by Larry Alexander | tutorwithlarry.com | Updated 2025
Hip-hop is supposed to uplift and create, to educate people on a larger level and to make a change. — Doug E. Fresh
Hip-hop don’t have no fresh energy, none at all. It’s money driven, everybody tryin’ to make that check, nobody putting art in their albums anymore. — Andre 3000
Venturing back to the heyday of hip-hop—the era between the pulsating mid-1980s and the culture-shaking mid-1990s—we find the origins and the meteoric rise of a movement: rap, breakdancing, graffiti art, and deejaying. Four elements. One voice. And at the center of that voice, always, was a pursuit of self-knowledge—the drive to understand who you are, where you come from, and what you are capable of.
Fast forward to today, and Chicago-based indie record label Closed Sessions—now celebrating fifteen years of shaping the city’s hip-hop scene—is raising eyebrows and raising the bar. Its track record of nurturing artists, championing artistic independence, and building a genuine community around the music suggests something significant: this label is not just making hits. It is making history.
But as we celebrate what Closed Sessions has accomplished, we must also ask a harder question—one that Andre 3000’s words above force us to confront directly: Is it enough to find and develop talented artists if those artists are not being guided toward music that means something? In an era when hip-hop is more commercially powerful than ever and more artistically hollow in many corners of the mainstream, does a label like Closed Sessions have a responsibility not just to promote a good beat, but to champion a positive message?
I believe it does. And the evidence of its own fifteen-year history suggests it already understands this—whether it has said so explicitly or not.
In exploring this question, I am drawing on articles by four journalists who have covered Closed Sessions with depth and care: Ogden Payne (Forbes, 2016), Tara C. Mahadevan (Bandcamp Daily, 2019), Jack Riedy (Block Club Chicago, 2020), and Mark P. Braboy, whose 2024 piece for the Chicago Reader on Closed Sessions’ fifteenth anniversary brings the story fully into the present and captures what the label’s community means to the people inside it.
Where It Began: The Founding Vision of Closed Sessions
In Ogden Payne’s 2016 Forbes article, we learn the origin of the label’s name: closed video sessions that founders Alex Fruchter and Michael Kolar held with budding hip-hop talents. Picture artists new to the Chicago scene being introduced to the city’s neighborhoods and eateries by Fruchter, then laying down tracks at Soundscape Studios under the guidance of Kolar, the label’s chief audio engineer and co-owner. Those recordings would become breakout projects for rising stars—not because the label threw money at marketing, but because the foundation was genuine: real talent, real mentorship, real craft (Payne).
Kolar describes the philosophy clearly: “I’ve seen some [artists] get lost in the major label system; I’ve seen some get lost and then climb their way to priority, but we [at Closed Sessions] don’t want to take anything on that we don’t think we can put our effort into” (Payne). This is not a label driven by volume. It is a label driven by intention.
The business model reflects that intention. Closed Sessions artists retain 100% ownership of their master recordings—a stark contrast to the typical arrangement in which the record company holds this asset and pays artists a mere 10-15% in royalties. Grassroots marketing, a steady fan base built over time, and a refusal to cut corners: these are not just strategic choices. They are ethical ones (Payne).
Self-knowledge, in the context of hip-hop, refers to the ongoing process of introspection, self-reflection, and understanding one’s identity, experiences, values, and emotions.
The Artists: A Platform for Voices That Matter
Tara C. Mahadevan’s 2019 Bandcamp Daily piece offers an intimate look at what inspired Fruchter and Kolar to launch a Chicago indie hip-hop label, and showcases the artists who have called it home: Jack Larsen, Jamila Woods, Femdot, and Kweku Collins, among others. What connects these artists is not a single sound. It is a commitment to saying something real (Mahadevan).
Jamila Woods stands out as perhaps the clearest example of what Closed Sessions, at its best, represents. Her music—layered, literary, rooted in Black Chicago—is exactly the kind of art that embodies the self-knowledge hip-hop is capable of producing. She is not making music to chase a trend. She is making music to tell the truth about who she is and what she sees. That is the tradition.
Jack Riedy’s 2020 Block Club Chicago piece looks at Closed Sessions’ third hip-hop compilation in a decade, illuminating how the label responded to external pressure to define Chicago hip-hop on someone else’s terms. Fruchter’s response: create compilations that weave prominent national artists like Raekwon, Freddie Gibbs, and Action Bronson together with Chicago’s homegrown talent—GLC, Sir Michael Rocks, and others—building an honest picture of the city rather than catering to a stereotype (Riedy).
