Metal Lungies

The quality of rap music in a given year can be measured in Alchemist releases. His 2016 output in 2016 so far includes an album with Havoc, a pair of 7-inch singles featuring West Coast legends ands scions, a stylish period drama with Curren$y, and some fine loosies with Meyhem Lauren and Durag Dynasty. Ignore everything except these songs and 2016 could be the magnus annus.

Kitchens & Choppas 2 is a sequel to probably my favorite album of 2014. It’s an economical eight songs with threadbare beats and Ca$h Out’s distinctive quavering, pimpish delivery. Calling the sound sparse is like calling money green. The stove, the strippers, and the scale float in endless space. It’s another jaunt through the trap, but as you’ve rarely seen it.

Atlanta’s Johnny Cinco goes exotic with his beat selection on his newest mixtape, Trap Religious, especially on the first two tracks. “Virtual Trapping” uses the sound palette of a dystopian sci-fi flick. Cinco still sounds like he grew up on dancehall until graduating to lean and Gucci Mane tapes, so Trap Religious takes the genre to weird new frontiers.

Maxo Kream of Houston delivers the year’s first great gangster rap album and serves fiends and 90s babies alike with street shit and Nickelodeon/wrestling references. If you want it without DJ drops, hit up iTunes/Spotify/etc.

Problem is savvy enough to foster ties in Atlanta, where rap’s creative mojo is strongest. The California rapper’s OT: Outta Town mixtape features everybody from Young Thug to T.I. to Jermaine Dupri. The strongest cuts are the 90s inflected opener and the song with Ca$h Out, who is low-key my favorite rapper right now.

Amid years of fruitless attempts to regain New York hip-hop’s former glory, luddites’ endeavors to reinstate “real” hip-hop, and embarrassing overtures by yesterday’s greats — most recently, the Wu-Tang Clan’s painful and perverse new album — amid all of that, Raekwon alone seems to have noticed that the provenance of every golden hip-hop moment remains pure and unadulterated for the taking. It’s sitting there in bygone record crates.

L.A. by way of Chicago producer Salva went and got all your favorite rappers for his mixtape. Download it at his website and listen to choice cuts featuring Freddie Gibbs, Kurupt, E-40, and Schoolboy Q below.

Shout out to rappers who aren’t friends with Gwyneth Paltrow. Don’t Drink The Kool Aid was one of my favorite rap albums of 2013 for its casual vibe. It’s like the kids banging on the desks grew up and got jobs, but kept the same fun, scrappy approach to rap but now with a worldly sense of humor and better beats. If you’re pressed for time, check out track 15, “Wootie” — I’m still parsing Cavalier’s verse three months later.

Holy. Shit. If you’re looking for a solid hour of music to get you through your commute, or literally anything else you might be doing, look no further. The entire mixtape is solid and once you hit the last six tracks it gets really real. AND a bonus with two Purity Ring tracks serving as book ends for this mix, absolutely no complaints. We last brought The Hood Internet to your attention when we were obsessed with Foster the People (still obsessed… but taking a healthy break to mix things up). Also, a double bonus, the mixtape has my favorite Hood Internet cover art to date created by Steff Bomb.

You can listen below and/or download from their site or on Soundcloud

Slum Village still got it. Well, at least T3 and Young RJ do.

Download: Slum Village – Dirty Slums 2