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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.

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 1630 total unique pages on emcees, DJs, producers, street dancers, graffiti artists and many others members of the Chicago hip-hop community including 283 unknown artists that we are trying to identify.

  ARTICLE COUNTER
  
  171 of the pages in this encyclopedia also have a corresponding article on Wikipedia, while 307 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

The Elements

✶ Graffiti Writing

• Graffiti Artists (42 members)

✶ DJing

• Disc Jockeys (DJs) / Turntablists (89 members)
• Radio Personalities
• Producers (96 members)

✶ Street Dancing

• Street Dancers (18 members)
  • Lockers
  • Poppers
  • Breakers
• Street Dance Groups

✶ Beatboxing

✶ MCing

• EmCees (MCs) (631 members)
• Hip-Hop Groups (90 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

• Sandman (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.: 11 March 2026 19:57:05)
• Angry Blackmen (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.: 11 March 2026 19:52:59)
• Sasha Go Hard (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.: 11 March 2026 19:44:59)
• Phaze-A-Matics (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.: 11 March 2026 19:38:06)
• Pheave (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.: 11 March 2026 19:35:59)
• Sarcastic (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.: 11 March 2026 19:34:27)
• Phenom (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.: 11 March 2026 19:34:04)
• G-Ball THC (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.: 11 March 2026 19:19:10)
• Phatal (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.: 11 March 2026 19:09:26)
• Samiam The Mc (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.: 11 March 2026 19:09:24)

... 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.