While Chicago has produced more than its share of blues and R&B artists, the City of Big Shoulders has yet to make its mark as a hip-hop hotbed. Snypaz is out to change all that.

They've already caught the ear of the Geto Boys' Scarface, who put the Windy City foursome on his 1998 album, My Homies, and helped get them signed to Rap-a-Lot, which will release their major label debut, Livin' in the Scope, on Tuesday.

After hooking up in 1993, Snypaz — Chilla, 2-4, Lil Rob and Sic Wicked — first made their local mark with their 1995 tape Ridin' High, but kicked it to another level with their 1997 disc, My Life as a Snypa, which they say they sold 80,000 copies of on their own.

In addition to working with Scarface, Snypaz also appeared on fellow Chicagoans Do or Die's "Bustin' Back" on that group's 1998 Headz or Tailz album.

"We built our reputation from the ground up," Chilla said. "It's better that way, really. Because then nobody can say we didn't pay our dues."

"Overnight," the cut they did with Scarface, grew out of living room jams based on Geto Boys tracks that Snypaz loved. "We grew up with them, you know? Then we got the chance to work with Scar, and that was like our big break," Lil Rob said.

Like Scarface and the Geto Boys, Snypaz offer up sounds that sometimes stand in stark contrast to the lyrics, injecting even the hardest raps with a healthy dose of soul music.

Cuts like "Kill-Steal-Will" and "Comin' Wit It" combine raw, aggressive lyrics with catchy, even melodic, backing tracks featuring strings and piano. "There's no one Snypaz sound, there's no one Chicago sound," Chilla said. "It's too versatile, so it's hard to label it. But we want to put Chicago on the map."

For Chilla, it's all about communicating, sending out their sounds to Memphis, New Orleans and Atlanta, reminding folks that just because you're in the middle of the country doesn't mean you can't play it. "We're in the Midwest, trying to get people to understand that everybody's doing something, no matter where they are," he said. "We've been hearing it from them, and now it's time they hear from us."

"We all take turns rapping, depending on who's really feeling the track," Lil Rob said. "Sometimes it'll have a Dirty South feel, sometimes it'll have a real hard West Coast feel, but that's what we want to do. Depending on who's rapping it, different people will feel different things."

Which means they're not all about being hard.

"That's on Everything" finds the guys taking things down a notch, with a mellow flow over staccato Spanish guitar. "In the end, it's about the track," Chilla said. "If the music is OK, we can do anything with it. If it's dark and gloomy, we work with that. If it's more, like, upbeat, then we go in that direction."