Recently in Drops Category

Kind of a bummer. Not really my bag.

Love the albums New Orleans' Curren$y churned out this year. His latest, Pilot Talk II, is efficiently laid out and densely packaged.  

I maintain it's Kanye West's fourth-best record, Reggie does not.

• According to Rap Radar, Kanye West's still title-less album will be released Monday, November 22, 2010, the week of Black Friday. I enjoy Noz's conspiracy theory on the reworking of the album via G.O.O.D. Fridays and I hope the thing doesn't end up being called Dark Twisted Fantasy because that title is stupid.
  
• Dr. Dre's Aftermath Cognac coming soon.
  
• Wyclef hospitalized for chest pains.
• Freeway's second Rhymesayers release prepped for this calendar year. ATG dug the first one.
  
• Barack Obama is a Muslim, er, listens to Lil Wayne.
• The Los Angeles Times on rappers and their overlooked passion for Ecstasy.
• Paul Wall attacked a fan with his microphone during San Antonio's Low Low Car Show Sunday night.
• Mickey Factz dropped a new mixtape Monday evening, which may be worth a glossing over as 2007's Heaven's Fallout boasted tremendous art and two to three choice moments.
• The Skyzoo and !llmind mixtape drops October 5, should be great.
• The suckling for hits by mid-major artists, off the G.O.O.D. Friday songs/artwork, is vile and useless.
• The cyclical promoting of an in-house, mediocre product from an otherwise trusted source is unfortunate but expected.
  

The biggest summer hit of 2009 was from an unknown Canadian breaking hearts without an album. This year found its cultural cornerstones scored by big rap songs from big rap albums. Whereas summer '09 became book-ended with would be comebacks from Raekwon and Eminem, 2010 hip-hop has seen its brightest stars converging on the opportunity to top charts. Drake sold nearly half a million in a week. Em over 700,000 copies of his sober, wordy work. I heard Rick Ross's Teflon Don blaring from four separate outlets (car, truck, nice car, loudspeaker) on one August night walking between Bloomingdale to the New York Avenue metro, and through to Dupont Circle.

Detecting an inviting climate, second tier rappers like Paul Wall and Guilty Simpson and Curren$y got their songs carbon manifestations available in stores and moved away from the tired formula of converging with stupid blogs to build buzz. M.I.A. sort of crashed and burned after a high profile New York Times piece tore into her guarded public image and reviews of her third album soured after the near-comic level of blind fanaticism that blanketed her old stuff.

Interesting comebacks surfaced: white people loved Big Boi's return to form. Rhymefest, after teasing El Che for three years, finally got a chance to see another commercial release tank miserably. Bun B's otherwise regional release elevated to national news when The Source awarded Trill O.G. its once prestigious five microphone rating. The last five mic rating this eroding-in-relevance rag handed out? Lil Kim's The Naked Truth. The award did lead rap fans down warm memories of how fraudulent and stupid The Source has been since the late '90s.

With the climate covered, ATG prepped a list of top summer albums. But the writers split over finalists while carb loading at Tom's Restaurant Monday night. This before transferring colors and taking trains out to Yankee Stadium, where most of the list hung out and exchanged anthems behind unifying, bright colors and sunglasses at night. The tight-knit fraternity became, for better or worse, an indistinguishable mob of hitmakers. So, here are the songs that got me through the move, the heat, the job search.


J. Cole - Villematic

Nas - Last Real Nigga Alive, Pt. 2 (Power, Paper, Pussy)

Drake featuring Jay-Z - Light Up

Ron Isley featuring Lauryn Hill - Close to You (Cover)

Yelawolf - Looking For Alien Love

Big K.R.I.T. featuring Yelawolf - Hometown Hero (remix)

Blu - So Perfect

Yelawolf featuring Gucci Mane - Wanna Party

Trek Life - Ready to Live

Rick Ross featuring Jay-Z, John Legend - Free Mason

Curren$y - Breakfast
 
Eminem - Cinderella Man

Badio - Kiss the Sky

Big Boi featuring Andre 3000 - Lookin' For Ya


Now back to mid-September.

Wu Tang Clan - Chamber Music


I've been listening to Michael man. Little else. When all the pretensions are removed and the bullshit vanishes, and we have this brief window between global mourning and an overstated spin cycle, well, Michael Jackson makes most music sound like shit. Especially Charles Hamilton.

Exploring the vast chasms of my iPod, however, recently came across the new B.o.B mixtape. Specifically the posse cut with Ash Roth and Charles Hamilton. That's some "fuck hip-hop" stuff. Fucking awful. Rapping about blogging and shit.

Anyway, we're at another Tuesday of new albums that no one will buy. The biggest name releasing music today is The Wu. But the most enticing pick of the week comes after the jump.

Z-Ro & Chill - The Rain

We're kicking off today's releases with some homefield advantage.

I'm counting this as his 13th LP since the late '90s, but it's fucking impossible to keep track. Perhaps the Houston rapper's most glaring tragedy is his inability to assemble. Z-Ro is an endless stream of verses, guest flows, Screw tapes, and mixtapes. In other words, good luck catching up with the rest of his best of.

Finding a comprehensive discography or even album art for an album that comes out today is harder than hunting down a Coldplay zip file that hasn't been deleted by label bosses.

I don't even know who Chill is.

We've somewhat shelved this weekly feature due to limited resources and an increasing distrust of the commercial release versus its mixtape cousin. We could not ignore today.

Hands down, the biggest single date of the year thus far. And, to the dismay of many obituaries penning the model's end, it is a good day for commercial hip-hop albums. I may even go to Best Buy myself and get some $9.99 LPs. Real talk.

Alas, we'll be properly breaking each down by week's end, but here's what you need to be checking for. Slate of shrink-wrapped freshness after the jump.