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.
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.
Cars & Trains describe their sound as “electronic-folk toy-instrument live-looping craziness”. I’m kind of glad they met Open Mike Eagle.
Do not adjust your internet. I ended up spending a lot of the summer listening to Open Mike Eagle’s latest, as I end up doing every year. 4NML HSPTL was easily his most concise and overall better album so far. The visuals for “Self Medication Chant” are too appropriate, as director Brood Baby Jed has fun with digital distortion.
“Universe Man” is easily of the highlights off Open Mike Eagle’s recently released, and recently reviewed, 4NML HSPL. Great production by Awkward, as most of the album is, along with Open Mike at his wordiest and a solid verse by Lesson Six favourite Serengeti to boot. While the video might cut off Serengeti’s verse, it makes up for it with it’s Saturday morning cartoon inspired visuals.
4NML HSPL is easily, the self-proclaimed art rapper’s most inaccessible and ambitious record to date. For those that missed his previous handful of albums, Unapologetic Art Rap & Rappers Will Die of Natural Causes, Open Mike Eagle’s rise to alternative hip-hop notoriety came from a willingness to experiment. Whether that’s lyrically, by combining informed observations on political affairs or hip-hop with his quasi-depressed nerdy self-reflective flow, or production wise, with a heavy reliance on synth-laden electronic beats.
Tracks about video games play a risky game but self-confessed nerd rappers Open Mike Eagle & Milo lend themselves well to the subject on “Boss Fight”. The track, off Open Mike’s recently released free Rent Party Extension EP, features an organic sounding collaboration taking turns reminiscing about their favourite past-time over the kind of dirty-sounding synth that Milo feels at home on. Bleeps & electronic vocals pepper the beat while both throw off Rez & Final Fight references like it’s nothing. Highly anticipating anything these guys together in the future.
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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.
