November 28, 2012 – Take a look at the cover art for all three of Crystal Castles' self-titled albums and the Toronto duo's progression is clear. 2008's I features a portrait of the band in front of a brick wall, awkwardly posed like the figures in a Robert Longo painting, vocalist Alice Glass in a vintage T-shirt, producer Ethan Kath in a hoodie and leather jacket, both in tight jeans. The image is totally appropriate for the noisy 8-bit provocation inside. Crystal Castles are Nintendo Entertainment System Teenage Riot.II , released in 2010, features an idyllically faded photo of a youthful goth standing in a graveyard near a tombstone that reads "Mother," making explicit the duo's stick-your-face-in-it dread and darkwave influences.

November 21, 2012 – Switching it up this week (with three extra songs since I missed last week's Friday Five) due to Thanksgiving on Thursday. Of course, Friday is still Friday if you work any kind of service job where your day will be filled with dread as everyone still stuffed with turkey pigs out on purchasing drastically marked-down Blu-Rays and widescreen TVs. To get in the spirit of Thanksgiving and shake away Black Friday fears, each of these songs represents something I am thankful for. In the spirit of being a little kid and being forced by mom or grandmom or whoever to declare what you are thankful for or you won't leave the godammned table, my reasons are at least 75 percent contrived.Action Bronson ft. Meyhem Lauren & AG Da Coroner - "Sylvester Lundgren"I am thankful for working class eccentrics.

November 20, 2012 – Can we Wiki together a timeline that breaks down just how much hip-hop culture is derived from, or at the very least, was heavily influenced by gay culture? How Tupac Shakur grew up in house music-obsessed Baltimore (hometown of queer-cinema godfather John Waters and transgender DJ/vocalist Miss Tony), attended a performing arts high school, sported the most perfectly plucked eyebrows on a man ever, and rocked a banjee realness style? How Lil Wayne, from New Orleans, home of bounce — raucous dance music that has no need for heteronormative values — looks like a working-class drag king? How there is simply no way that the early days of hip-hop, in conversation with disco and punk, and enacting constant cultural exchange between uptown and downtown, does not bear the influence of the city's gay-affirmative history?

November 14, 2012 – Yesterday, Memphis rapper Cities Aviv posted a self-serious note about his new album Black Pleasure. The letter thanked fans and celebrated the "listener…capable of acknowledging [their] own feelings and not those that have so easily slipped in the back[s] of [their] skull." It was posted as a screenshot of a word document, Frank Ocean-style. Someone with a master's degree can pen a piece that wrestles with the way that Ocean turned the Text Edit screenshot into short-hand for sincere, direct artist-to-fan contact, because the note worked on me. It gives the arch, mysterious rapper a little more context, and affords his confrontational rhymes some heart. The album is called Black Pleasure, though Cities is really declaring his freedom here: A black dude into noise and metal from Memphis, the birthplace of crunk, rapping his way out of categorization.

November 14, 2012 – The mythos of the creative struggle adds another layer to a pop-music classic: Brian Wilson in the sandbox; the Stones arguing over everything holed up in a chateau; Bowie coked-out in Berlin; Rick Rubin making rap history from his NYU dorm; Dilla, dying in a hospital bed. The story behind Kendrick Lamar's good kid, m.A.A.D. city is a very special, though quite different, against-all-odds tale: Young Compton MC transcends the blog-rap bubble, avoids every pitfall of the major-label rap album, and comes up with an unabashed, uncompromising concept album that sold 240,000 copies its first week out. How did this happen? good kid, m.A.A.D city builds on the past 20 or so years of deeply personal and personality-driven capital-A albums. Without the 10 records listed below, it is hard to imagine Kendrick's instant classic arriving unscathed. Dr. Dre, The Chronic (1992) O.C.D.

November 13, 2012 – After last year's Hater of the Year, a collection of Silkky Johnson's instrumentals for Main Attrakionz, Western Tink, and others, the producer set out to "make a project that's more fun to listen to than a traditional beat tape." The result is Debauched Legend, which he describes as "a psychedelic rap album," a purposeful hip-hop oddity: "I wanted it to sound like something you might find in a bargain bin and have no idea when it's from or who made it."There is definitely a "where'd this come from?" hot mess quality to Debauched Legend. Beats are loaded up with noisy effects and car stereo-ready bass, and a multitude of rap personalities make appearances, from Internet star A$AP Rocky to Tumblr-ready types like Khalil Nova and Metro Zu, and even art-damaged Spanish-language rappers like High Kiks and Himself the Majestic, and Japanese MC, Sneeeze.

November 12, 2012 – When I spoke to Roc Marciano about his career — from Flipmode Squad to Pete Rock's Petestrumentals with the U.N. to his 2010 debut, Marcberg — he replied by saying, "I got my first deal in 2000, I think." That he isn't entirely sure when he signed to a record label, and that he has to specify that he's talking about his first record deal, is a pretty good indication of his circuitous route to underground success. It's also representative of his rarefied stance in the New York hip-hop scene: Hardly a rookie, not quite a veteran.

November 9, 2012 – Kendrick Lamar sure did dodge a bullet by not having to use Lady Gaga singing all self-satisfied like she's in the semi-finals of American Idol on "Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe," didn't he? The story is that she didn't get it in on time, which is conceivable, but it seems more likely that it just didn't work and Kendrick knew that. And if that's the case, shout-out to Lady Gaga for being cool with that, and Interscope for going along with it. Consider this, too: The only Black Hippy member who shows up on good kid, m.A.A.d city is Jay Rock. In the eyes of industry weasels, that's got to be bad for branding, right? Along with the cringe-worthy Mary J. Blige bonus track, "Now Or Never," it's fascinating to see how easily good kid could've gone wrong.

November 8, 2012 – The only time I have ever felt afraid at a rap show was when Killer Mike performed at this year's Hopscotch Music Festival in Raleigh, North Carolina. It wasn't because of some vague but palpable criminal element often present at hip-hop events. And it wasn't the swarthy-bougie frat bros from nearby Chapel Hill using Mike's onstage energy as an excuse to knock some nerds around, either. It was the sentiment sent from the stage after a performance of the song "Reagan" from Mike’s 2012 album R.A.P. Music. He doubled down on these lines: "Ronald Reagan was an actor, not at all a factor / Just an employee of the country's real masters / Just like the Bushes, Clintons, and Obama / Just another talking head telling lies on the teleprompter."Hopscotch's audience, mostly white, caught up in Mike's performance and rhetoric, hooted and hollered and clapped. They were cheering for cynicism.

November 8, 2012 – Yacht Rock is the Alchemist's two-part, Dilla's Donuts-gone-cocaine-crazy collage of Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous clips, samples from sunbaked '70s pop and '80s cheese rock, punctuated with raps from Action Bronson, Blu, Roc Marciano, and others. I feel like somewhere in this record must be a snippet of Emerson, Lake, & Palmer's Love Beach. There is definitely a clip from Carl Reiner's John Candy vehicle Summer Rental. This isn't so much diggin'-in-the-crates music, as it is diggin'-behind-the-crates music veering toward muzak. All the garbage not worthy of even being placed in a crate. Albums with painted dolphins on the cover. Records with nine different keyboards credited. Hammy hyper-clean guitar riffs trying to sound glorious. Jolly, sexy vocals jumping between gated drums. Sub-Kenny G sexy sax and synth-harp in tandem like Crockett and Tubbs.