Perhaps it’s Eyedea’s chameleon-like ability to adapt that made him such a successful freestyle battle champion early in his career. The Twin Cities rapper is as equally adept at playing the role of the jocular rabble-rouser as he is the stern, introspective backpack rapper or the infuriated, politically minded . . .

Like just about everything in the city, Milwaukee’s hip-hop scenes are divided by racial and geographical boundaries. Populated largely by college students and graduates, the East Side’s hip-hop scene favors conscious and alternative rap, lionizes Talib Kweli and heralds the ’90s as rap’s golden age. Milwaukee’s grittier North Side scene, on the other hand, is more in the moment, drawn toward contemporary club rap, much of it fashioned after hits from the South. Separated by just a few miles, these two scenes exist with little overlap.

Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh revisits the Dead repertoire with a rotating cast of musicians that he bills as Phil Lesh and Friends tonight at 10 p.m. at the Briggs & Stratton Big Backyard; The Roots are the only major rap act to play Summerfest’s whitewashed line-up this year, but at least they’re an uncompromising one...

If the touring hip-hop festival Rock the Bells had existed in 1998, its line-up might have looked virtually identical to this year’s. Headliners like A Tribe Called Quest, The Pharcyde, De La Soul and Mos Def were the biggest names in alternative rap a decade ago, and they remain so today. Of course, that’s as much a sad comment on the dearth of new talent in the scene as it is a testament to the headliners’ longevity, but the veterans did their best to prevent the bill from becoming a nostalgia tour. Although A Tribe Called Quest . . .

Mixing backpacker hip-hop with a smattering of popular club rap doesn’t sound like such a revolutionary idea, but until just a half-decade ago, few Milwaukee DJs had flirted with that simple combination, leaving a giant niche for Kid Cut Up and his fellow No Request DJs to fill. Cut Up is now one of the most prolific, successful . . .

Given Nas’ inability to explain on his previous album exactly why hip-hop was dead, the media understandably greeted Nas’ latest album, originally titled Nigger, with great skepticism. Against the odds, though, the rapper created a piece of art that proves that its controversial original title wasn’t just a . . .

Nas has long been the most stoic and dead serious of all the major emcees. Especially since he returned to critical favor after his brief but image-killing flirtation with floss in the late '90s, he's been careful to avoid any hint of vice or banality. Of his four most recent albums, two explore his ever-consuming Jesus complex, one eulogizes the genre he loves, and the latest somberly charts the remnants of slavery. He carries the weight of the world-and the cross-on his self-beleaguered shoulders. While his one-time rival Jay-Z indulges . . .

One of the few Milwaukee rappers with ties to both the alt-rap hip-hop scene of the city’s East Side and the grittier, club-rap scene of the North Side, Prophetic stakes out an agreeable middle ground, embracing both sounds without succumbing to conscious-rap moralizing or thug-rap clichés. The slick production of his new album, Mo Profit, Mo Progress, finds a sonic middle ground between laid-back alt-rap and bombastic...

Kanye West cemented his star-making reputation when he produced Common’s 2005 hit Be, a soulful, down-to-Earth album that resuscitated Common’s career after 2002’s ambitious but muddled Electric Circus. Common teamed up with West again for much of 2007’s Finding Forever, a respectable sequel that never fully captured the simple charm of Be, but for Common’s upcoming album, Universal Mind Control, the conscious...