DVS Mindz : the twenty-year saga of the greatest rap group to almost make it outta Kansas

99.9% of aspiring rappers never make it in the music industry. So why do we only hear the stories of the ones who do? DVS Mindz might be the greatest rap group you've never heard of. Formed in Topeka, Kansas, in the mid-1990s, they developed a reputation for ferocious rhyming and frenetic live performances. In their heyday, DVS Mindz released a critically acclaimed CD, received nominations for prestigious awards, and opened for legends such as Wu-Tang Clan, Run-DMC, and De La Soul as well as KC icon Tech N9ne. But the group struggled with creative differences, substance abuse, ego battles, and money issues, and they split up in 2003. Geoff Harkness takes readers on a unique two-decade journey alongside the members of DVS Mindz, chronicling their childhoods, their brush with success, and what became of them in the years that followed. Based on more than one hundred hours of video and audio recordings from 1999 to 2022, this fly-on-the-wall account offers a backstage pass into the recording studios and radio stations, video shoots and house parties, nightclubs and concert halls of the Kansas City-Lawrence-Topeka music scene circa 2000. __DVS Mindz__ is at once a compulsively readable group biography of four talented MCs, a vibrant voyage through the forgotten history of local hip hop, and a breathtakingly real story of struggling to achieve big dreams. "DVS Mindz is the story of an underground Topeka, KS rap group that dreamed of making it and fell just short. It is a story a four friends who shared a dream and pursued it together in one of many small, regional music scenes. It is a story of what it is like to rise in the music business and what happens when a career is over. Geoff Harkness first encountered Str8jakkett, Killa Da Hun, D.O.P.E., and DL when he was an aspiring musician and music journalist. He chronicled their work - he is credited for drawing positive, critical attention to them - and he stayed in contact with them as they released their debut album, opened for the Wu-Tang Clan, and then as they faded from the scene. In telling the stories of the group's four MCs, Harkness draws attention to what he calls the creative underclass-those whose paid labor largely supports other creative professionals. DVS Mindz is divided into three parts covering their childhoods, their rise and career height, and ends with a section on how they come to terms with their lives. This narrative is an unreplicable career history of regional underground rap group, which will interest readers intrigued by music scenes but it is also a case study of the precarity, rewards, and real options and limitations for those pursing artistic careers"-- Provided by publisher