October 16, 2012 – Rap music, even when it is behaving badly, can teach its fans a great deal. Last week, Maybach Music Group's Gunplay turned himself into a Miami jail for an armed robbery that allegedly took place earlier this year. On Saturday, not long after Gunplay's lawyer said the rapper would be exonerated, TMZ posted footage of a man who looks a lot like Gunplay, roughing up a guy behind a desk, flashing a gun, stealing a necklace, then quickly exiting the room.The minute-and-half footage is instructive. Mostly because it presents a crime being committed without any of the idyllic melodrama that movies and hip-hop often lay on pretty thick. It's awkward and sloppy. It's real. The sequence of events also begs the question: Why is the right-hand-man to Rick Ross, one of the game's biggest names right now, roughing up and robbing someone?

October 12, 2012 – Kanye West's "White Dress," from the upcoming soundtrack to RZA's Man With the Iron Fists, produced by the rapper, as well as the RZA and Chicago's Boogz & Tapez (they co-produced Cruel Summer's "New God Flow") is a touching tribute to girlfriend Kim Kardashian. At least that seems to be the assumption. Kanye, rap's king of over-sharing, mostly steers clear of anything too specific, presenting what sounds more like a savvy, though guarded assessment of his current relationship; It's detailed enough to resonate, but it also feels universal enough to work as just a lived-in, little love song. And it refuses to be idiotically sunny and joy-filled. Reality keeps poking through and screwing things up a little.

October 11, 2012 – Jacked up on too much coffee and a great new Kanye song, there's no way you're getting complete thoughts, here. Give Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire credit for working with Gucci Mane, who he's a lot like, really. Give him even more credit for recording a song called "Telephuck," with a soundwave that if you check it out in Soundcloud, looks LIKE A GIANT BONER. Make sure you check out DJ Burn One-approved rap-funk-fusion jazzbos iNDEED, whose album streamed here last week and is now available for download. "Double Cup Etiquette" is a swooping something-like-a-love-song (to a lady who can hold her liquor, to drank, to old Willie Hutch-style Southern soul). Of course, Burn One would sample a track from Hutch's 1977 kinda-disco album, Havin' a House Party. Why doesn't Lil Twist's Diplo-produced single "Flowerz" sample the Armand Van Helden song of the same name? How great would that be?

October 11, 2012 – Robert Glasper's 2007 album, In My Element, was released at the same time as jazz crank Wynton Marsalis' response to hip-hop's perceived decadence, From the Plantation to the Penitentiary. While Marsalis made a whole, tell-not-show album about how evil rap music is, Glasper mixed his elegant post-bop jazz style with samples, Dilla tributes, and Mecca & the Soul Brother-style interludes, making a case for rap's experimental, grab-from-anywhere appeal. 2009's follow-up, Double Booked, found Glasper injecting hip-hop and R&B into his jazz, splitting the album between songs featuring a traditionalist trio and a more fusion-oriented band, the Robert Glasper Experience.

October 10, 2012 – Some of my favorites from July, August, and September, like Styles P's brutal, hipster-baiting The Diamond Life Project, or 100s' evil pimp rap for the Tumblr generation Ice Cold Perm, and great stuff we've premiered (7evenThirty's Heaven's Computer, 8Ball's Life's Quest, Antwon's End Of Earth, and Labtekwon's HARDCORE: Labtekwon and the Righteous Indignation/Rootzilla vs Masta Akbar), all deserve to get some additional attention, but I won't go on about those again. This time around, I'm highlighting some albums and mixtapes that I also missed out on.Chinx Drugz, Cocaine Riot 2 Highlights: "Early in the Game," "Holla at a Nigga," "Coke Boy Wave" RIYL: Harry Fraud, Max B, Pastor Troy Queens' Chinx Drugz has got one of those names that, in an earlier era, invoked a gruff-voiced third-stringer on a Pete Rock compilation.

October 9, 2012 – Sorry, goys, on Rick Ross' new mixtape The Black Bar Mitzvah, the rapper does not collaborate with Schlomo Artzi, there are no Rabbi Shmuley Boteach interludes, and Rozay's producers did not conjure up Klezmer-trap, the latest subgenre ready to knock the wind out of trap-rave. It's just a rocky, Rockie Fresh-featuring mess wherein Ross and MMG jump on some other rappers' beats and throw out a few originals to temporarily up their buzz, giving it all an extra hype boost thanks to the quasi-trolling title and album cover. Because the rap crews who get on the radio are more like business conglomerates, anyways, think of this as MMG needing to drive up their stock after G.O.O.D.

October 5, 2012 – Seems like we're actually entering an era of restrained, sophisticated, and strange R&B. Frank Ocean is turning Stevie Wonder's subtle moves on Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants into a career. The Weeknd,  who was ripped off by Kelly Rowland on "Motivation" almost immediately, and more recently had his fog-soul steez stolen by Usher on "Climax," Justin Bieber on "As Long As You Love Me," and Kanye and crew on Cruel Summer's "Higher," has given coasting and complacent pop stars an excuse to experiment. Miguel, better than all of them but apparently afraid to show it before Mr. Tesfaye made it safe, now sings the Zombies over Fabio Frizzi-style synth farts and drops trippy masterworks like it ain't no thing.It's all very exciting. It's also pretty damned tasteful, isn't it?

October 5, 2012 – Atlanta producer DJ Burn One's persistent mixtape release schedule recalls the workhorse mentality of Memphis' Hypnotize Minds and Houston's Suave House — '90s regional rap monoliths that made their names thanks to a constant stream of innovative, well-crafted Southern hip-hop. Every once in a while, something a bit more high-profile has Burn One's name attached to it, as well, such as last month's resurrection of rubbery-voiced T.I. sidekick Young Dro on Ralph Lauren Reefa. But for the most part, he's putting out studious rap albums at a frequency of at least one per month. Constants on those tapes are Burn One's ambitious country-rap production — imagine Big K.R.I.T.

October 5, 2012 – There seems to be some confusion about Kendrick Lamar's good kid m.A.A.d city, even after the rapper's major-label debut went up to iTunes for pre-order, earlier this week. The track he did with Lady Gaga, "PARTYNAUSEOUS," was nowhere to be found on the iTunes tracklist, and that's a good thing. Still, encouraged by this MTV piece on a 9/18 listening party that said the track was played, and years of experience with labels ruining rap albums with cloying crossover cuts, plenty of rap fans just assumed we would endure Kendrick going Gaga. This guy's got a song with Lady Gaga in his backpocket, why wouldn't he use it? Yesterday, Hip-Hop DX reported on a Power 105 interview with Lamar where he confirmed that "PARTYNAUSEOUS" would not be on his album.

October 3, 2012 – "And I don't fuck with suckers, I'm from the Bay and I fuck with real motherfuckers like Los Rakas." That's E-40 on Panamanian Bay Area hip-hop duo Los Rakas' "Pimpin' Smokin' Dro." The hump of non-English-speaking hip-hop can sometimes be hard to climb over for English-speaking only dummies like myself, so an E-40 shout-out like that helps. Then again, so does a song as evocative and immediate as "Hablemos Del Amor," which you can stream below."Hablemos Del Amor" begins with atmospheric police sirens while rainy synths and a touch of melancholy Auto-Tune add some melodrama. The raps builds to a "one love" chant on the hook, invoking Bob Marley and Nas. In its final moments, the song simmers back down to pay tribute to Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, and as the group explains below, Panamanian reggae artist El Kid, killed at age 23.