Rapping Up?

Indy hip-hop has been on the more for more than a decade. But where is it going?

By Evan West

How to assess the career of the Mudkids, Indianapolis’s most enduring and recognizable hip-hop group?

They first formed in the early 1990s, when Rusty Redenbacher, who then fronted the now-defunct Birdmen of Alcatraz, showed up for a hip-hop night at what is now the Jazz Kitchen. “This kid was sitting in the corner with a box full of tapes,” he recalls, and before long, Redenbacher was in the “kid’s” basement recording music on his four-track. In 1995, the pair officially formed the Mudkids and started setting the smart, playful rhymes of rapper Redenbacher (a.k.a. Choc Soreel) to the hypnotically melodic beats of DJ/producer Tyler Knapp (a.k.a. Elp-Mass). And since then, no other area hip-hop outfit has made as much material, lasted as long, or achieved the same level of local recognition.

The Mudkids have produced four full-length albums and are set to release their fifth, We Are Dynamic and People Like Us, this summer. They have toured the country and opened concerts for big-time acts such as KRS-One and the Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah. They have enjoyed solid college-radio play and earned spots on the CMJ music charts. Legend has it that Redenbacher once showed up superstar rapper Eminem at a freestyle battle. And the group’s first record, 4trackmind, got a strong write-up in The Source, a leading urban-music magazine. A song and video they produced to honor the Colts’ 2007 Super Bowl run had close to 80,000 YouTube views.

But the Mudkids have never scored a serious record deal, and none of their albums has sold more than 5,000 copies. After more than a decade of hard work, the group is basically back where it started. They recently parted ways with longtime manager and promoter Ron Miner (a.k.a. DJ Indiana Jones) and talented mainstay rapper Brian “Skittz” Philips. Without a label, the Mudkids are releasing We Are Dynamic and People Like Us on their own. (And the title suggests, if only sarcastically, that a good deal of self-affirmation was required for its creation.) As in the beginning, they are lining up their own show dates and wondering what, if anything, will come of the whole enterprise. “Success for the Mudkids would mean no more day jobs,” says Redenbacher. “I’d love for us just to have a decent independent record deal.”

For all the great expectations, it is hard not to be a little disappointed by where the Mudkids are today. Because where they are is—well, here. And the jury is still out on whether Indianapolis is—or ever will be—a good place for a hip-hop group.

Even relative stardom for Indianapolis artists might not translate to notoriety for the city, largely because of how the industry is changing. On this particular night, the Mudkids are playing a benefit concert at Radio Radio, in Fountain Square. Redenbacher kicks off the show by saying, “Hi, we’re the Mudkids from Indianapolis, Indiana, and we play hip-hop music”—just as he has done at the beginning of every performance since the group started, whether abroad or at home. While proclaiming their Indy roots in Indy venues might have seemed a redundant—if rousing—rallying cry at the height of the Mudkids’ local fame a few years ago, these days it is something of a necessity; fewer and fewer audience members were old enough to get into music clubs during the group’s heyday.

A common criticism of the Mudkids is that they never strayed from their original “underground” formula of sampling quirky hooks from obscure, out-of-print vinyl records, looping them to stripped-down beats, and finishing the mix with Redenbacher’s thought-driven, no-frills lyricism. But tonight, they test-drive material from their upcoming album, which marks the group’s greatest stylistic departure to date. In “Swim,” Redenbacher shows off his surprisingly soulful singing chops to a Knapp-created beat that is less driven and more dreamlike than much of his previous work—and yet, in a way, more serious. Redenbacher and Ryan “DJ Helicon” Hickey—a member of the group since 2006—close the show with it, and, encouragingly, the audience is enthusiastic.

Yet a positive response at Radio Radio is far from an affirmation of Indianapolis hip-hop. Local performances from the group are increasingly rare, and when the Mudkids do play, it is almost exclusively as they have tonight—as part of a lineup of bands in which they are, as Hickey says, the “token” rap group. Is the crowd coming out to hear the Mudkids, or to catch one of the other bands on the bill? Whatever the case, the group is starting to reevaluate the benefits of being a flag-bearer for Indy. “The unfortunate reality is, we’re probably not going to get anywhere here,” says Hickey.

It wasn’t always that way. Local groups such as the Tibbs Street Posse, who performed “Naptown Is the Place to Chill,” were getting radio play as long ago as the late 1980s. And in the late 1990s and early 2000s especially, when 4trackmind was getting national buzz and a Mudkids breakthrough seemed imminent, Indianapolis was starting to look like a hip-hop scene. Aspiring artists, many of whom were friendly with the Mudkids and/or inspired by their growing success, showed off their skills at concerts and impromptu freestyle-rap battles at clubs around the city—and the wild dreadlocks of the outspoken and charismatic Redenbacher were a common site. “It was really cool in those days,” says Josh Baker, a local music-venue consultant and founder of the now-defunct Midwest Music Summit. “Veteran indie groups kind of carried the smaller bands on their backs, and there was a real sense of camaraderie.”