Artist Ajani Jones, whose trajectory was reshaped by his work with Closed Sessions, credits the label with something more than professional development. In his own words: “They helped me by showing me the ropes in the industry, and how it works, and what it really takes to garner the attention that you’re seeking… Before I just kept putting music out because that’s what I love to do, but I think I became a lot more aware of what my music does and what effect it can have on people” (Riedy). That last phrase is the one that matters most. Not just what the music does for the artist’s career. What effect it can have on people. That is the question every artist and every label should be asking.
Fifteen Years and Counting: What the Anniversary Reveals
Mark P. Braboy—a Southeast Side of Chicago native, Jackson State University English graduate, and one of the most respected music and culture journalists in the city, covered Closed Sessions’ 15th anniversary in 2024 in the Chicago Reader. His piece captures something that the earlier coverage, focused on business models and compilations, could not fully see: what the community around Closed Sessions means to the people inside it.
According to Braboy’s reporting, founders, friends, and affiliates of the label gathered to reflect not just on the music they had made but on the bonds they had built. Fifteen years. An anniversary that most independent labels never reach. The question Braboy’s piece implicitly raises—and that I want to raise explicitly here—is: what is that community for? What does it exist to do beyond commerce?
The most durable community is one organized around shared values. And the values that have driven Closed Sessions from the beginning—artistic integrity, mentorship, independence, a genuine commitment to the artists as human beings rather than as content generators—are values that align directly with what I believe hip-hop, at its best, has always been about: self-knowledge, community, truth.
The Deeper Responsibility: Hip-Hop, Self-Knowledge, and What Labels Owe Young People
Hip-hop music, at its core, is a powerful medium for self-expression and social commentary. It has always been a platform for marginalized communities to share their experiences, challenge societal norms, and advocate for change. And at the heart of this transformative art form lies the pursuit of self-knowledge.
Self-knowledge in the context of hip-hop means more than knowing your own story. It means the ongoing process of introspection, self-reflection, and understanding one’s identity, experiences, values, and emotions. It means gaining insight into your strengths and weaknesses, your aspirations and fears, and developing the honest self-awareness to navigate the world with intention. This is what the best hip-hop has always offered its listeners—especially young people, who are in the formative stages of developing their identities and navigating the complexities of life.
The significance of this is particularly urgent right now. In a commercial landscape where too much of what reaches young ears celebrates violence as power, material wealth as the only measure of success, and the degradation of women as entertainment, the music young people consume is shaping what they believe about themselves and the world. Andre 3000 called this out directly: the money-driven, art-free impulse has taken hold. And the antidote is not silence. It is better art, more intentional art—art that asks something of the listener.
Quincy Jones understood this. “My dream is to see hip-hop incorporated in education,” he said. “You’ve got the youth of the world in the palm of your hand.” That is not a small responsibility. That is an enormous one. And it belongs not just to the artists, but to the labels that platform them.
My dream is to see hip-hop incorporated in education. You’ve got the youth of the world in the palm of your hand. — Quincy Jones
What Closed Sessions Must Do Next: A Call for Intentional Artistry
Closed Sessions has built something rare. An independent label that artists trust. A community that has lasted fifteen years. A business model that respects the people who create the music. These are genuine achievements, and they deserve to be celebrated.
But celebrating what is is not the same as demanding what should be. And I want to be direct: a label with the credibility, the independence, and the artist relationships that Closed Sessions has built is in a position to do something that labels beholden to major distribution deals cannot easily do. It can choose its artists not just on the basis of talent and commercial potential, but on the basis of what they are saying—and why.
This is not a call to produce sanitized, message-heavy music that nobody wants to listen to. The best purposeful hip-hop has never sacrificed artistry for the message. Kendrick Lamar does not choose between craft and meaning. Jamila Woods does not choose between beauty and truth. Common does not choose between storytelling and social consciousness. The artists who have defined what hip-hop is capable of have always understood that form and content are inseparable—that the beat and the words must both be in service of something real.
What I am calling for is intentionality on the part of the label—a conscious, explicit commitment to asking, when evaluating and developing artists: What is this music doing for the listener? Is it building self-awareness or eroding it? Is it offering young people a mirror in which they can see themselves clearly, or a funhouse version of reality designed to keep them spending and consuming without reflection?
