The Ultimate Guide to Finding Hip Hop in Boston

Published by Tim Burdick on June 18, 2010 at 9:30 am

An Introduction

Whether or not they’ve ever visited the city, almost everyone has some fact about Boston that they can summon at will.

Many will mention Boston as a place rich in sports lore. It’s the place to find Fenway Park — home to the beloved Red Sox and the almost equally famous left field wall affectionately referred to as the Green Monster. The city also conjures names like Bird, Russell, and Auerbach and other images of the clover-laden basketball team that’s hoisted more NBA championship banners than any other franchise (Lakes be damned).

Some will name the famed places of higher learning; there’s MIT — think Goodwill Hunting — and Harvard, the nation’s first university. For others, it is a place of great, if muddled, historical significance: they bring up Paul Revere’s midnight ride and the Boston Tea Party. Ultimately though, few can elaborate on the sources of Boston’s identity past these vague outdated concepts. The details are shoved to the back of our minds. We are grasping at ghosts — the city’s history has a tendency to overshadow it’s identity.

At times, talking about the Boston hip hop scene can give you that same feeling. When questioned about Boston hip hop artists, national acts passing through all give the same answer. “Guru,” each offers. “…and Mr. Lif. and Akrobatik.” Another pause. “But they all moved away years ago.”

That is, of course, the black eye on Boston’s hip hop scene. New York City — hip hop’s birth place and arguably still the Mecca of the culture — is too close; it has always been too easy for blossoming local talent to make the five-hour move to the Big Apple. As underground artists like Guru and Lif gained notoriety in the late nineties, they packed up and left. Even Rhode Islander Sage Francis, a man who made a name for himself in Boston at the 1999 Superbowl Battle, relocated to NYC soon afterwards.

By 2003, the local underground hip hop scene was in crisis. Most of the city’s major venues refused to book hip hop shows, blaming low profits and more frequent violence.

Thankfully, hip hop is slowly making a comeback. Venues have started to book hip hop shows again, thanks in large part to Ned Wellberry — who operates as Leedz Edutainment — the city’s most successful hip hop promoter. In 2010, Leedz is still responsible for most of the bills with local headliners. At the same time, Boston is once again a regular stop for national tours.

Hip Zepi: The Ultimate Guide To Finding Hip Hop in Boston

Still, hip hop hasn’t made a full recovery in Boston. There are as many indie rock shows on any given night as there are hip hop shows in a full week, and venues tend to charge more for hip hop shows — sometimes as much as double the usual price of any other show. Hip hop culture is alive in Boston, but not all is well. Hip Zepi, a store that has been a fixture of hip hop in the heart of downtown Boston since 1994, closed its doors last month.

But, to discredit the presence of hip hop as a whole would be a disservice to the city. Thankfully, there are still plenty of places in Boston that you may catch some hip hop, you just have to know where to look.

Continue Reading: Page 2 – Venues »

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Justin Boland Says:
June 8th, 2011 at 7:42 pm

I’ve had the opposite experience in Boston — way harder to book shows here than anywhere else on the US East Coast. The violence has definitely killed the scene, except for national acts occasionally coming through.