Numerous prominent hip-hop artists have emerged from Chicago: Kanye West, Chance the Rapper, Common, Chief Keef, Vic Mensa, Psalm One, and Mick Jenkins (to name a few). And yet a feature-length, comprehensive documentary about the history of the local hip-hop scene has yet to come to fruition. The team behind Midway: The Story of Chicago Hip-Hop hopes to change that.
Meanwhile, the Midway team is working with the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College Chicago to archive music, photographs, videos, posters, and other materials as a means to educate audiences about Chicago’s hip-hop culture. They’re also partnering on a website, Brockmeier says, that will be a separate entity from the Midway documentary site. As he describes it, “It’ll be a place where people can go to look at old photos and see old videos—and at some point, will be able to read or watch the interviews we did for the film.”
Though pragmatic about the financial goals he still needs to hit, Brockmeier seems confident about the film’s prospects, based on the hundreds of interviews already shot and the support the project has already received. “We want it to be more—and it will be—more than just a YouTube or Vimeo video,” he says. “It’s gonna be a big film.”
