~by Maxwell Cavaseno
As 2012′s dawn peeks from over the hills of yesteryear, more new young rappers are poking their head out to bask in the sunlight. More than a few have managed to take their influences and spin them in ways that outsiders would find difficult to trace. One of them is Khalil Nova, a young man in his early 20′s from Atlanta. Like Tyler, The Creator and Spaceghostpurrp before him, he’s a producer with an eclectic style which looms over his vulnerable personality. A personality which is is embodied by the struggle within last year’s “808′s Of Death”.
It’s easy to see why Danny Brown declared “Khalil Nove got next!” While more and more bedroom rapper/producers are popping up out of the woodwork at an alarming rate, few of them have the immediacy in their production styles to stand out and arrest your attention. But on opener “Cloud Mover”, Khalil seduces the listener with a haze of soap-opera strings, low thudding bass, and melodies meant to pull at heartstrings. Throughout the tape, his sounds form a confusing array of realms to dwell in: whether on the murky sitar-tinged plod of “Combo”, the eski/R&B hybrid of “Freezer Bhudd” to the lo-fi could’ve-been-a-malnourished-Zomby-tune of “Internet Muzik” and the Juicy J gone cybernetic grind of “The Ultimate Track”. Khalil manages to merge the sounds of video-game bleeps from bits 8 to 32 with the bombast of modern trap production.
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- Yayo
2011 was a strange year in rap, but also a great one, as far as I’m concerned. Both Lil B and Odd Future, 2010′s star pupils, mostly fell to the wayside due to a struggle to be taken serious (B), and what feels like an overall laziness (Odd Future). In their wake, many different acts emerged, the most prominent of which were internet darlings like Spaceghostpurrp and the ASAP Mob, whom combined to make one supergroup by the year’s end. Although Purrp has yet to sign the ink on a major label contract, the ASAP Mob, and specifically their star Rocky, signed an extremely lucrative contract that has been disputed to this day.
While Odd Future’s once heavy output dwindled to an album, a re-release, an EP, and a mixtape no one even remembers, the future stayed odd; and by that, I’m talking about Nayvadius Cash, also known as Future. Future is Atlanta’s latest prodigal son, an autotuned mess of a rapper whose music should be far more disasterous than it is infectious. Due to an underlying talent that hasn’t yet been fully harnessed and a knack for crafting larger than life hooks, Future has managed to come out of the year with three incredible mixtapes, as well as one decent collaboration with Atlanta’s old-guard and a string of loosies found on various mixtapes throughout the year.
Due to the fact that Future’s had better moments this year than Tony Montana (in my opinion), I decided to compile my top 30 Future tracks for the sake of prosperity, as well as include the mixtapes they can be found on. This really was Future’s year as far as I’m concerned, but that doesn’t take away anything from the other 49 songs I’ve chosen in the accompanying list.
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- Yayo
2011 was a fantastic year for rap music. That’s really all I need to summarize this, but we’re still gonna write a whole lot of words about it because that’s what bloggers do. This is only the beginning of it, and to kick things off, I present to you my top 25 albums and mixtapes. Why 25? Because I kinda ran out of steam around 23, but totally had to have a cliche number.
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(sidenote: I still haven’t written about THAT album)
The second quarter is over, which means we’re half way through the year. 2011 has been a great year for rap, despite the fact that the album format is little more than a distant memory. It’ll be interesting to see what the rest of the year holds for us.
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So we’re already 23 days into the second quarter of the year, but I decided I would drop another one of these as I sorta made it a tradition. For those of you uninitiated (most?), I just post a bunch of pictures of mixtapes and shit that I really enjoyed in the quarter that just passed, and people look at the pictures and say yo, fuck this faggot, that mixtape sucked! Then I retreat to a mansion in the hills, and work on a shitload of No Jumper posts before hacking down my family. Sound good? Alright.
As always, a lot of this probably WON’T appear on my year end list (except for some obvious exceptions), and is only placed here to reflect my listening habits at the time. One contribution from each artist, although I don’t think any artist has put out two flawless projects so far this year (unless you count E-40, and I’m still only including one of the RR series/I’d be afraid if anyone else did).
This is really just for collective purposes, and the odd chance you might’ve missed something here. I’m pretty sure I might be missing some shit, but that’s okay. It’s a list, we wouldn’t have it any other way.
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