January 15, 2013 – "I'm a fan of electronic music going back to the early '80s," says DJ Muggs, explaining away the inspiration for his new Bass for Your Face project. Pitched as the Cypress Hill architect's attempt to craft hip-hop-based music that appeals to the dubstep crowd, the ten-track album is hinged around cavernous bass tones that twist their way around vicious metallic drum patterns while guest MCs like Danny Brown, Dizzee Rascal, Freddie Gibbs, and Chuck D contribute aggressive vocals. Bass for Your Face also features a canny collaboration with underground rap man of the minute Roc Marciano, whose hushed and menacing tones embellish a brutal brooding groove for "Absolem," which you can stream below.

November 15, 2012 – "I'm in Miami right now so the morning regime is get up, smoke wax out of my custom G-Pen vaporizer, walk around the beach, have a bowl of cereal with a banana in it, and just enjoy the weather," says Action Bronson. It's two hours before today's noon release of the rapper's new Rare Chandeliers album, a 14-track free download cut in tandem with the producer Alchemist, and Bronson is enjoying the last spoils of the Miami life before hopping on an airplane and heading home to Flushing, Queens. By the time he lands, Rare Chandeliers will have dropped and helped further the burgeoning legend of Bronson: The project showcases more of the rapper's masterly flow, his delightfully uncouth sense of humor, and is infused with his now patented smorgasbord of fine-dining food references.

October 24, 2012 – "Gangstas move in silence, nigga / and I don't talk a lot," spits Meek Mill midway through the title song on his Dreams and Nightmares album. As the Philadelphia-based arm of Rick Ross' expansive Maybach Music Group, sizable things are expected of Meek and his debut. But in the run-up to the October 30 release date, Meek, 25, seems to be taking his rapped vow of silence as something of a mantra, greeting a series of questions about the make-up of the album with a conversational shrug.Reaching him while in transit from Philly to New York City, we ask Meek how his approach to writing Dreams and Nightmares differed from the two Dreamchasers mixtapes that established his gift for layering street-wrought raps over radio-friendly beats in prime M.M.G. fashion. "I don't know," he says in a curt-but-polite manner.

August 20, 2012 – "You from the fuckin' projects….You can kill a live person but you can't kill a chicken?" says Royce Da 5'9" before letting out a rowdy laugh. The rapper is sitting behind a conference table at Interscope Records' Manhattan office, ragging on his Slaughterhouse bandmate Joell Ortiz as they weigh up the idea whether any of the group could hack it working in an actual slaughterhouse. The bloody preparation of live animals is on their minds after the quartet, which also includes Crooked I and Joe Budden, decided to shoot a video for "Throw It Away" at an operational slaughterhouse in a run-down industrial section of Jamaica, Queens. That was two days ago; now this afternoon three-quarters of the squad (Budden skipped out during lunch) are looking back on the olfactory ordeal they endured at Jamaica Poultry in uproarious fashion.

August 16, 2012 – The rapper formerly known as MF Doom is holed up with a pint in a pub in London. The elusive MC/producer is coy about his exact location — "There's two ambulances across from me now," is all he'll give up — but it seems the foggy British air is working wonders on his music. His latest album, Key to the Kuffs, credited to JJ Doom, was recorded in tandem with New Orleans-based producer Jneiro Jarel (best known for his 2009 Georgiavania long-player with Goodie Mob member Khujo), but there's a marked Anglophile infusion to this new project.

June 26, 2012 – Chicago's Chief Keef, possibly the most hyped rapper of the moment, spent the best part of his five-song New York City debut rapping while looking down at the floor. Hiding behind a pair of thick white-rimmed sunglasses with a cropped mop of short dreads, the 16-year-old MC periodically looked out to the crowd, but mostly bowed his head while shouting out his rudimentary raps. This coy lack of engagement might have be born out of necessity: Every inch of the stage was crammed full with cronies and cameramen, the entire front wave of the crowd consisted of gawkers with permanently raised camera phones, the rumor that Kanye West was going to show up probably brought out even more reporters than usual. The diminutive Keef had no where else to move, let alone hide.

May 2, 2012 – "I ain't going to jail yet!" Fourteen days before Mystikal will be locked up for three months over a parole violation, the New Orleans-raised rapper was spending his free time strutting the stage at Manhattan's S.O.B.'s club, gyrating his waist with a salacious swagger. Mystikal's original six-year jail term came after he plead guilty to sexual battery; his new violation comes from a domestic abuse arrest back in February. As he prowled around with sweat cascading down his forehead, he broke free from his raps to holler to a girl in the crowd, "I fucks with you too." His belt proclaimed the word "Explicit" tied around his thrusting hips.

December 21, 2011 – Digable Planets, the Brooklyn crew whose jazz-influenced hip-hop scored no shortage of critical accolades in the '90s, is set to reunite for a tour and new album, their first since 1994's Blowout Comb. However, depending on who you believe, the reunion will either be the triumphant return of three boho rap icons, a compromised project without all the original members, or something that won't happen at all. A press release from November of this year bandied around the claim that the group's founding rappers, Butterfly, Doodlebug and Ladybug Mecca, would be teaming up onstage for a couple of shows in New York and Los Angeles in tandem with the rap group U.G.O. Crew.