Ask Jazzy what hip-hop in Madison sounds like, and she doesn’t hesitate: “We don’t have our own. We dip and dabble. I hear a lot of Chicago accents and flows. Madison is like a box — we stick to what we know.”
At 17, she is just beginning her career, having released her debut single “Biggest Øpp” on SoundCloud this summer. She can already see the limitations of a city that has never cultivated its own sonic identity.
Without that, artists like Jazzy feel pressured to make music that sounds like what national record labels are producing…