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Hip-Hop Heartland
Nelly and Eminem make the Midwest a Rap Hot Spot
by Neva Chonin, SF Chronicle

When St. Louis rapper Nelly bumped Detroit native Eminem from the No. 1 slot on Billboard's Hot 200 chart in July, he did more than make good bank. He made history: For the first time, two rap artists hailing from America's great untapped Midwest battled for national sales supremacy and left competitors in the dust. Nelly's "Nellyville" and Eminem's "The Eminem Show" were the smash hits of the summer; months later they remain, back to back, in Billboard's Top 10.

Thanks to the Nelly-Eminem juggernaut, 2002 has turned out to be a banner year for Midwestern music as major labels begin to take unprecedented notice of St. Louis, Detroit, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Chicago and other cities scattered through the overlooked heartland. Thanks to the rise of the Southern sound epitomized by Atlanta artists like OutKast and Ludacris, regional rap is all the rage -- and the region at the center of the map right now is, both culturally and geographically, miles from hip-hop's traditional East and West Coast strongholds. Even if St. Louis isn't the next Atlanta, the Midwest is already being touted as the next Dirty South.

"I think what Nelly's done for St. Louis overshadows what Eminem's done for Detroit," says S. Scarbriel of Digable Records NMA, who helped break Nelly and his St. Lunatics crew on MP3.com. "Now, when people think of the Midwest, they think of Nelly and his St. Lunatics crew. He single-handedly put it on the map."

The Midwest has had stars before. In the '90s, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony put Cleveland on the charts, and Chicago rapper Common remains a force in the national conscious hip-hop scene. But none have had the commercial impact of Nelly, Eminem and rising stars like Detroit's Slum Village, whose "Tainted" video is a BET favorite.

With his Motor City slang and regional rhyming, Eminem writes another chapter in Detroit's rich but often overlooked musical history, which ranges from Motown to heavy metal and garage rock. But in Nelly's St. Louis turf and in other Midwestern cities, the music scenes have been more desolate -- in part because ambitious talent has been too busy trying to leave town to concentrate on creating an indigenous sound.

"Before Nelly blew up, rappers didn't want to be associated with the Midwest," Scarbriel says. "Everyone tried to sound like the East Coast or the West Coast, then the South. Nelly was the first to make it sound cool to be from the Midwest. He took a liability and made it an asset. The way he pronounces his words, the way his raps come out, doesn't sound like anyone else. It's a Midwest country accent."

Being at the geographical nexus of a country has its ups and downs. Rappers in Midwestern cities incorporate elements from the East, West and South to create a unique fusion with a potentially broad appeal. At the same time, each Midwestern city assembles its influences differently, and the result is artistically rich but commercially problematic. Rather than an identifiable "Midwest sound," there are instead multiple sounds from artists whose ties are regional, not stylistic: The rapid-fire rhyming of Chicago's Twista bears little resemblance to the laid-back bounce of St. Louis' Pretty Willie Suella.

Scarbriel, whose Digable Records label and Stlhiphop Web site (www.stlhiphop.com) promote Midwestern music, thinks rap's traditional territorial pride is another factor. "It's about representing where you're from. People in Chicago represent their city; people in Indianapolis represent theirs."

If there's a link between the Midwest's diverse scenes these days, it's shared optimism. With Nelly and Eminem boasting two of the year's best-selling albums, crews like Slum Village on the rise and the music industry looking for the next Atlanta-like explosion, their turf seems poised to become the new rap heartland.

"People are encouraged by Eminem's, and particularly Nelly's, success," says Scarbriel. "When Eminem and Nelly came out, there was nothing like them on the scene -- Eminem was the first serious white rapper to really blow up, and Nelly was the first to see his Midwest roots as a plus. They were the pioneers, and people will come up after them. You have to figure that if it could happen in St. Louis, it could happen anywhere."

E-mail Neva Chonin at nchonin@sfchronicle.com.