Midwest Hip Hop - Cleveland

Cleveland

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 rapper, 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 lead 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 BIG ("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 back with this album after 10 years of Flesh-n-Bone being in jail, and Bizzy Bone leaving the group twice, thus finally returning.

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 and with Ohio being named as Americas 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 showing 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, Al Fatz, Nicx (often stylized NicX), and Ray Jr (not to be confused with Ray Cash).