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.
Another pointed track by Brother Ali with outstanding production from Jake One. Ali has been making some strong statements with each of the first few songs we have heard from his album coming out in a couple days.
The visuals for this single are pretty fiery and powerful, just as one would expect after hearing the social and political raps of Ali on the single. This song takes a while to digest and the video just showcases the complexity of the issues that we face today, as told by Ali.
Mourning In America is the title track to Brother Ali’s forthcoming album, and it lives up to the expectations. The social/political commentary from Brother Ali fits in great with the production from Jake One.
This is the first single off of Brother Ali’s upcoming album Mourning In America and Dreaming In Color, which is coming out on August 12th. This is a sweet track, and I am pumped for the album.
This song by by Brother Ali along with the previous material we have heard this year features Jake One on the production, which is a change from previous albums. This is a song with a great message and I think this song along with the upcoming album may be one of Ali’s best pieces of work to date.
Brother Ali recently sat down with the people over at Hiphopdx for a lengthy interview. I would highly highly recommend reading the full interview because Ali is able to communicate his thoughts in a very intelligent manner. Some of the answers Brother Ali gives are insightful and can really make us think about certain things. Heres a little snippet below, to read the rest head on over here.
Over the past few years, with the rise of blogs and other media sources, the opportunities of exposure for many artists has increased. In order for the less exposed artists to say relevant in the music scene, they feel a strong need to release more music, meaning they release a new single, album, EP, or mix-tape more often. Some artists like The Roots, or People Under The Stairs have released many albums, but there is a difference in the quality of each of their releases versus the artist who releases a new song every few days that they just worked on.
Continuing with the semi valentines day/love themed music, Brother Ali released The Bite Marked Heart, an EP which serves as a buffer between his last album and his upcoming album Mourning in American and Dreaming in Color.
You can download it here
Jan 10th
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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.