In 2003, Che “Rhymefest” Smith, an up-and-coming rapper from Chicago, moved to Indianapolis when his wife got a job here. “Oh my God, what am I going to do in Indianapolis?” he recalls thinking. “I’ve either got to try to find a hip-hop scene or make my own.” As it turned out, he did find the scene, performing in MC battles around the city, and it was here that he hooked up with then-manager Miner, whose contacts would help Rhymefest score a deal with Allido Records, producer Mark Ronson’s indie label, which joined with Interscope in April. Still, he found a less-than-encouraging audience in his adopted city. “Sometime I think hate is the new love in Indianapolis,” he says. “I never really felt accepted there. And it’s a hard place to blow up in. You have to blow up, then come back to get love.”

Rhymefest did blow up. In 2004, “Jesus Walks,” a song he had co-written with superstar rapper Kanye West, his friend from Chicago, became a monster hit and won a Grammy for best rap song of the year. In some ways, the wheels of success began turning while Rhymefest was in Indianapolis. But not surprisingly, when Rhymefest broke out as a solo artist, he claimed Chicago as his home—a pointed comment, especially in hip-hop culture, where, historically, a performer’s roots are integral to establishing a reputation. If you listened to Run DMC and LL Cool J in the ’80s, you knew they were from Queens, New York; Compton, California in south-central Los Angeles got on the national radar in the late ’80s when Dr. Dre and the rappers he produced narrated life on its mean streets. Later, Ludacris gave a reputation to Atlanta, and, closer to home, Nelly elevated St. Louis.

“One criticism leveled against Indianapolis is that it has never found its own identity,” says Rhymefest. Indeed, if you ask an average hip-hop fan outside of Indy to name an artist who hails from here, expect a blank stare. “I’m not going to say there was a peak, because I don’t want to sound like one of those grumpy old guys,” says Miner. “But the scene is
broken up into factions, and within those groups new factions are constantly splitting off.” Plenty of talented artists are still around, and the past couple of years have seen some minor successes, such as the group Trilogy, which scored a record deal under Jive Records (but has since lost one member). But the frequent hip-hop concerts and parties that once populated the city’s nightlife are getting harder to find. Fairly or not, in terms of security, hip-hop audiences tend to draw tougher scrutiny, and a handful of violent incidents at area clubs had a chilling effect on once-reliable venues. “Indianapolis is a safe town,” says Baker. “And hip-hop is not considered a safe bet, both in terms of the appeal of the music and the crowd it brings in.”

With the Internet making local artists available to anyone, anywhere, anytime, hip-hop’s historic emphasis on regionalism is fading. In many ways, hip-hop artists fight the same uphill battle faced by countless local musicians: Indianapolis, at its heart, is not a strong live-music town. “It’s a very lazy culture here,” says Baker. “Most people would rather sit on the couch or go to a movie.” The Mudkids describe finding enthusiastic and supportive crowds in other cities where they are less-known, but here, says Hickey, “You can kill yourself to promote a show and nobody comes out.”

“With hip-hop, it’s on and off,” says Alan Roberts (a.k.a. DJ Topspeed), a prominent local DJ who performs with the Twilight Sentinels and hosts a hip-hop radio show on 96.3 FM. “These things come in waves, in cycles.” And while the Indianapolis “scene” might be suffering a lull at the moment, things still look bright for a few individual artists. The Twilight Sentinels, for example, have a deal with indie label F-5 Records out of St. Louis; have released one album, Meanwhile..., and are working on another; and Miner says at least one rapper he represents, Kayo, is “in discussions” with several record-label reps. “Within a year,” says Roberts, “there could be a few people signed out of Indianapolis.”

But even relative stardom for Indianapolis artists might not translate to notoriety for the city, largely because of how the industry is changing. Music kingmakers favor fleeting artists who produce catchy, throwaway singles known disparagingly as “ringtone rap,” which puts album-oriented groups like the Mudkids, who depend largely on grassroots appeal, at a disadvantage. And with the Internet making local artists available to anyone, anywhere, anytime, hip-hop’s historic emphasis on regionalism is fading. “It doesn’t matter where you are in this day and age,” says Roberts. “You could be in Dirtbag, Iowa, and still make it.”

So wondering whether Indianapolis can ever become a breakout hip-hop destination, then, might not be the right question at all.