The stakeholders in this conversation are broad. Music executives can leverage their influence to highlight the positive messages and transformative power of self-knowledge in hip-hop. Rappers, as role models and cultural influencers, can continue to incorporate themes of self-discovery, personal growth, and social consciousness into their music. Educators can integrate hip-hop into their curriculum as a tool for teaching self-expression and critical thinking. Media representatives can promote positive narratives. Parents can engage their children in honest conversations about the music they consume. And young people themselves can support and uplift the artists who are saying something worth hearing.
Closed Sessions, at fifteen years old, stands at a crossroads that every successful independent institution eventually faces: the choice between consolidating what has been built and expanding the vision of what it could become. The label has already demonstrated, through its artist relationships and its compilations, that it understands hip-hop as community, not just commerce. The next step is to make that understanding explicit—to build self-knowledge, artistic purpose, and social responsibility into the label’s identity as consciously as it has built its business model.
What Great Hip-Hop Has Always Known
The best hip-hop has never needed to choose between excellence and meaning. Lecrae’s “I’ll Find You” is visually powerful and lyrically captivating; Lauryn Hill’s “Miseducation” is sonically beautiful and spiritually honest. Common’s “Imagine” is inspirational and challenges the status quo. These are not accidents. They are the products of artists who understood that their music would shape how people thought about themselves and each other—and who took that responsibility seriously.
This is what I mean when I say hip-hop is literature. Not that it is academic or distant or formal. But that it participates in the same ancient human project that all great storytelling participates in: helping people understand themselves and their world more fully. When hip-hop does that well, it is one of the most powerful forces for human development that exists. When it abandons that project in favor of pure commercial gratification, it betrays everything that made it worth paying attention to in the first place.
Closed Sessions, by the evidence of fifteen years, has not abandoned that project. The artists it has championed—Jamila Woods, Femdot, Kweku Collins, and the many others who have passed through Soundscape Studios with Fruchter and Kolar—are not making disposable entertainment. They are making art. The label should name that, claim it, and build on it with explicit intention going forward.
The Beat Goes On—But So Must the Conversation
In this symphony of talent, innovation, mentorship, and community, Closed Sessions has demonstrated that an independent hip-hop label can not only survive but thrive by doing things the right way. Fifteen years. Dozens of artists. A business model that respects the creators. A compilation history that honors Chicago’s complexity. A community that endures.
The question now is what the next fifteen years will stand for. My hope—my direct call to the label, to its artists, to the broader hip-hop community—is that the answer includes a deliberate commitment to self-knowledge: to music that helps young people understand themselves, that challenges rather than numbs, that builds rather than diminishes.
Doug E. Fresh said it plainly: hip-hop is supposed to uplift and create, to educate people on a larger level and to make a change. Closed Sessions, at its best, has done exactly that. The next chapter should do it with even greater intention—because the youth of the world are, as Quincy Jones reminded us, still in the palm of hip-hop’s hand. What a responsibility. What an opportunity.
Stay tuned. For the beat—and the message—go on.
Works Cited
- Alexander, Larry. “The Significance of Self-Knowledge in Hip-Hop Music.” Tutor With Larry, 4 Dec. 2023, Tutor With Larry.
- Braboy, Mark P. “Closed Sessions Celebrates Underground Rap and Itself.” Chicago Reader, 2024, clippings.me/markbraboy.
- Mahadevan, Tara C. “A Guide to Chicago’s Closed Sessions Label.” Bandcamp Daily, 2019, Bandcamp Daily article.
- Payne, Ogden. “Closed Sessions: The Independent Record Label Restoring Chicago Hip-Hop.” Forbes, 13 May 2016, Forbes article.
- Riedy, Jack. “[Closed Sessions Compilation Review].” Block Club Chicago, 2020, Block Club Chicago.
About the Author
Larry Alexander is a professional English tutor, former college English professor, and lifelong hip-hop enthusiast. He has nine years of teaching experience at Prairie State College and is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. He offers tutoring in essay writing, personal narratives, business writing, grammar, and proofreading.
He believes in the transformative power of hip-hop as literature, as education, and as a vehicle for self-knowledge. Visit tutorwithlarry.com to learn more or book a session.
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