I'd like to shout out Travis for the amount of material he puts on WYDU. Man, I don't know how you do it. Keep up the good work. Here's my controversial top 5 of 2009:
5) Kid Cudi - Man On the Moon: The End of Day
Feel free to savage me on this one. I know there’s a lot of hate for Cudi, and not being a mixtape guy, I never really heard much besides hype before this LP came out. I took a shot and just bought it and ended up digging the hell out of it. It’s a mellow and melodic album and although Cudi isn‘t the greatest lyricist (he has followed the style of Mike D from “Pass the Mic“ and often rhymes words with the same words, hey I rhymed!?), he does have a unique style. I know this LP isn’t for everyone, but I listened to it over and over for a good month and it’s still in my rotation.
4) Brother Ali - Us
Brother Ali is fast becoming one of the best MC’s in hip-hop, rivaling his label mate Slug (Atmosphere). What you have with Us is another superbly produced album from Ant and, of course, some dope mic work from Ali.
3) B.o.B - Should Have Been the First Album
I still don’t know what the deal is with this leak from B.o.B’s MySpace page, but what I do know is that I downloaded it and ran that stuff into the ground. I checked a couple months after I downloaded it and it wasn’t available anymore, so I don’t know if he finally resolved his label issues, but it looks like he might have. This download includes “I’ll Be In the Sky”, “Left Field”, “Generation Lost” and “Mellow Fellow”, among other solid tracks. There are some real good songs on here and I’m pretty damn hyped for the future of music from Bobby Ray.
2) Fashawn - Boy Meets World
This is one of the albums that I got later in the year on this list, so it may have benefited from being fresh in my mind, but this album is really great. Produced by Exile and featuring the more than capable Fashawn on the mic, this was a serious contender for my personal album of the year. Given more time, I may have moved it up, but #2 ain’t bad. It might by the Exile connection, but Fashawn reminds me of Blu with his life inspired rhymes and dope flow. If he keeps this up, Van Damme! (Anyone said Van Damme in a minute?)
1) Zion I - The Takeover
Zion I has always been one of those groups that I’ve liked, but they always made inconsistent albums in my opinion. They’d have 5-6 real dope songs and a bunch of experimental stuff that I really didn’t get into. Well, on The Takeover, they didn’t abandon their experimentation, but I feel like they perfected it. Songs like “Geek To the Beat”, “Juicy Juice” and “Country Baked Yams” aren’t your typical straight up hip-hop songs, but I don’t have a problem with that. When I was unemployed this summer, I bumped this album on a regular basis and when I was working on this list, I really thought about how much I listened to this album and how much I enjoyed it. Maybe it was the time that was afforded to me, but I listened again and I just dig it.
1/28/2010
Top Hip-Hop Albums of 2009 - BC's 1-5
1/26/2010
Top Hip-Hop Albums of 2009 - BC's 6-10
Here's my 6-10:
10) P.O.S. - Never Better
In my mind, P.O.S. just keeps putting out great material. In weaker years, this would be higher up on my list, but for the sake of my very important list, he’s #10. With tracks like “Goodbye“, “Low Light Low Life” (w/ Sims and the very nice to look at Dessa) and Savion Glover, I expect nothing but bangers in the future. And, listening to P.O.S. I wonder why I haven’t gotten into more Doomtree stuff; it’s time I do.
9) CunninLynguists - Strange Journey Volume Two
I really think I swapped volume 1 and 2 now that I think about it. I think this one benefited from a later release date, but looking back, I think 1 is better. That being said, this is a nice album and stands alone in it’s own right. “Running Wild” features a dope appearance from E-40, who has always had one of the craziest and most inventive flows in the game, not to mention that they’ll never be another MC like 40 until 5004. They’ll never be another MC like 40 until 5004??? One of the few tracks not produced by Kno, “Cocaine”, features production from another one of the best producers out there, J-Zone. Then, you have one of the nicest tracks, featuring EFamm, “The WWKYA Tour”. Another nice contribution to hip-hop from CunninLynguists.
