Did you guys realize Lupe was already gearing up to drop another album and/or official mixtape / mixtape series?

THE FADER: Lupe Fiasco Teases Mysterious New Pharoah Height 2/30 Project

... Whaaaaaa?

It seems that Tetsuo & Youth has had a positive and at least somewhat long-lasting effect on Lupe's reputation and marketability, despite the *hummibgbird* attention spans of modern hip-hop audiences. I'm glad. I'd more or less written him off myself but now I'm comfortable with the fact that (F&L II and Lasers aside) he's released 3 excellent albums. Tetsuo & Youth had a major impact on me.

After recent singles, new Weeknd album is one of my most anticipated this year.

ok i really love that new Miguel.

Meek Mill's new album is (surprisingly?) good too.

my top 5 of the year looking like this right now:

Miguel
Kendrick
Vince
Earl
Meek

(with Drake/Rocky/Future/etc being really close to make the cut.)

not sure about the order yet.

fucking Genteel neg repped me for this post, haha. what a loser.

I miss when rappers had cool names.

I don't know if I miss anything really. hip hop was goofy before. kinda. I miss that because im still goofy. I can only show out at work and with close friends instead of a group.

watch those Beastie Boys vids like What'cha Want. now I know where I got my inspiration to dance. you got Odd Future now, but that's like dark "kill a bitch" violent goofy..... not for me.

im getting old.:) amen.

Meh..goofy hip hop wasn't really that good and the beats sucked.

goofy hip hop was not a genre. I was just stating. it was kinda goofy in the past. to let loose and all. now you have to have a smart phone and......

whatever. whatever, drop it. forget it. this thread is not for me. post on.:(

Beastie Boys ruled

yes!!! you know them. and just that time era. I thought I made myself clear/vague? I love the goofy attitude. been listening to them lately.:)

I need no woman just headphones and whatever they'll have in 2040. I had all the pussy and blowjobs I need though beauty and sexiness will strike me here and there but nothing a simple jack will take care of.

I go thru patches where i just listen to beasties for days.

I think you just have a broader palette than I do, and a less rigorous sense of loyalty to music. It used to baffle me how your lists would change so drastically, but now I'm wondering if it's not my own stubbornness that's the problem.

I still say
At.Long.Last.A$AP
To Pimp a Butterfly
Tetsuo & Youth
If You're Reading This It's Too Late
And B4.DA.$$ are the big notables of the year, with Pilot Talk III, the new Raekwon (which, like, nobody fucking noticed), Mr. Wonderful and Sour Soul filling out the rest of the starting line up.

But recently my whole year has been flipped by an increased, faunung love for White Men are Black Men Too by Young Fathers. That album, even though it doesn't feel entirely like "rap" reminds me of Shabazz Palaces and their equally progressive and tweaked version of hip-hop, only I think I like Young Fathers MUCH more than I like SP's at present.

Really though, that's just my in-genre list. The big albums for me have been, once again, electronic, breakbeat and footwork, noise and ambient-related. Jim O'Rourke, Hudson Mohawke, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Andøya, Thee Oh-Sees, Jlin, Prefuse 73.

But I'm still waiting for the real shit to drop.

ALLA, Tetsup & TPAB are the real hip hop dominators in my opinion.

At.Long.Last.A$AP is def my favorite of the year so far.

MY TOP TIER HIP HOP ALBUMS THIS YEAR SO FAR:

Mr. Wonderful
Welcome To Los Santos
If You're Reading This
B4DA$$

MY OTHER HIP HOP ALBUMS THAT I LIKE A LOT BUT NOT QUITE LOVE:

Sour Soul
Blade Of The Ronin
I don't Like Shit


(you are not mistaken... I did not forget to include TPAB... I like it. But I have a feeling it won't make it to a year-end Top 10 for me.)

Wait, scrap that... B4.DA.$$ and If You're Reading This... (which basically made me do yet another full 180° on Drake. I'm back to bangin' NWTS and Thank me Later and even Take Care, all because of the freshness of this "mixtape" (fuck it, it's an album).

B4.DA.$$ is an album I constantly forget about, but there's no damn reason for it. It's an immensely successful underground->pop crossover for Joey B. His "Long.Live.A$Ap", if you will.

It's totally solid and probably only fades from memory temporarily because it's such a fundamentally classic East Coast boom-bap record. It doesn't scale conceptual mountains or gestate in a womb of orchestral jazz Impressionism like Tetsuo. It doesn't swagger into a saloon wearing Spurs and six-guns, daring on-lookers to say somethin' stupid like ALLA. And of course it doesn't turn the rap album into a thousand page Bohemian novel about holidays in Perdition, social reform and reincarnation, like To Pimp A Butterfly.

It just more or less kills it. Joey Bada$$ is gimmick-less, much like his Flatbush familiars The Underachievers (who, as y'all know, I have a bit of a thingfor), and the album achieves something a perfect cosmic middle ground between Talib Kweli's conscious heroic "good guy" emcee and the fury of early Wu-Tang Clan, while still further establishing Joey's unique identity.

I feel bad for not mentioning it more, but please believe, I have been listening to B4.DA.$$ regularly all year long, my regard for the album growing all the time.

Cherry Bomb and I Don't Like Shit are both good. I know I was slow to feel the new Earl, but that's mostly because I have personal issues with the way these two conduct themselves, both in virginal boyhood and in their newfound "maturity".

When Earl insults his fans for being upset that OF broke up (male virgins who want to dress like Easter baskets forever, is, I believe, how he put it), I can hear the self-assured, wet-eared pseudo-wisdom of someone who just wants to publicly announce the popping of his own cherry without actually holding up a sign.

Tyler has been better about it. He has actually conversed with fans, and tried to explain the fact that he's growing up, and changing as a person, to a bunch of children of the Internet age, who get their identity from their "Fandom".

But either way, if you give a shit about the people that made you as unfathomably lucky as you have been, you will not insult them and tell them to "go talk to some girls, seriously" (says the bording school brat who's not old enough to understand the true nature of vice). Fuck you, brat.

Your album's good though.

Cherry Bomb is interesting. But not great. I like it. Don't love it.

If You're Reading this IS an album. I don't really get it when dudes call their shit a mixtape, but it's all original beats and written songs. TO me a mixtape is y'konw, freestyle over other peoples' tracks. This was a retail release of new material. In full length format. That's called "an album," Drake.

yeah but it's more like a compilation of outtakes. i heard he released it in order to get out of his contract in Cash Money but who knows. i think those songs were originally made for "Views from the 6" before he scrapped that version and decided to go for a more left-field album (still eager to see what he's gonna come up with).

oh and i don't like Cherry Bomb at all. "Smuckers" is a great song though.

please listen to the Meek album, friends. it's really solid, easily better than his first one.

yeah my year lists probably do change a lot throughout the year. but once the year is over and i revisit them, not so much.

I get that - but even if it is outtakes, it's still a bunch of new original songs that our ears never heard. I mean, I Am Not A Human Being is an album. Not a mixtape. But it's really just leftover tracks from other projects. But it's an album.

I don't know why I care so much about what we call it. Pet peeve I guess haha.