Soundset Festival

Throwback to the Familia Skateboard Showdown in 2012.

Throwback Thursday:

Evidence being our guest Instagrammer for Soundset 2014

Throwback Thursday:

J.Cole onstage at Soundset 2014.

Throwback Thursday: Caught In The Middle Magazine was the brainchild of Jason "J Bird" Cook and Kevin Beacham, created in collaboration with Boom Design. Our mission was to create a magazine that explored the diversity of Hip Hop, while ignoring the many limitations that were prevalent at the time, such as East VS West, Major VS Indie, Old School VS New School, and so on. The goal was to purposefully curate the best of all those worlds.

A key underlying theme of CITM was to provide a window for the world to view the Chicago Hip Hop scene, which was brimming with a wealth of exceptional talent at that time. We decided early on that we would ignore the trend of putting a popular trending big name artist on the cover and instead, only put Chicago artists on our cover. For our first issue, released in December of 1994, Common Sense was the perfect choice. He was the most recognizable MC representing the city on a global level and he was on the brink of releasing his sophomore album, "Resurrection". This cover is notable for being the first time Common graced a magazine cover in his career.

Now, twenty-one years later, following a continually flourishing and successful career, Common joins us at Soundset 2016. And, though the location is different, we're still caught in the middle...

Magazine Cover Photo by Jason "J-Bird" Cook & Graphics/Logos by Boom Design