Charlie/Hype Williams/Miley Cyrus: Genre Research

Alternative hip hop (also known as alternative rap) is a sub-genre of hip hop music that revolves around varieties of rap and hip hop genres. Allmusic defines it as follows:

Originating in the late-80s, in midst of the Golden age of hip hop, alternative hip hop was headed primarily by East Coast rappers such as De La Soul, Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth, Jungle Brothers, A Tribe Called Quest, Brand Nubian, and Digable Planets in subsidiary conjunction by West Coast acts such as The Pharcyde, Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, Digital Underground, Freestyle Fellowship and Jurassic 5as well as certain Southern acts such as Arrested Development, Goodie Mob, and OutKast. Similar to the alternative rock movement, alternative hip hop segued into the mainstream at the dawn of the 1990s. However, during the mid-late 90s, alternative hip hop suffered a decline in mainstream success. The situation broke way around the mid-90s with the emergence and mainstream popularity of East Coast hardcore rap artists such as Wu-Tang Clan, Nas, The Notorious B.I.G., and Mobb Deep. Both West Coast gangsta rap and East Coast hardcore and their many derivatives subsequently became more prominent in popular music, whereas alt-rap became largely relegated to the underground scene. Following this development, many alternative rap acts eventually either disbanded or faded into obscurity. It was in the 2000s that alternative hip hop reattained its place within the mainstream, due in part to the declining commercial viability of gangsta rap as well as the crossover success of artists such as OutKast, Kanye West, and Gnarls Barkley. Industry observers view the 2007 sales competition between Kanye West's Graduation and 50 Cent's Curtis as a turning point for hip hop. West emerged the victor, selling nearly a million copies in the first week alone.