January 8, 2013 – One of the most exciting songs on Chief Keef's Finally Rich is the bonus track "Citgo," a melodic mumbler with an absolutely gorgeous beat. It's like some missing link between the glitch-smack of trap and the stoner bliss of "cloud rap," or whatever the hip-hop in your Tumblr feed that makes you long for opiates is tagged these days. “Citgo” was produced by Young Ravisu, a Polish teenager discovered by Chief Keef via YouTube. This makes sense. Every element of “Citgo” is just a little bit off and always for the better. It's the sound of Atlanta mutated by Chicago and misheard by a trap-rap fan in Eastern Europe. The drums hiccup in the background, denying visceral rewards, and the futuristic synthesizers that define so much aggressive hip-hop have no edge at all; they're simply bouncing blobs of warmth.

January 7, 2013 – Angel Haze vs. Azealia Banks began last Thursday when Banks tweeted, "Seriously, if you were not born and raised in NY.... DON'T CLAIM NY. YOU ARE NOT A NEW YORKER." Haze, who is not from New York, but recorded a breakout song over a sample of Gil Scott-Heron called "New York," responded with, "And you don't want this fade off Twitter. So knock it off. Before you get shanked through your iridescent bubble jacket @AZEALIABANKS," which is kind of funny.Banks tweeted back, "Did Angel Haze just threaten to cut me because of a very general tweet I sent about non-New Yorker claiming NY?," and then another tweet that just declared, “SHEEEESH!” It does seem like Haze's assumption that the tweet was about her was strange, especially given that "New York" is more than six months old. "Charcoal skinned bitch. But I'm a chill.

January 7, 2013 – Consider this video a reminder that, hey, ST 2 Lettaz's R.E.B.E.L. mixtape from this past fall was pretty awesome! The first release from Slow Motion Sounds following G-Side's breakup, it looked back to 2008's Starshipz & Rocketz, with ST less focused on the Internet victories the group embraced, and then, seemingly, couldn't climb out from under. Instead, R.E.B.E.L. nods to work-a-day worries and the state of the nation, all the while rewarding the simple pleasures of rapping over goofy samples (Empire of the Sun, Skrillex) — an aspect of G-Side's repertoire they abandoned as their sound grew more ambitious.The video for R.E.B.E.L. track "Trill 2 Da Bone" continues this back-to-square-one approach, following ST as he wanders around Huntsville, hustling.

January 4, 2013 – So, Jay-Z is scoring Baz Lurhmann's The Great Gatsby, along with the Bullitts. Spare me the "Jay-Z and Gatsby are the same" blog posts because they aren't the same (Kanye has a little bit of James Gatz's phoney-baloney, self-made, self-loathing spirit, though). However, I would say that Jay-Z's "Song Cry," with its end-of-a-relationship crumble is Fitzgerald-like; Particularly the lines, "You helped me get the keys to that V dot 6/ We was so happy poor, but when we got rich/ That's when our signals crossed"," in its diagnosis of the connection between ennui and upward mobility. Nevertheless, I'm excited by the prospect of Jay-Z providing soundtrack input.

January 4, 2013 – Back in June, when David Lowery, the guy from Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker, took on the so-called "Free Culture movement"— mostly in response to a 21-year-old intern at NPR admitting that she, like most 21-year-olds, got most of her music for free — I kept thinking, "Where does rap music fit into all of this?" It's no surprise that an aging-out rocker would not consider hip-hop in his missive, but Lowery also teaches classes on the music business at the University of Georgia. I would hope that something, anything, about rap's top-down embrace of free downloading culture might've popped up on his radar. I waited for most of 2012 for the discussion to turn to rap, and it never happened.Not that I need to tell anyone reading this, but the narrative of rap music, since at least the middle of the 2000s, has been all about free download mixtapes.

January 2, 2013 – Lee Bannon began last year with Fantastic Plastic, a producer album featuring rappin' ass legends like Inspectah Deck and Del the Funky Homosapien, right-now underground types like YU and Chuuwee, and on my favorite track, "Phone Drone," some dude on YouTube screaming excitedly about getting the new iPhone. Yet, Bannon's expressive full-length stayed under the radar even as the Sacramento producer's profile raised significantly, thanks to his involvement in Joey Bada$$'s Pro Era crew, producing "Enter the Void," featuring Ab-Soul, and acting as tour DJ for the 17-year-old rapper. Fantastic Plastic remains a hidden gem from 2012 rap's all-over-the-place burst of creativity and you should check it out.

December 14, 2012 – Not sure what happened here, folks, but I really wandered into my own world this second half of the year! No radio hits unless Chinx Drugz and French Montana's hyper-regional hit “I'm a Coke Boy” counts. And despite my old-fashioned rule of not allowing anyone to show up twice, two cult rap acts make multiple appearances: Alchemist sneaked through with two beats, and Gunplay makes two appearances, one on 601 & Snort's tight-lipped closer from “Bible on the Dash,” and then, crooning like a goof on a Miami Sound Machine-esque Trina cut that went nowhere. For some perspective, the list at mid-year included 2 Chainz four times. I'll try to get out of my head for the New Year.

December 12, 2012 – Who: New York rapper/producer Le1f (pronounced "leaf," his birth name is Khalif Diouf), and don't forget the number where the "i" should be, making his name look like it's written out in some hybrid language from outer space. Why? "Because I feel more like an alien than a gay rapper," Le1f jokes, playfully dismissing the "whoa, a gay man makes rap music" articles that got him attention, but also have boxed him in since the release of his debut, Dark York, earlier this year. But, let's get it out of the way: Yes, Le1f is a gay MC.

December 12, 2012 – Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a little early to do this. But we're well into the non-stop whirl of year-end proceedings (check out SPIN's 40 Hip-Hop Albums of the Year if you haven't already), so all bets are off on critical appropriate-ness, I think.

December 7, 2012 – On Sunday, Das Racist officially broke up, and that's a bummer. The big Das Racist joke, it turns out, was that there was no joke. That rather than devolve into novelty MCs and pump out a bunch more “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell”-type songs and become what my friend Sean once called “the hipster LMFAO,” they took their shit very, very seriously. That was funnier than any of their punch lines. They went for it. In just two years, the response to the group went from "These guys?" to "These guys…" to "Oh, those guys" to "THOSE GUYS!!!" A few favorite moments from the DR era: Heems rapping on "Amazing": "Used to play basketball, then we started drinkin'"; the way Kool AD says "Sun Tzu" on the “The Last Huzzah” remix; that “Micheal Jackson” is a song that exists in the world; Dapwell's #rare freestyle on Pitchfork Selector.