CHICAGO — Chicagoans love their homegrown rappers, at least according to YouTube.
The video website run by Google looked at which music videos people in 10 major cities watched last year to learn how music tastes vary across the country. Google's biggest takeaway? We look out for our own.
"People are proud of their homegrown musicians, so of course people from a certain city have a certain taste in music," said Patrick Lenihan, a Washington-based Google spokesman. "They get their artists and artists get them."
In Chicago, we get rappers. Hip hop is popular everywhere, but videos posted by Chicago's own Lil Bibby, Lil Durk and Twista got three times more views here than the national average last year. R. Kelly got national recognition (for various reasons) in the mid-2000s, but still received twice as many views on YouTube in his hometown than elsewhere last year.
YouTube didn't disclose which specific music videos get more views here compared with the rest of the country, so sadly we can't name an official Chicago YouTube anthem of 2015. But the artists are a good start.
Also, YouTube says Philadelphia is really into songs from "Empire," the primetime urban soap opera shot in Chicago. So we can be glad our hip hop cup runneth over.
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