Music like Los Marijuanos

A native of the “Uptown” and “North Pole” neighborhoods of Chicago’s North side, E.C. Illa (also known as E.C. & WhiteFolks) began his recording career in 1990 as a member of The Ill State Assassins, a rap and production group that spawned several successful nationally-recognized artists such as Twista, The Legendary Traxster, Toxic and others. After his music began circulating throughout Chicago’s inner-city and college radio stations abroad, E.C. Illa started solidifying himself as one of the few well-respected white rap artists of an era in rap history when most non-black rappers were quickly dismissed. Having grown up within Chicago’s infamous gang culture, Illa’s fluently-street music was able to reach far beyond previous attempts by other white rap artists to be embraced as legitimate or “real.” E.C.Illa’s vinyl-only debut was an EP titled “The Invisible Man” (1992) released on Mob City Records, an independent label owned by Dirk van den Heuvel, a DJ for Northwestern University’s “Street Beat” radio show. Mob City records would go on to release Illa’s first full-length album titled “Ill State of Mind” (1993), as well as other selected 12” singles from those releases.