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. This is where Flocka's head went after the death of his brother. Anger fueled Flocka's debut album, placing it in a long tradition of pissed off hard-heads like M.O.P. And Three 6 Mafia, and standing out amongst major label releases filled with friendly radio moves and cute crossover attempts. There was none of that on Flockaveli.

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. The brawl sent a few to the hospital and caused a significant gash on Chris Brown's chin, which he of course, tweeted a photo of, and of course, deleted soon after.

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 Fraud." Here, Harlem's Smoke DZA moves away from his usual novelistic weed and women tales towards something more noirish and well, New York — the thug fable "Playground Legend," Scorsese-ian tough talk on "Fuck Your Mother." It's all very appropriate for a project inspired by Boardwalk Empire main character Nucky Thompson. On "Ashtray," in which Fraud puffs-up and screws down a 2 Chainz sample, the Jet Life right-hand man teams up with other seco

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. He twirls words around, does goofy things with his voice, kind of sings, and shoots the song into a few different direction and then brings it back down to earth, all without the aid of a hook. It feels closer to the rigid experimentalism of a bebop solo than a typically tight hip-hop verse. On the next track "Ownership," Del does it all again.

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. Cole can spit, "I got love for the underground / Kweli, Pimp C, H-Town, where Bun B get down," and no one questions that adjustment to the rap canon. Live From the Underground goes even further in deconstructing the term "underground." K.R.I.T. traces the concept of "the underground" through two centuries of black protest and illegal business done just to survive. Mostly, the underground still represents gritty honest rap music separate from the mainstream, whether its origins are at a spoken-word venue or out the trunk of a caddy, but K.R.I.T.

June 7, 2012 – Back in March, footage of an inane debate between two Florida state representatives went quasi-viral. In the video clip, Democrat Alan B. Williams expresses his support for a bill that would refine Florida's evidence code by quoting Jay-Z's "99 Problems": "I know my rights and you're gonna need a warrant for that / Aren't you sharp as a tack? / You some kind of lawyer or something?" Spoiling for a fight, Republican Dean Cannon, who opposed the bill, proceeds to misquote the lyrics as, "You should try for a lawyer or something." Then, he inexplicably lectures Williams: "It's an unspoken rule: If you're going to invoke Jay-Z, you must get the lyrics correct." Gangsta-rap pioneer Ice-T and 2 Live Crew frontman Luther "Luke" Campbell hopefully got at least a chuckle out of this exchange. Twenty-plus years after President George H.W.

June 6, 2012 – Piling accolades on top of the album while we were premiering it seemed a bit gauche, but Oddisee's latest, People Hear What They See, is one of the year's best. Lush live instrumentation and beat-breaking are at its core, but it moves into sunny orchestration, country-fried interludes, and a loose improvisational swirl of instruments that traverse the D.C. producer's pan-regional influences (boom-bap, bluegrass, gospel, go-go, old school R&B). Plus, Oddisee's goal of creating message-oriented hip-hop that's free of smarmy preaching and not quite so soaked in nostalgia is a lofty one. Over the past few years, his work has become wildly ambitious (Diamond District's retrofuturistic In The Ruff, instrumental concept album Rock Creek Park), and though the soul-beats and fervid rapping might scan as "underground," he pretty much exists in a space all his own.

June 5, 2012 – Children of the Night's mixtape Queens...Revisited pays throat-clearing tribute to their home borough and its legendary hip-hop traditions. Right there in their mixtape title is an acknowledgement that this trio walk over ground already paved by legends like Mobb Deep, Nas, and Run-DMC (just to name a few). But placing nostalgia front and center allows the group to keep it moving and take part in a burgeoning New York rap scene that includes Action Bronson, Das Racist, Meyhem Lauren, and many more. In the video for "Kids From Queens," rappers Lansky, Remy Banks, and Nasty Nigel dignify the stark imagery of classic Queens rap videos.

June 4, 2012 – On "What Would You Do" off Nottz's In My Mind, the masterful boom-bap beatmaker and gruff, ornery rapper threatens to take out any producers who swipe one of his basslines. It's a funny though genuine threat from someone who takes their craft quite seriously, having built their reputation by lacing major label rap albums with the right kind of hard-ass, irregular hip-hop (Kanye West's "Barry Bonds" and G-Unit's "Footprints").

June 4, 2012 – "Now hold on, before I get to the real hip-hop shit of the day, because I see the real hip-hop heads sprinkled in here, I see 'em. I know there's some chicks here waiting to sing 'Starships' later, I'm not talking to y'all right now, fuck that bullshit. I'm here to talk about real hip-hop shit. People here to see A$AP Rocky today. People here to see ScHoolboy Q on this stage. That's that shit I represent." That's what Hot 97 on-air personality Peter Rosenberg said on the smaller stage at Summer Jam yesterday afternoon that caused Nicki Minaj to cancel her performance. Or, caused Lil Wayne to tell Nicki Minaj to cancel her performance. It takes a mix of bravery and self-loathing to work for Hot 97 and get self-righteous about "real hip-hop." And it takes a mix of badass-ness and clueless self-absorption to cancel a performance because a DJ said some not-so-nice things about you.