page_title: Midwest hip hop
section_title: Cleveland
hierarchical_section_title: Midwest hip hop / Ohio / Cleveland
caption_attribution_description: English: Bizzy Bone (of Bone Thugs &amp; Harmony) - Live in Concert
context_page_description: Midwest hip hop is a regional genre of hip hop music performed by artists from the Midwestern United States. In contrast with its East Coast, West Coast and Southern counterparts, Midwest hip hop has very few constants in style or production.
  Midwest hip hop's first dose of national popularity came in the mid-90s with the extremely fast-paced rappers known as Choppers, such as Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, Twista, Tech N9ne, Atmosphere, and Eminem.
  However, while the artists mentioned above became one of the first to introduce Midwest hip hop that rivaled the popularity of West and East Coast styles, other subsequent acts have or already had also risen to national prominence such as Nelly, D12, Common, Da Brat, Chief Keef, Kanye West, Kid Cudi, Big Sean, Juice Wrld, Metro Boomin, and Chance the Rapper but they share very few similarities. Other notable midwest rappers and producers include: Brother Ali, Lupe Fiasco, Royce Da 5'9, J Dilla, Ramey Dawoud, Tech N9ne, Elzhi, Obie Trice, and up and comers Freddie Gibbs, Danny Brown and Manny Phesto. It is because these lack of constants between acts from different cities that it can be extremely difficult to define a "typical" Midwest sound.
context_section_description: In the early 1990s, five drop outs formed the unit Bone Enterpri$e and took a one way bus ticket to Compton. They went searching for Eazy-E, a pioneer of gangsta rap, and signed to his label. They were signed to Ruthless when they got back to Cleveland for a concert, where they performed for Eazy on the spot. They changed their name to Bone Thugs-n-Harmony consisting of Flesh-N-Bone, Layzie Bone, Wish Bone, Krayzie Bone, Bizzy Bone. While in L.A. they visited The Good Life where they bore witness to the creators of their soon to be new style, a rapid-fire flow and melodic mesh of harmonizing vocals, called Chopping, that they called the Flow Motion. They released their LP Creepin on ah Come Up with the smash single "Thuggish Ruggish Bone" and "Foe tha Love of $" featuring Eazy-E. They later had hits like "1st of Tha Month", "Tha Crossroads", Art of War's "Look Into My Eyes", and "If I Could Teach The World" which earned the group their first American Music Awards. Bone Thugs-n-Harmony were the first Midwest rappers to go platinum, which led to a conflict with Chicago rappers as Twista, Do or Die, and Crucial Conflict about stealing their style. They are also the only ones to collaborate with hip hop "Hall of Famers" like The Notorious B.I.G. ("Notorious Thugs"), Tupac Shakur ("Thug Luv"), Big Pun ("When I Die"), and Eazy-E ("Foe tha Love of $") while they were all living, and have sold more than 40 million records only in the U.S.  Today they have their own label after contractual difficulties with Ruthless records. Their most recent album, Uni5: The World's Enemy was released in May 2010. They returned as a full group with this album after 10 years of Flesh-n-Bone being in jail, and Bizzy Bone leaving the group twice to build companies 7th Sign Records and IMG Recordings and Distribution, inc.
  In 2008, most Northeast Ohio (NEO) Hip-Hop has either a faux-southern sound (usually from inner city Cleveland/Akron), while Youngstown (on the PA Line) preserves a more classic vibe. However, both the Eastern and Western sides of Cleveland itself hold light to a conscious Hip Hop sound coined by artists such as Mos Def and Talib Kweli, while the southern portion of the city holds more to a flashier, more glamorous side of hip hop.
  Cleveland was named as xxlmag.com top ten hip hop cities, with Ohio being named among America's most hip-hop states, and having the full support of Cleveland Cavaliers star small forward LeBron James's imprint, DeamLife Ent., Cleveland and the whole Northeast Ohio music scene has shown itself as a force in Midwest as well as mainstream hip-hop.
  Cleveland remains on the scene with Kid Cudi, who collaborates with a wide array of musicians, Machine Gun Kelly, who signed with Diddy in August 2011, and other notables, such as Chip Tha Ripper, (also known King Chip) Ray Cash.
caption: Bizzy Bone of Bone Thugs & Harmony – live in concert
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