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.

November 8, 2012 – Sunday School, Chicago rapper/producer Tree's mixtape from earlier this year, boldly reconfigured the crate-digging boom-bap style which defined the '90s, and later on went grandiose thanks to Windy City icon Kanye West. In short, Tree removed all of the smooth-sailing pleasantries of '70s R&B by slicing old records razor-thin J. Dilla-style, turning them into stuttering and snapping beats with the same nervy energy as the elbow-throwing rhythms of street rap's prevailing trap-music sound. He branded his stammering, soul-sample style "soultrap." On his new mixtape, Trillin', Tree brings his idiosyncratic ears to Chicago's in-the-process-of-blowing-up, drill-music scene. The post-Luger aggression of Chief Keef and Lil Durk bumps into the melodic, slowed-up sound of Houston ("Woodgrain Wheel" screws a sample from Slim Thug's "Diamonds").

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.