Today is a day! It might even be the day. The greatest day in all of hip hop, even. The one in which XXL Magazine and Diet Mountain Dew announce their esteemed annual Freshman cover, highlighting some of the best and brightest rising rap talents. Their selection is as diverse as its ever been this year, too, featuring wide variety of rappers from the ones who are presently signed to Interscope to those who are about to announce their signing to Interscope.

Make no mistake, the XXL Freshmen isn’t about forecasting, or even recommendations. It’s about creating an argument and using that argument to remind us that XXL does still exist. Yes, this post only helps to perpetuate that cycle but whatever, it’s also a good excuse to analyze the careers of a few buzzed about rappers. And several “buzzed about” rappers. Hit the jump for the report cards. (more…)

Popular rap magazine XXL made a list of rappers again this year. They’re supposed to be famous by next year. A few of them will be, but mostly because they’re already famous today.

They really busted out the demographic dart board for this one. White people! Teenybop kiddies! Lyrically lyrical fast rappers! Generic Southerners! Half the Def Jam roster! Two people from Compton! Based God! Surely making a list like this is damn near impossible given how fractured hip hop has become, but this seems like a particularly slapdash selection. At the peak of this list – Yela, B, Kendrick, Meek – there’s more talent, creativity and promise than the previous two years combined, but the lows are far lower than they’ve ever been. (more…)

This is the part of the blog where I pretend my former quasi employers hold any relevance by breaking down XXL’s recently announced (sort of) Freshmen 10 list into some statistical ratings and snap judgements. But before we get into that, a couple quick notes:

- More than half these names were on that fake list that leaked a few months back. In fact, XXL has only officially announced four of these names. The rest have been leaked heavily. So if I’m jumping the gun I’ll be the gun jumper and if I’m wrong then I’ll be that too.

- Why don’t they just make it The Freshmen 15? That way it’d be an actual pun.

- No southern rappers from anywhere but Atlanta. Unless you count North Carolinian J. Cole and I don’t because Wikipedia tells me that he’s secretly German.

- Not one token New York rapper this year. The Statue of Liberty sheds a single tear.

- There has never been a Bay Area rapper on one of these things. #imjustsayin. (more…)

Hit the jump for a numerical break down of XXL’s 100 Best Hip Hop Sites list. My calculations are as close to perfect as humanly possible. Which is to say they are probably a little inaccurate because the entire internet became a blur towards the end of my research. (more…)

Mama Noz recently hoisted a bucket of old magazines and hip hop ephemera on me that had previously been collecting dust in her garage. In the tradition of the THIMK and Press Rewind, this new weekly series will feature some choice images and articles, culled from that bucket and elsewhere.

Run-D.M.C. – “Here We Go (Live At The Funhouse)“

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from Here We Go 12″ (Profile, 1985)

And what better place to start than with Run DMC’s first Rolling Stone cover from 1986? Historic, as it was the first time a hip hop artist had appeared on the cover of the once prestigious publication. I had intended to scan and share the whole thing, but it turns out Rollingstone.com beat me to the punch with an official online transcription. Still, there are a few more photos that aren’t on their site after the jump. Sorry about the cropping issues, RS is much too big for my scanner. (more…)