedia Views

Page	Has Wikipedia 30d pageviews
Kanye West	309,055
King Von	205,075
Juice WRLD	114,820
Lil Durk	90,484
Jennifer Hudson	89,003
2hollis	45,056
Young Dolph	37,742
Earl Sweatshirt	29,518
G Herbo	26,100
Gil Scott-Heron	25,863
Lupe Fiasco	22,949
Da Brat	22,496
Donny Hathaway	21,659
Vic Mensa	20,045
Serengeti	16,543
Fredo Santana	14,037
Polo G	11,854
Harold Washington	11,308
Hitmaka	10,226
Lil Reese	9,861
... further results

The Elements

✶ Graffiti Writing

• Graffiti Artists (42 members)

✶ DJing

• Disc Jockeys (DJs) / Turntablists (96 members)
• Radio Personalities
• Producers (104 members)

✶ Street Dancing

• Street Dancers (19 members)
  • Lockers
  • Poppers
  • Breakers
• Street Dance Groups

✶ Beatboxing

✶ MCing

• EmCees (MCs) (682 members)
• Hip-Hop Groups (111 members)

✶ Knowledge

• Philosophies
• Writers

More Elements

Click here for a full list of categories including:

• Entrepreneurs (4 members)

• Fashion Designers (1 members)
• Recording Studios
• Record Labels
• and many others...

Please see our editors and inclusion criteria pages for more information.

Genres

The following hip-hop genres are associated with Chicago and have an article on Wikipedia:

  * Chicago hip-hop
  * Drill music
  * Midwestern hip-hop
  * Chopper (rap)
  * Comedy hip-hop
  * Freestyle rap
  * Hipster hop
  * Mumble rap
  * Political hip-hop
  * Progressive rap

EchoNest (Spotify) includes Chicago artists in each of the following genre maps:

  * Hip-Hop
  * Rap
  * Gangster Rap
  * Melodic Rap
  * Golden Age Hip-hop
  * Hip-house  
  * Chicago Bop
  * Chicago Rap
  * Chicago Drill

Recently Updated Pages

• Radio Stations (Modification date"Modification date" is a predefined property that corresponds to the date of the last modification of a subject and is provided by Semantic MediaWiki.: 15 April 2026 19:15:22)
• Doc Illa (Modification date"Modification date" is a predefined property that corresponds to the date of the last modification of a subject and is provided by Semantic MediaWiki.: 15 April 2026 18:03:30)
• Shawn Boyd (Modification date"Modification date" is a predefined property that corresponds to the date of the last modification of a subject and is provided by Semantic MediaWiki.: 15 April 2026 18:00:49)
• Black High-Priestess (Modification date"Modification date" is a predefined property that corresponds to the date of the last modification of a subject and is provided by Semantic MediaWiki.: 15 April 2026 17:59:04)
• DJ 331/3 (Modification date"Modification date" is a predefined property that corresponds to the date of the last modification of a subject and is provided by Semantic MediaWiki.: 15 April 2026 17:56:08)
• Save One (Modification date"Modification date" is a predefined property that corresponds to the date of the last modification of a subject and is provided by Semantic MediaWiki.: 15 April 2026 17:54:10)
• Super Business Women Show (Modification date"Modification date" is a predefined property that corresponds to the date of the last modification of a subject and is provided by Semantic MediaWiki.: 15 April 2026 17:52:22)
• Cheryl Burton (Modification date"Modification date" is a predefined property that corresponds to the date of the last modification of a subject and is provided by Semantic MediaWiki.: 15 April 2026 17:51:05)
• 704 (Modification date"Modification date" is a predefined property that corresponds to the date of the last modification of a subject and is provided by Semantic MediaWiki.: 15 April 2026 17:49:39)
• David McKinley Trotter (Modification date"Modification date" is a predefined property that corresponds to the date of the last modification of a subject and is provided by Semantic MediaWiki.: 15 April 2026 17:46:47)

... further results

For Researchers

This digital encyclopedia is a Semantic MediaWiki project. Semantic properties are used to add structured, machine-readable data to pages within this project. This allows for enhanced search capabilities, data extraction, and the creation of specialized views based on semantic information.

Contact

This site is administered by the CHHHP team.