The Index.
A living catalog of the rappers, producers, and beatmakers whose best work happens off the clock — in bedrooms, basements, and after-shift studios across 78 countries.
Photographed in Atlanta, March 2026 · Maya Okonkwo
How to Navigate the Archive
Three ways to dig in.
Every profile is tagged by city, year, and role — so you can follow a single producer's arc, a city's scene, or a year of mixtapes the way you'd read a magazine's back issues.
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01
By City
From Atlanta basements to Lagos bedrooms to Tokyo after-hours — filter the 1,400+ archive by where the work is actually being made.
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02
By Year
Six years of reported profiles, starting March 2019 — follow an artist's catalog chronologically or jump to a specific era of the side-project boom.
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03
By Role
Rapper, producer, beatmaker, engineer, vocalist, or DJ — every profile is filed by what the artist actually does in the studio, not what their press kit claims.
Latest in the Archive
This month, filed by hand.
A chronological index of the most recent reported profiles — the way a working journalist or A&R would screenshot it before opening a tab.
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01
Profile Atlanta, GA 2026
After the warehouse shift: a profile of indie rapper Marcelle Holloway
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02
Interview Lagos, NG 2026
The Lagos beat scene is open-source now — a conversation with producer Ife Adesina
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03
Profile Detroit, MI 2026
She mixes at the public library after closing — rapper and engineer Renée Bell
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04
Listen London, UK 2026
Side Project of the Month: Tunde Akinsola's "Borrowed MPC" — 14 instrumentals, no features
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05
Profile Atlanta, GA 2026
How Closed Sessions rebuilt an Atlanta studio inside a former laundromat
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06
Interview Tokyo, JP 2026
Kenji Hara on making modular hip-hop in a 6-tatami apartment
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07
Profile Brooklyn, NY 2026
Emeka Obi's verses are written between class and his overnight shift
The Archive by the Numbers
Seven years. 1,400 profiles. One reading habit.
The depth, scope, and return rate that made Hip Hop Side Project a destination for hip-hop research — not a content farm.
1,400+
Long-form artist profiles published since 2019
320+
Producer interviews on the record, transcripts on file
78
Countries represented across the reader base
6:12
Average reader session — 2.4× the music-blog benchmark
Featured in XXL's "10 Outlets Reshaping Hip-Hop Coverage" · 2023
Won the 2024 Hypebot Indie Music Journalism Award
Syndicated 14× by NPR Music's indie desk since 2021
Editor's Note
What this archive is — and isn't.
Every profile you'll find in this index came out of a reported conversation. We don't run press kits, label pitches, or AI-generated summaries; we send a writer into a bedroom, a basement, an after-shift studio — and we transcribe the talk. If a profile is here, an editor signed off on it and the artist approved their own quotes before publication.
Three things this archive deliberately is not. It is not a major-label coverage outlet: signed artists with roster budgets do not appear as "featured." It is not paywalled: every profile, every producer interview, every transcript is free to read in full. And it is not optimized for streams or chart positions — those numbers are often unverifiable for unsigned artists, and we will not print them as fact.
"We started this because nobody was writing about the people making their best work at 2 a.m. between shifts. Six years and 1,400 profiles later, that's still the only reason we keep doing it."
If you know an artist whose side project deserves a serious, candid profile — whether that's a beatmaker in Lagos, a rapper in Detroit, or a producer collective in Atlanta — write to us. The archive grows one reported conversation at a time.
— Devin Mosley, Founder & Editor-in-Chief
Atlanta, GA · March 2026
Reach the desk: [email protected]