I always like to take time now to reflect on releases from the previous year. There’s so much music coming out that it is difficult to make up your mind on a top 10 at the end of the year. You’ve got to wait until early the following year and let the music sink in, sit with the output a little while before you can put a best of list together. We’re now almost at the end of February and I feel like I can present my top 10 for 2023. So here we go for another ranking, starting from the top with number 10, and making my way down to number 1. 10. Nicki Minaj - Pink Friday 2 I’ve never been much of a fan. I’ve always seen Nicki Minaj’s music as pop rather than rap and hip hop. That was until I checked out her 2018 album “Queen” on which she leaned a lot more on the rapping than the singing and that album I kind of liked. Nicki Minaj had not released a proper project since then and there was much anticipation for “Pink Friday 2”, even more so that this is the part 2 to what his seen by most a...

 Only just finished putting together my 2022 year end list and back again with a list of my most anticipated rap albums of 2023. Some of these have been announced - with or without firm dates - and some of have not, but there is a good chance they will come out in 2023. Let’s get into it! Skyzoo & The Other Guys: The Mind of A Saint Inspired by the TV show “Snowfall” which recounts the story of one of the most prominent drug dealers, the album will be tapped from the perspective of a fictional character, Franklin Saint, who has gone from through the trials and tribulations of a major trafficker. But unlike many rap albums that glorify the life, Skyzoo plans on addressing the harsh lessons of the life of crime and use it the album as a vehicle to show the double-sided reality, which is something many rappers fail to tackle. Knowing Skyzoo’s skills and with his 2021 album still in rotation, I’m sure we’ll be in for a treat. Dropping January 13th, 2023. El Michels Affair & Bla...

When you listen to so much music it’s very hard to come up with any kind of top ranking. Even more so when a year is a busy and as good as 2022 was for Rap and Hip-Hop. But it’s good to take time to reflect on all the music that has come out and to try and put together a list of your favorite projects so that you can kind of keep a time capsule for the previous year that you can come back to later. You can then see how well these albums still fare a few years down the line and it’s a good opportunity for anyone reading to catch up on a project that they have missed out on. Usually you tend to forget the albums that have come out early or in the first half of the year as there is so much coming out and it’s difficult to keep your attention on one project for long. Remember the times when an album would come out and the only way for you to listen to it was to buy the CD? I can tell you that back then you’d take your time with a single album - sometime spending months with it - and would ...

As usual, I wanted to close another year with a “Top 10 Bangers of…” article, collecting the songs I ended up playing the most throughout 2022. Criteria for this list are that these songs must have come out during the year, were supported by a music video, and obviously were songs that I kept coming back to long after I first heard them. Here’s the list! Benny The Butcher - Johnny P’s Caddy (feat. J. Cole) Benny The Butcher has been in my current top 5 rappers for a couple of years now, so when he came back with another album in the “Tana Talk” series in the first quarter of 2022, I was excited. This track was the first single in the rollout and also is the opener on the album. The Alchemist laced Benny with one of the best beats of the year and J. Cole delivered my favorite verse of the year on the feature. Benny The Butcher also held his own with a dope verse. This is by far my favorite song of the year and has been in heavy rotation all year. Kendrick Lamar - N95 This year marked th...

What a year it’s been. Let’s not state the obvious, but who would have expected what was going to happen back in February last year when I was writing that 2020 was off to a great start music-wise . Despite all the mess, last year turned out to be a good one in rap music with so many releases that this is why I’m only getting around to write about my top 10 bangers of 2020 now in March. So much music in fact that it’s been difficult to keep up and digest. But here are, in no particular order, the songs that I’m still bumping today and that I will probably find myself playing well into this year. Run The Jewels - Ooh LA LA (feat. Greg Nice and DJ Premier) The dynamic duo of El-P and Killer Mike released their 4th collaborative album under the group name Run The Jewels in the midst of the social unrest and protests surrounding the shooting of George Floyd. The group’s trademark style of music that is politically charged, heavily engaged and hard hitting was very timely and they actually ...

          Maybe it's the recent Halloween with its horror themes and skeletons. Or maybe it's the fact that the group recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of their 3rd and most critically/commercially successful studio album "III: Temples of Boom" (released on 31st October 1995, same day as Halloween). Recently I have found myself listening to a lot of Cypress Hill, which is bringing back a lot of great memories from my first years getting into Hip-Hop, and has inspired me to write on this blog again.      I first got into Cypress Hill while spending some time in Austria on a school exchange programme. Back then I was listening to a lot more Alternative Rock and Metal than I did Hip-Hop. My only reference was Eminem... I remember watching TV from time to time and leaving it on a channel playing back to back music videos (probably because I could not take watching any other German-speaking TV channel then). Besides a music video from some ...

Pittsburg, CA rapper A-Wax has been active since the early 2000's. He initially came up on the scene through his associations with fellow Northern California local sensations Woodie or the Mob Figaz. He would go on to release his debut album Savage Timez in 2001. His story is unlike anyone else's: a white man who ended up joining the Bloods - a notoriously violent gang mostly made of black members - he was arrested and found guilty of manslaughter, sentenced as if he was an adult despite being 16 years old. He spent 5 years in prison where he became fascinated with Hip-Hop culture and started writing songs. Upon his release from prison he met with Woodie who brought him onto the rap scene and introduced him to the Norteños while at it. He has since released over 20 solo and collaborative projects, rapping alongside the Mob Figaz (who would later become sworn enemies due to street beef), Woodie and his East Co. Co. crew, Waka Flocka Flame's Brick Squad, just to name a fe...