Can We All Agree Phoenix Now Has a Hip Hop Scene?

People claim Phoenix doesn't have a hip hop scene because it's not Atlanta. Injury Reserve talks about Phoenix hip hop on No Jumper like there's not a scene. Can we all stop this nonsense???

First, Phoenix may not be Atlanta, LA, or any other place some transplant to Phoenix has lived in or some city where a dude visited his homie and had a bomb weekend seeing some hip hop shows. *sarcastic voice. Let's be real - those comparisons are ridiculous and unnecessary. Why? Because sure the scale of Phoenix's hip hop scene doesn't match the scale of those places. But that doesn't negate the fact that every night of the week from Wednesday to Sunday there is a show going on, with multiple shows Friday/Saturday. Artists are releasing music weekly. There are videos being released, cyphers being filmed, interviews, blogs, podcasts, facebook groups, discussions, tweets, retweets, IG stories - you name it there is a community of people 500+ strong talking about Phoenix hip hop. We're not this booming hip hop mecca and might well never be - but hip hop fucking lives and breathes here - you cannot tell me otherwise.

Second, sure Phoenix once didn't have a scene or wasn't as active of a scene. This is when the likes of Futuristic and Injury Reserve were building names for themselves. What happened to them was awesome. But can we please stop talking about Phoenix in the past tense? When they were building their thing Phoenix wasn't an active hip hop scene and it was more spread out than it is now. Today, that's just not the case. Here's how the answer should go now..."yes, Phoenix was almost a ghost town for hip hop and we had to build our own scene" BUUUUT......... A) "now it has a scene because there's a lot going on there (I'm even okay with them saying, "much of what we helped build") or B) "we don't know what Phoenix is like now because we're so busy pushing ourselves and looking eye to eye to national artists that we're not paying attention to Phoenix." Either of those are fair statements. To keep speaking of Phoenix hip hop in the past tense, especially to a national audience, continues to discredit what the fuck is going on here. If you don't know, don't speak on it.

Finally, the Arizona scene is huge and it continues to merge into one entity. Tucson is popping. Flagstaff has dope artists who are doing things weekly as well. The best part? The three biggest cities in Arizona are starting to move together. Flagstaff's Boom Box Bros. are coming down to Scottsdale for a show for the 2nd or 3rd time this year (#RIPSAL), Tommy Will is on tour with Respect the Underground, Black One is taking Phoenix artists down to Tucson once a month for the Crown shows. And the best part - fans, not artists or their homies - are going back and forth between the three cities to catch shows. Listen you can't @ me and tell me otherwise....Phoenix has a hip hop scene and the best part is it's part of the Arizona hip hop scene, which is a fun fucking community and scene when it's focused on doing fun and cool shit here and now and not trying to be Atlanta and not worried about what it once wasn't.