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…
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.
We finally got around to finalising our list of our favourite albums of the last year. There are too many honourable mentions to go through, but the quality of the music over the last 12 months is clear in this very list. Let’s hope it continues throughout the next 12 months. For now though, here’s our top 10 albums of 2011.
Before we move onto our albums and free downloadable of the year (along with a few guestlists), we’ve got the little matter of our top 10 tracks of 2011.
The bar is raised incredibly high in our penultimate entry for the Tracks of 2011.
The now eight albums deep LA based rap duo, People Under The Stairs, are nothing but consistant. You can’t fault them for it, they’ve been delivering album after album filled with jazz loop laden anthems. It’s safe to say that the People Under The Stairs best of compilation will be one of the finest examples of our genre. However, they’re also prone to prescribing to the rule of quantity not quality, where hit and miss doesn’t even come close. Luckily after 14 years in the game they’re finally getting that ratio on the right side.
Thes One & Double K have a knack for making the last handful tracks of their albums brilliant. My one complaint with PUTS is that there is too much focus on quantity but they definitely know how to end an album with fanfare. This, “Left Foot, Right Foot” of the freshly pressed Highlighter album, is one of their best finales to date. Pure feel good lyrics and production here.
People Under the Stairs (puts) has been arguably one of the most successful independent hip-hop acts of the past decade. This album is arguably their most ambitious album to date, as they enlisted help from producers and studios all over LA. From the opening track Selfish Destruction to the conclusion, I can not get over the production of the album. The production of Selfish Destruction especially caught my ear, and then you are thrown right into The Second Track, and there is no break from the catchy production. Thes One and Double K both stay strong and on point trading verses on the various tracks. This is probably one of the best albums of their storied career, and well you just have to listen to it yourself.
Not only does Headnodic have the ability to come up with a great pseudonym but he can also produce a fairly decent beat. Here Lesson Six favourite, People Under The Stairs take to four minutes off Headnodic’s soon to be released album, Red Line Radio. While it doesn’t (as far as I can tell) have any relation to Redline Racer its set to feature Raashan Ahmad, Moe Pope, M.r Life, Gift of Gab and more. The date you should be writing down is the 26th of July.
I’ll admit it, I was hoping to get the Best of 2010 mix out at the end of 2010 but it ended up coming out nearly two weeks into the new year. However, the other thing we were hoping to do was put out more of these things. Since our weekly Top Sixes are on hiatus (exciting developments to come soon though) this is one of the better ways to share older music with you, along with a some current stuff. So that’s why we’re putting out another January Mixcloud.
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.
