NO TRIVIA

June 20, 2012 – Tito Lopez's "Mama Proud" has that rough, bubbling with passion intensity symptomatic of MCs too big for their hometown, but maybe a little too ragged to really break through. We'll see. "Mama Proud" currently sits at No. 91 on Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. Much of the song's charm comes from realizing that there is absolutely nothing cool about it.

June 19, 2012 – "When my little brother died, I said 'fuck school!' " That line from Waka Flocka Flame's "Hard In Da Paint," framed his pissed-off post-crunk around a tragedy horrible enough to explain Flockaveli's hour of gun shots, shouts, and fuck-you-up chants. And there's a simple poetry to that exhortation. Notice that the line doesn't justify his decision, it simply states the facts.

June 15, 2012 – "Worst Beef Ever" probably needs to become a recurring feature, doesn't it? Devon Maloney already gave you a comprehensive look into the Drake's entourage versus Chris Brown's entourage bougie nightclub battle of early Thursday morning ("Dreezygate"), but, man is this thing depressing.

June 14, 2012 – Rugby Thompson is a collaboration between Smoke DZA, the fiercest member of Curren$y's Jet Life crew (and the guy who exhorts, "riiiiiight" at the start of his verses), and Harry Fraud, beatmaker of the moment (the Lords of the Underground-flipping hit "Shot Caller” for French Montana), conjurer of euphoric bangers (Action Bronson & Riff Raff's "Bird On a Wire"), and the guy whose producer drop is the never-gets-old "la musica de Harry

June 12, 2012 – An almost ridiculously jaunty loop of orchestrated soul kicks off "On Momma's House" from Attractive Sin, the latest from legendary West Coast weirdo Del the Funky Homosapien, with beats from the New Jersey production crew Parallel Thought. "On Momma's House" skips and swings along for more than five minutes, with the Del doing that rapping on and on and on thing he does so well.

June 7, 2012 – Big K.R.I.T.'s style is a canny conflation of two, once-embattled rap undergrounds: Dead-serious conscious rap bumping up against wizened Dirty South artists like UGK and 8Ball & MJG. A hybrid of this kind of hip-hop with that type of rap music would've been an affront to hip-hop heads a decade ago. Now, an MC as milquetoast as J.