November 8, 2012 – Who: "In the past few years, I just been focusing more on solo stuff," Roc Marciano modestly explains, delivering something of an understatement. The Long Island rapper kicked around for about a decade before finally releasing his debut, Marcberg, in 2010. By simply surviving, Marciano became a link back to New York hip-hop's head-busting past and also something of a rookie, keeping the sound alive. "I came into the game around '99-2000, with Busta Rhymes," Marciano recalls, adding, "I got my first deal in 2000, I think?" From Flipmode Squad to tough-minded trio the U.N.

November 2, 2012 – This week's Friday Five is brought to you by Popeye's Chicken & Biscuits (or as they now call themselves, "Popeye's Louisiana Kitchen") who inexplicably offer free Wi-Fi. Not that I'm complaining. As someone who had to evacuate New Jersey because of the hurricane, and spent the rest of this week scrambling around for places to stay and wireless Internet to steal, it is much appreciated. Their delicious spicy french fries and ice-cold orange soda are also appreciated. Don't worry about me, my dog is safe, and the most expensive thing I own is, like, the original Lil B Black Ken cover art and a few Sun Ra LPs, so even if my apartment is flooded and my stuff's ruined, it ain't no thing.

October 31, 2012 – Rapping over a classic (or buzzing) beat is often just a cheap, if savvy, way to grab some attention. When jackin'-for-beats is done right, however, it brings with it a very specific type of energy. Lil Wayne's “Georgia Bush” is more affecting because it contains from-the-frontlines-of-Katrina frustration, as well as the warped memory of Field Mob and Ludacris' Georgia pride anthem. You can hear the original and the usurped version fighting it out, and that's fascinating. Rap thrives on that kind of tension.Classick, the new rapping-overs-others'-instrumentals mixtape from Angel Haze, enters that “Georgia Bush” zone of inspiration. Haze's take on Lupe Fiasco's "Bitch Bad" shifts the focus of the song to a male who witnesses his mother being beat up and, as a result, continues a cycle of abuse. Adjusting Lupe's sloppy gender politics is inspired.

October 29, 2012 – Not enough hip-hop stories end well. About the best we get is that some legendary MC fades away gracefully and grows up and out of the industry, to live comfortably. Jay-Z is the anomaly. For awhile there, it seemed as if Run-DMC were going to age, with relative grace, which would have been, in its own way, a minor victory. They made some great albums, then some not-so-great ones, and from time-to-time, they toured. And then, on October 30, 2002, Jam Master Jay was shot in the head in his Queens recording studio. Ten years later, the murder remains unsolved.Damn That DJ Made Our Days: Look back at Jam Master Jay's life in photos.At the time of his death, the police, frustrated by a lack of witnesses willing to come forward, floated a narrative that a 1994 cocaine deal Jay was allegedly involved in, may have led to his death — an old friend turned enemy settling a score.

October 26, 2012 – G.O.O.D. Music's Cruel Summer just kind of came and went, didn't it? It sold pretty well, and I still hear songs from it crawling out of car radios, but overall, it was an underwhelming release. And so, we of the up-to-the-second rap Internet all just pretended like it never really happened. It was better to do that than get bummed out about it not living up to the hype, right? A few times this year, I've compared Kanye's over-ambitious production to Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan's serious-as-cancer approach to superhero storytelling. Nolan took a grown-ass man in a bat suit, forget about camp or even just plain fun, and built up the Batman mythos into an impenetrably po-faced film. Kanye's approach to trap music has been similar.

October 26, 2012 – Hot Sugar (producer Nick Koenig) first popped up on my radar when he contributed the foggy, tone-setting opening rap track "Sleep" to the Roots' excellent and severely underrated undun last year. The central tenet of Koenig's beatmaking approach involves treating found sounds like classic hip-hop breaks ready to be chopped, looped, and contorted however he sees fit. The results can be eerie and devastating — like the traffic-noise beat of Big Baby Gandhi & Fat Tony's "Lurkin'" from BBG's NO1 2 LOOK UP 2 — or just plain absurd, like the dial-up modem skronk bounce of "56K," a Heems-assisted track from Hot Sugar's Midi Murder EP, out on Tuesday.On "I don't wanna b judged," Barbados-via-the-Internet MC Haleek Maul details the death of a friend, the fruitlessness of even a little bit of success, and barfs up some Chex Mix out of frustration about it all.

October 26, 2012 – Houston-based music writer and "tank-top enthusiast" Shea Serrano (read his excellent profile of No Trivia favorite B L A C K I E) and Houston rap legend Bun B have teamed up for "Bun B's Jumbo Coloring And Rap Activity Tumblr." In case you're confused, the top of the Tumblr describes it this way: "It's like one of those coloring books that kids have, except way less boring." The most recent image is of Vanilla Ice's Yo! MTV Raps trading card, side-by-side with a blank card ready for a self-portrait of you as an early-'90s MC. Others include a connect-the-dots that allows you to draw Tupac's bandana, and my favorite, Tyga as a pirate standing next to a code you have to crack, A Christmas Story-style. The instructions read, "Ahoy matey!

October 25, 2012 – Did you check out Rework, that recent Philip Glass remix album that Beck put together? Yeah, me neither. Here's my stupid complaint with it: How do you tackle minimalism in 2012 and ignore the ambitiously simple sounds coming out West Coast rap? Shame on you Mr. Hansen and Mr. Glass for being less with-it than Wiz Khalifa, who reached out to producers like the Invasion and League of Starz for Cabin Fever 2. How about we Kickstart a collection of Bay Area remixes of Glass compositions? Call it Rewerk?

October 25, 2012 – Kendrick Lamar's good k.i.d. m.A.A.d. city is the best rap thing to come out this week. Hell, it's the best rap thing to out this year. You already know this. One unfortunate by-product of Kendrick-mania, though, is that Main Attrakionz's Bossalinis & Fooliyones, which certainly deserves some attention, has been overshadowed. So, it's my pick of the week. I'm sure I'll circle back around to good k.i.d. soon enough. There's a lot to unpack with that one.Like every made-up, mostly meaningless subgenre tag (chillwave, #seapunk, witch house), "cloud rap" is pretty goofy. But it also fits the drifting raps and muscle-relaxer beats of Main Attrakionz quite well. And if you think of “cloud rap” as also referring to the Internet cloud that houses our files these days, then the term aptly describes Squadda B and Mondre M.A.N.'s DGAF model for rap distribution.

October 23, 2012 – Despite receiving little to no airplay on rap and R&B radio, PSY's witty K-Pop behemoth "Gangnam Style," currently sits at No. 1 on Billboard's Rap Songs chart for the third week in a row. Blame Billboard's "new methodology" for determining what tops their genre charts, introduced earlier this month. The changes now consider digital download sales and data based on streaming music. The reason for doing this is to move away from genre charts, which are "fueled solely by radio airplay." This is a wise decision that, ideally, would better reflect how people consume music in 2012. However, the adjustments have not allowed for more variety or subtlety; they have allowed pop's biggest stars to dominate the more rarefied genre charts, as well.