Boom bap and Christian hip-hop from the indie trenches.
Sphere of Hip-Hop began in 1997 as a college media-class project, after Josh Niemyjski and a classmate kept hitting the same wall. Good new rap was hard to find unless you lived where the scene was thriving. The site went live in early 1998 and grew on news coverage and free MP3 downloads, which had passed 47 million by the end of 2008. Niemyjski settled in Seattle in 2003 and co-founded the label Illect Recordings there, while the magazine picked up a weekly satellite radio show in 2007 and a podcast soon after.
The stream has run since at least 2017, around the clock and without commercials, drawing on the independent rap the magazine has championed since the MP3 days. Dusty drums and soulful loops carry most hours. A lot of the writing comes from rappers working through their faith, and fresh singles from tiny labels turn up right beside underground records from the nineties.
For heads who outgrew the charts.
