By JC Poppe Special to OnMilwaukee.com Published Feb 18, 2011 at 1:12 PM

Yesterday, 88Nine Radio Milwaukee announced the winners of their listener's choice awards, and Milwaukee hip-hop snagged a couple of honors, which were announced at an event last night at The Wherehouse.

This year, Milwaukee hip-hop was nominated for awards in a very large way, and several hip-hop artists received enough votes in several of the categories to be a finalist for an award ... which is great.

However, this year's big winners are ¡OYE! for his "In Your Mind" project, a gem that won "Best Disc We Missed", and Prophetic for "Most Memorable Live Show" for his performance this last year as an opener for N.E.R.D. at Summerfest.

Also, hip-hop group AUTOMatic performed at the event and did an extremely great job of entertaining the crowd and yeah, I'm a little biased towards them (I'm their manager) but that set last night was the best set I've seen them do to date.

On a side-note, I was at the award show and 88Nine did a great job of putting together a fantastic event from beginning to end and if you are a musician or artist and you didn't take advantage of the social networking, be sure to do so next year. It's well worth it, trust me.

For a complete list of the winners, go here.

Speaking of Prophetic, the emcee that many people have dubbed as being Milwaukee's hope to breaking into the big time, is releasing a new project called "MPMP2" at One Sports Bar tonight.

The event is free and I have had a chance to hear most of the music on the project and it's a winner. Go and check it out, grab the music, and see why so many people in Milwaukee are talking about him...if you didn't already know.

Speaking of shows, tomorrow at Stonefly, the second installment of The Takeover Freestyle Battle is going down. DJ Bizzon is working hard to make sure this event helps to reinvigorate the love for the basic skills a hip-hop artist must have, in Milwaukee and beyond ... and that's the ability to drop an off-the-cuff killer freestyle. KHB, Raze, and The Hollowz are all performing at the event and they are also judging it.

Enjoy your weekend!

JC Poppe Special to OnMilwaukee.com

Born in Milwaukee and raised in the Milwaukee suburb of Brown Deer, Concordia University Wisconsin alumnus Poppe has spent the majority of his life in or around the city and county of Milwaukee.

As an advocate of Milwaukee's hip-hop community Poppe began popular local music blog Milwaukee UP in March 2010. Check out the archived entries here.

Though heavy on the hip-hop, Poppe writes about other genres of music and occasionally about food, culture or sports, and is always ready to show his pride in Milwaukee and Wisconsin.