At the end of last year Spin Magazine compiled a fairly comprehensive video of video game samples in hip-hop. It started to make a few of us at Lesson Six think how many were actually about video games rather than just sounding like them. The result, a list of our top six tracks about video games…
Our Best of 2012 coverage had to end at some point but I couldn’t think of many better than Junk Science’s Baje One for our final guestlist. We asked the Modern Shark founder what he’s been listening to in 2012.
Normally we quickly introduce the artist and their list, but British spoken-word poet The Ruby Kid has kindly written his own. So I’ll get out the way.
I was already thinking about compiling a “Best of 2012” list when Lesson Six got in touch and asked me if I’d like to write one for them. It’s a peculiarity of rappers’ egos that a lot of seem to assume the world is interested in reading our arbitrary, subjective ordering of other people’s output, but now is not the time or place to interrogate that. Now is the time and place for me to present my top 10 hip-hop albums of 2012. Of course, I couldn’t pick just ten, so there’s a handful of “honourable mentions” thrown in for good measure.
Next up is our annual guestlist from Letters From The Fronter and Rifle-Eyeist, Kwes. Who in his own words, is “absolutely terrible at putting my year’s listening into lists, even more so putting them in a cohesive order.” So here is Kwes’s “list”
The final week of our Best of 2012 coverage has us handing over the keys to some of our favourite artists to find out what they liked this year. We kick it all off with Milo’s Top 10 albums of 2012. Who has released the first of two EPs already today. You should go check that out after.
So here it is. Our final part of our Best of 2012 coverage concludes with our top 50 tracks of the year. I’ll avoid the clichés, but this has been a tough list to put together and a special thanks to everyone who produced great music throughout the year for making it tough. It’s been fun.
We’ve still got our guestlists for 2012, which will be coming up each day this week and then we’ll be returning to regular goodness. But for now, enjoy the end of the year with our Top 50 Tracks of 2012.
It’s a cliché itself, but what a great year we’ve had. It’s just been packed with so much great music as hip-hop diversifies, there’s one thing for sure – hip-hop ain’t dead. So why don’t we get down to what you came here for? A list of our favourite albums of 2012 for you to skim-read. Then once you’re done, let us know your albums of the year in the comments below.
How else could we mark Christmas Day but with a post of free presents of the year? So we’re going to share with you our picks of the free downloads from the past twelve months.
I think our past year’s end of the year wrap-up content has always been missing acknowledgement of the directors who constantly make the brilliant visuals we frequently post. When looking back through the archives of 2012, it’s only fair that we pay tribute to our favourite videos of the year. So, in no particular order…
Hip-Hop is cheap. Financially at least. It’s the reason that at least in terms of quantity, hip-hop is king. Even if that means the majority of cases end up compromising in quality and don’t quite do the genre credit. But, the fact that all you need is a beat and a microphone, in it’s rawest form, is the reason we love it.
However, thanks to the social crowd funding website Kickstarter, we’re starting to see a slate of artists target funding for their latest projects. With the UK now getting access to start campaigns, and not simply fund them, we look at site’s influence on the genre so far and wonder are we just making glorified pre-orders?
Jan 10th
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Lesson is about progressive & cliché-free hip-hop with intelligent lyrics. Striving for something more than the mainstream perception of hip-hop. This means no misogyny, no glorification of drug-use, no violence and no played out flaunting of personal wealth.
