Twin Cities hip-hop
Hip Hop scene in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota US
Twin Cities hip-hop, also referred to as Minneapolis hip-hop, is a subgenre of Midwestern hip-hop music that originates from the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Minnesota.
History
Hip hop culture in the Twin Cities can be traced as far back as 1981. Similar to the development of hip hop in the South Bronx, Twin Cities rap started as parties with a DJ and an emcee. A DJ named Travitron is considered the "godfather" of hip hop in the Twin Cities, and began hosting Hip Hop Shop on 89.9 KMOJ, the first radio station to play Hip Hop in the Twin Cities.
The first Twin Cities hip hop vinyl record released was from the rap group I.R.M. Crew, led by Kelly "Kel-C" Crockett from North Minneapolis. Members were Devastating Dee, TLC, Kel-C, IBM and Cuttin' Kal. "I Dream of DJ’s" was released in 1986, followed by "Baseball" in 1987. Wide Angle, which doubled as a record store and indie recording label, is considered the first Twin Cities independent hip-hop label, with releases on vinyl from Shampayle, the twin cities first female rapper released on vinyl.
David "T.C." Ellis was featured on a Prince song "Graffiti Bridge" in 1990. Further, Ellis's album "True Confessions" was the first rap album released on the Paisley Park label in 1991.
“Twin Cities hip-hop” enters the record as hip Hop scene in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota US. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Twin, Cities and hip-hop can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7858125. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1981, 1986, 1987 and 1990.
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This entry incorporates text from “Twin Cities hip-hop” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.