8) KRS-One and Buckshot - Survival Skills
This was one of the surprise albums of the year for me. It sounds weird to say that you would buy an album and not expect much (why would you buy it them?), but I wasn’t expecting a lot here. This album ended up being solid all the way through. They used a lot of different producers, from Black Milk to Marco Polo to 9th Wonder, but the album comes together nicely. Plus, anytime someone calls out autotune for the garbage that it is (“Robot“), they score a point in my book.
7) Mr. Lif - I Heard It Today
This was another surprise, although milder, as I have enjoyed Lif’s albums in the past, but I didn‘t expect the best album of Lif‘s career in 2009. Barrack Obama is President, but that doesn’t mean Mr. Lif is going to sit back and trust the government and ignore the injustices in the country and world. If you slept on this album, which you might have, wake your ass up and buy it.
6) Raekwon - Only Built For Cuban Linx Pt. 2
A snap y’all, it’s another shocker/surprise. Linx II has been talked about for years and years, only to be delayed on multiple occasions. It‘s also one of those “part 2 albums” that are usually a last ditch effort to recapture some sort of past glory (and sales), but end up miserable failures (I think I saw The Carnival II while perusing my local record store, when the hell did that come out???), so much so, that I expected absolute garbage from this album. Man, was I wrong. I got excited when I heard the phenomenal “New Wu” w/ Ghost and Meth, but I was still skeptical, especially when hearing about the 50 producers that were involved. Anyway, man, was I wrong to doubt this album. Raekwon could be the new Ghostface if he puts out another gem like this one, meaning that he might turn into the most relevant member of the Wu (anyone get that Ghostdini LP? Heard a song w/ autotune and didn‘t bother, myself).
1/09/2008
Yet another one, sort of
New Year, new beer. The Sierra Nevada Pale Ale just hit Sweden. It might be the most common of all the common beers in U S n A but I'd never heard of it before last week or so. Give it a try if you haven't. God lord if it wasn't so darn expensive I'd might drink more of those then I drank Becks this year (eh, last year)... By the way anybody knows any good Canadian beers? Or whiskeys? I'm gonna stay in the Rockies in British Coloumbia for two months this winter, skiing and such. I guess I somehow ended up postponing getting educated yet another semester…
Well, whatever. Since I’m somehow unable to figure out a proper best of list I’ve just but together a .rar file with some tracks you definitely wouldn’t wanna miss out. And if you did miss any of the below listed tracks, now you how a second chance. My lazy ass is probably last of the WYDU crew to get the ’07 wrap up post done, and it’s not even a proper wrap up. For the better hopefully, it would be pointless to be the third or fourth writer on the same site telling you Nostalgia was the best jam of the year, even though it was. So…
1. Zion I - Don't Loose Your Head feat. Too Short
4. Turf Talk – Popo’s feat. E-40
First track is of the Too Short hosted mixtape I Love The Bay. I never gave the entire records more then a few spins, but this track really stuck to me and I’ve been bumping it all year. It really goes at parties, by now all my friends now it and requests me to put it one whenever drunk and loose enough to listen to that weird thug music they always here while in the car with Hugo. That meaning it’s catchy, beat is addictive sort of and rhymes suits the feeling of the track. One of the best Too Short verses I heard in a minute…
Most importantly you need to listen to the Husalah jam. Hopefully you like it enough for you to cop the album. I thought it over for at least five minutes and I am now positive his album Huslin' Since Da '80's was the best record released in ‘07. Somehow it's so unheard, there's only a few of us who seams to know. My guess is most people don't like hyphy, which is fully understandable, and therefore don’t pay attention to any music out the Bay area. But that’s a non-issue really when it comes to Husalah, he makes west coast gansta rap music – far from hyphy. If you like gangsta rap with a certain sad feeling to it, like say Cormega or Mobb Deep, you should give this a listen. As a side note Cormega actually appeared on the first Mob Figaz album, a group in which Husalah is one of the five members. Another great Mob Figaz-memeber, the Jacka, also appeared on the latest Cormega project. Fuck it here’s another Husalah track, if your taste in music is anything like mine you can’t get enough of it..Sometime this summer Londoner Kano dropped his second LP. Although not as good as his ‘04 debut there where some jams on it. On Bad Boy he somehow succeeds with the impossible, he manages to include some reaggae sampling on a track and doesn’t suck. It’s actually really dope.
