Brake Lights recalls the belligerence of Game’s older mixtapes where he recklessly swung at G-Unit and whoever else shot him a funny look. But those rivalries are long dead aside from the occasional snide remark in an interview. Nowadays, Game is struggling to get a single on the charts and..

This rap shit can be awful cruel. Both Drake and Wale played the sensitive rapper card. Wale’s talent grabbed him a dedicated following, an Interscope contract, and Roc Nation management, but disappointing first week sales. Drake came out with an unremarkable bubblegum rap album and had Jay-Z, Kanye, and Wayne..

35 tracks deep, 6th Sense’s new tape is a bullish statement of his talent and versatility. His sound is clean, crisp, and practically begging to be populated with lyrics. Rappers, throw away the shitty beat tape you’re currently listening to and contact this man. “Losing My Mind” is especially fearsome...

HerFavoriteColo(u)r is an EP from the darling of the underground hip-hop scene,  Blu. It’s entirely self-produced, relying predominantly on jazz samples. But don’t think you’re getting a fully developed Blu album; HerFav is only 30 minutes long and half of it is instrumentals. It’s unpolished, but not in a bad..

Free music outweighs commercial releases ten to one in the Tanya Morgan catalog. These guys just can’t stop recording. For their latest project, Von Pea and Donwill dumped some of their spare bars over the funky “sandwiches” that The Roots play before and after commercials on Late Night with Jimmy..

No dusty crackly samples over here. Oddisee’s Odd Spring sounds like it was recorded with a room full of musicians; warm, whole, and lively, but still hard pounding hip-hop with deft rappers. Odd Spring is the last in Oddisee’s Odd Seasons series and the DC producer plans to release all..

Shawn Jackson sent out a mixtape of b-sides and rarities this morning. Shawn has perhaps the best ear for beats of any underground rapper I can think of. He raps with a suave, consistent LA flow and DJ Lowkey did a great job mixing the tape as well. Download: Shawn..

K.R.I.T. raps and produces an entire album of deep south soul sampled hip-hop. Big K.R.I.T. rep Goodtalk told DJ Booth, “We dug deep into the crates for the music/movie samples! The first person who can tell us which samples we used we will get $1,000 cash and a pan of..

Starlito is officially my new favorite rapper. There’s something magnetic about the way he delivers vivid raps despite sounding half-asleep/constantly inebriated. On Living in the Past, DJs Dolewite and Scooby of Grind Hard Radio have Lito rap over pre-2000 beats, a concept similar to Joell Ortiz Covers the Classics, but..

I feel like I’ve been waiting for someone to make a tape like this. Dallas-born New York-based producer Shy Guy sampled all of the James Bond themes in chronological order, stopping at License to Kill, for this incredible beat tape. Shy Guy makes excellent use of his source material; he..