I don’t consider myself a hip-hop head. Nor do I think of Champaign-Urbana as much of a hip-hop hotbed.

Sure, Ludacris supposedly went to middle school here, but I’m guessing that it was probably a good business move to ignore that part and focus on the “Five Georgia homes to rest his Georgia bones.”

The Midwest, especially pre-Kanye West and Lupe Fiasco, hasn’t really been considered a frontrunner in the genre. Something about Nebraska just doesn’t scream beats and rhymes.

So, naturally, I was skeptical of any claim C-U has to a local hip-hop scene. Until I got a friend request on my top-secret never-used MySpace from Krukid, a hip-hop artist originally from Uganda but currently living here. Here. In Champaign. An actual rapper. Who raps about Champaign. What?!

While rapping about Champaign is actually kind of stupid, especially for listeners who don’t live here, I was really more intrigued by some of his songs about Uganda, especially “Invisible,” which is based on experiences of child soldiers.

The fact that he was on the Rawkus top 50 list was enough to impress me, although in all honesty I hadn’t even heard of Rawkus until then.

Ignoring what this says about me and my instant validation of ratings by Web sites I know nothing about, this stopped me from completely writing off local hip-hop.

A few weeks ago I decided to go with some friends to the local hip-hop benefit show for Planned Parenthood’s Teen Awareness Group. While I didn’t really care for some of the earlier acts like Cypha MC, the last act we saw was Amazing Mos. And his songs about being a T.A. at the U of I really did live up to his name.

It also didn’t hurt that he was a really nice guy. Once we explained that we had to go to high school the next day, he even forgave us for leaving in the middle of his performance and everything.

Since I haven’t seen Krukid live yet, I was extremely excited when I found out that Krukid and Agent Mos are playing back to back at the IMCfest on Sunday. Until I realized that “back to back” meant 1 and 1:30 a.m.

But you should still come and check them out if you can, and feel free to email any tips for sneaking out of houses (without breaking stuff, please) to dripps@uni.uiuc.edu.