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When he first emerged in 2001, Diverse was roundly acclaimed in his hometown of Chicago as the city's most talented MC since Common. Born Kenny Jenkins, he was the owner of a plus-size vocabulary and a complex but liquid-smooth flow, which placed him squarely in the intellectual hip-hop underground and often earned him comparisons to Talib Kweli. Jenkins was born in Chicago's Englewood area, and grew up in several parts of the city, eventually calling Rogers Park home. He was interested in hip-hop as a teenager, when he started writing his own lyrics, but was reluctant to perform in front of his friends. After graduating high school in 1993, he attended Northern Illinois University on a baseball scholarship, but tore his anterior cruciate ligament in a football game, ending his athletic prospects. He returned to Rogers Park and took a job as a mail carrier at the nearby branch of National-Louis University; in the meantime, he focused more on music than ever before, honing his rapping s...