Lest the city that loves you back take offense, "unproductive" is not necessarily the same as "irrelevant" or "insignificant," but merely a question of quantity relative to quality; while Philly has never hesitated to assert its national significance, its musical significance has received less-than-undivided attention.

Philadelphia lost its temp job as the nation's capital in 1800, but in lieu of political might had established footing as a hub of classical and religious music. British-born composer Alexander Reinagle, having been effectively ignored by the New York crowds of his day, brought the works of Mozart and Haydn with him but also found an audience for his original works, most notably the four "Philadelphia Sonatas," the first American-composed works to utilize the classically famous composition structure.

The city also became, in a way, the origin point of so many future politically active musicians, as two of the 56 signatures of the Declaration of Independence belonged to local musicians: Benjamin Franklin and author Francis Hopkinson. In the middle years of the 19th century, the city reached its first zenith of cultural power as the influx of German, Irish and Italian immigrants brought a wave of operatic, Celtic and Catholic music with them, filling the streets of the old city with choral arrangements and full-on symphonies and the vocal work of the quasi-secretive Orpheus Club, the nation's first (and oldest active) men's chorus. It was as though the city itself had planned for life after the big layoff, although future twists would suggest it should have saved up a little more ahead of its unplanned vacation.

The first half of the 20th century was a mostly unremarkable few decades for Philadelphia music, as both World Wars and the Great Depression took Philadelphians' energy and focus (and disposable income) away from culture and towards more epic concerns. Following World War II, however, Philadelphia saw a brief reprisal of its role as cultural mandate, as jazz superpowers John Coltrane and Dizzy Gillespie arrived from the South. Each took remarkably different paths through jazz, as Gillespie stuck with bebop well into his later years while Coltrane eventually moved towards a fringe, modal avant-garde brand of jazz before his wild years caught up with him in 1967. Neither brought Philadelphia the level of clout afforded New York City or Chicago for their contributions to early jazz, but Coltrane and Gillespie certainly validated Philadelphia's claims towards not just spawning great music, but actually fostering it.

Then, for a moment in the 1970s, Philly reached its second high point as one of the most musically vital cities in America, as the "Philly Soul" sound took pop staples – guitar, vocal harmonies, shuffling drum arrangements – and added them to the burgeoning soul sound coming out of Detroit and Baltimore at the time, producing a sound reminiscent of early funk, but in truth more similar to what eventually emerged as disco in the last days of the decade. Patti LaBelle, The O'Jays and The Delfonics emerged as the most successful (and thereby most copied) parts of the scene, but what went widely acknowledged at the time was that the instrumentalists' role defined the sound more than the vocalists; in fact, the quintessential Philly Soul track was an instrumental played by MFSB entitled, appropriately enough, "TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)."

On four separate occasions and in four different incarnations, "TSOP" was used as the theme song to the legendary Soul Train dance show, a fact contributing to the widespread misperception that the show was taped in Philadelphia rather than its actual shooting location in Chicago. Still, the glitzier sound and more relaxed club environments of New York took over in the late 1970s and, by 1980, Philly's moment had passed yet again, all that brotherly love once more falling victim to the kind of eastbound exodus so common to northeastern American cities. It's as though the music, like the city, insisted on stopping as soon as it started.

Disco crashed and burned, and in its wake came a starkly different soundtrack for life on the streets away from the dance clubs: hardcore rap. Ironically, for a city with so much true-to-life source material happening around and within it, Philadelphia's first nationally-embraced rapper wasn't Schooly D or even Cash Money & Marvelous, but Will Smith, arguably the least menacing rapper of all time.

Smith wasn't the only Philadelphia artist to hit it big at the time - Boyz II Men popularized countless local destinations first with the chart-topping "Motown Philly" before crooning their way into countless record books, while Lisa Lopes changed her name to "Left Eye" and moved to Atlanta to join TLC - but his family-friendly rhymes put an almost cartoonish spin on growing up in West Philadelphia; those couple of guys up who were up to no good? The numbers suggest they wanted something more than "one little fight."

Philadelphia rap (the serious kind) saw a brief resurgence to the national eye in the mid- to late 1990s by way of The Roots, Eve and Beanie Sigel, the latter acting as a local bridge to the Roc-a-Fella empire Jay-Z was building in New York City before going into hiding following a three-month stint in prison in 2008 on assorted probation violations. Sigel was also vital in giving Philadelphia rap one of its deepest and most defining feuds to date, almost single-handedly taking on DMX's Ruff Ryders stable of artists in a war of words between 2002 and 2005.

Sigel sold hundreds of thousands of records, but more importantly gave Philadelphia rappers a template for success, a formula put to gainful use earlier this year when Big City Phil declared war on a new generation of rappers with the internet-saturating "How to Rob an Industry Hipster," in which Big City Phil (nee Phil Esposito) took aim at Kanye West, The Cool Kids, homosexuals, fashion, Kid Sister, Mos Def, Jay-Z, and pretty much every other marginally famous and well-dressed rapper of the past five years:

Esposito might not have realized it (or perhaps he did), but "hipster" really summed up not just the state of the independent Philadelphia rap experience but of life in Philadelphia itself: do what it might, Philly still ends up cast aside into the shadow of its mammoth neighbor 90 miles to the east.

It's fitting, in a sad way, that the most famous composition named for the city, "Streets of Philadelphia," was written by a guy from New Jersey. Try as generations of infinitely talented and eager artists might, the songs about the city still live on more prominently and durably than the songs from it, the music relegated to a living version of the Rocky Balboa statue in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Everyone knows it's there, and everyone knows it may have lost in the beginning, but everyone also knows it will keep on fighting.

"Love" image from zoonabar on flickr.