A method and system for performing Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (“MIMO”) detection that reduces complexity by decomposing MIMO detection problem into two less complex problems, Candidate List generation and Interference Cancellation (“CLIC”). Embodiments of the CLIC framework parse an N element channel output into a first set containing S elements and a second set containing N−S elements. A first list of candidate vectors is generated from the first set of elements. A set of interference cancelled elements is generated by using the first list of candidate vectors to cancel interference from the second set of elements. A second list of candidate vectors is generated from the set of interference cancelled elements. A minimum cost is computed for each bit of the candidate vectors and from the costs a log-likelihood ratio is computed.