A Dozen for 2018: Best of

This past year was a great year for hip-hop, a lot of music came out.

From January to December, release after release came out. Some were forgettable, while others had replay value. Out of all the music that was released, I probably heard about less than fifty percent of it, if we are being honest. If someone would’ve said they heard every release then I’d say: they are lying.

With that said, below are some of my favorite records of the year. Hopefully my perspective introduces you to music you wouldn’t have heard otherwise.

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Suprise of the Year: Don Toliver – Donny Womack

This was a nice surprise that I discovered in 2018.

After a strong performance and an impressive one on Travis Scott’s “Can’t Say,” Toliver peaked my interest.

I Google him to get learn some information on him. I found out he was from Houston like Scott and that he had just released a project as well. I found his album(?) and hit play.

That project was dope.

Verse of the Year: J. Cole – “OSOM”

Cole has had a tremendous 2018.

He dropped an okay album (so I’ve heard) and has been killing the guest feature all year long.

Jay Rock’s “OSOM” is no exception.

Verse of The Year: 03 Greedo – “Vroom”

“Vroom” was the first time I ever heard 03 Greedo rap. I couldn’t have chosen a better guest verse to have as an introduction.

For a few months, I’ve kept seeing the name 03 Greedo on my Twitter timeline, mostly from writer Jeff Weiss and mostly about Greedo’s case. I never paid too much attention to him until I ended up reading an article saying Greedo was next rapper from Los Angeles.

Music Discovered in 2018, Pre-2018: Game – Bloody Moon

As the year comes to a close, you begin to see content related to the best “x” of 2018 everywhere.

Now, there isn’t anything wrong with that. I, in fact, am working on my own best of material at the time of this writing. Reminiscing on the past year is fun but it can become repetitive and exhausting. That’s why I decided to add some flare to the year-end lists. I already stay away from the typical best albums of the year and instead focused my attention to individual records.

In 2018, the music was overwhelming.

A lot of great music was released this year from the very beginning (Evidence’s Weather or Not) through today, that it was hard to listen to everything. It was easy for something to fall through the cracks. I am guilty of that but I did listen to a nice amount of music this year.

While I am currently working on my best of year-end lists, I decided on a side project a while back. I thought it’d be cool to listen to old music I never got around to, and identify those that I thought were interesting.

I was going to write down music I’d come across that was:

1. Dope,
2. Released prior to this year, and
3. Not previously heard by me.

With an iTunes library of over 25,000 songs, I knew I was bound to find something I had not heard that I would love.

I put a bunch of stuff on my iPad and hit shuffle on the thousands of songs on there. Over the course of a few months, I had developed a small sample size of songs that I genuinely enjoyed.

Now, please find below one of those records I recently discovered that is dope.

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Nelly and Alchemist

One day I was casually scrolling through The Alchemist’s Wikipedia page, when I clicked on his production discography. I must have been looking for backup for a certain song when I stumbled across the year 2004. Mobb Deep’s Amerikaz Nightmare dropped that year, which I was bumping back then. Plus, Alchemist had credits on both Jadakiss’ sophomore album, Kiss of Death, and Snoop Dogg’s latest effort, R&G. Neither of these production credits surprised me.

I scrolled a bit further down and saw Nelly’s name.

I was dumbfounded.

Alchemist and Jay Worthy – Fantasy Island

This project came out of nowhere. I definitely was not expecting another soft-rock inspired project from Alchemist. In fact, I thought the complete opposite. I thought he was done with that phase when he dropped the amazingly dope Yacht Rock EP.