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.
Canadian mainstay, Abdominal finally got around to sharing the oft-referenced instrumental project this year. Sitting Music was a good five years since his last solo album, but it’s experimentation and overall sound was unlike anything I was expecting. Definitely one of my favourite releases of the year. He followed that up with a successful IndieGoGo campaign, the goal of which is this very video.
Like all good stories this one starts on MySpace. While everyone was decidedly friends with Tom, I never found much use in MySpace besides music. That’s probably why my only strong memory of the original social network comes in the form of a back and forth between me and Abdominal.
This is incredible. An entire hour of visuals from DJ Format’s recent live sets. This serves as the definitive DJ Format collection with tracks and beats from his three albums so far set to music videos, live footage and album cover montages.
Canadian rapper Abdominal says ‘goodbye forever street cred’ after releasing this video of him rapping with his mum in “Courage”. Presumably this is a track on his longly-awaited unplugged album with The Obliques.
I’ll be honest, I was drawn to this track by seeing Abdominal’s name. The Toronto based MC has been working on a follow up to 2007′s Escape From The Pigeon Hole for a long time and we’re happy any time we see The Pedal Pusher’s name appear on new material. However, like most of time when I listen Canadian artists, I find another favourite to add to the list. Piece of Mind, who also have an album on the horizion, are another artist from north of the border worth following. Oh Canada.
This week the UK’s Matt Ford, aka DJ Format, will release his first album in nearly seven years. Statement of Intent, the long awaited follow up to 2005′s If You Can’t Join ‘em, Beat ‘em is set to feature DJ Format’s incredibly strong boom-bap production while also giving great independent rappers a great platform to be heard. For those unfortunate enough to have missed the first two albums in the mid-naughties, here are DJ Format’s Essentials.
Some strange people might remember Len from their hit-track “Steal My Sunshine” from 1999 but they also did this track featuring a ton of young Canadian, then, up and comers. According to discogs the plethora of upstarts where Andy Bernstein (Abdominal), Asicks, C-Plus, Circle Research, D-Sisive, Dane Goulet, Daniel Denton, Dave Yan, DJ Moves, Fraser Wendt, Gordski, Governor Bolts, Insight One, Ishkan, Justin Levy, Phatt Al, Philip Rae, Richard Terfry, S-Luv, Sixtoo, Tachichi. Why anyone would think of putting this many people on one track, I don’t know but the result is great and quite important for a few of the stars of contemporary Canadian hip-hop.
Another month goes past and more release dates have been announced and we’re back with another list of what you should be putting on your radar. Hopefully people are finding these lists useful, as it’s stupidly tough to get updated lists of these dates.
It’s always tough to find up-to-date release lists for our genre but we’re aiming to please at Lesson Six. Here’s our second On The Horizon list of release dates.
Jan 10th
Nov 29th
Sep 24th
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 [...]
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.
