The Mixtape About Nothing

"The underground just spun around and did a 360!" When Eminem spit this rhyme in 2000 on The Marshall Mathers LP, he was, as usual, talking about himself, but I imagine the line must sound depressingly prophetic to circa-2008 underground rappers surveying the last eight years. In a strikingly short time, all of the mutually understood rules of independent rap's mid-to-late-90s golden age have been overturned, rendered obsolete by a c ombination of shifting critical opinion and the democratizing bulldozer of the internet, and indie-rappers have been struggling to gain footing in their bewildering new landscape ever since. Criticizing mainstream hip-hop's misogyny, violence, and materialism, for instance, once meant approving, pat-on-the-head reviews from mainstream rock publications like Rolling Stone and SPIN. These days, it is the quickest route to being derided as a self-righteous "backpack rapper," a term that has soured into a reflexive sneer.

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