- Super Chron Flight Brothers - Cape Verde
- Ron Contour & Factor - Saffron
- Freeway & Jake One - The Stimulus Package
- IDE & Skavenger - Addicted to the Vision
- Factor - 13 Stories
- Homeboy Sandman - The Good Sun
- D. Dove - Screwg McDovey
- John Robinson & Lewis Parker - International Summers
- Factor - Lawson Graham
- Iron Braydz - Devil May Cry
- Strong Arm Steady - In Search of Stoney Jackson
- Cymarshall Law - Creator’s Kid
- JFK - Building Wings on the Way Down
- Reflection Eternal - Revolutions Per Minute
- Ceschi - The One Man Band Broke Up
- Arrested Development - Strong
- Donwill - Laura’s Tape
- Donwill - Don Cusack in High Fidelity
- Georgia Anne Muldrow & Declaime - Someothaship
- Kay the Aquanaut - Nickelodeon Ethics
- Big Boi - Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty
- D-Sisive - Vaudeville
- Digital Underground - The Greenlight EP
- Everliven Sound - Freedom II
- Nas & Damian Marley - Distant Relatives
- The Roots - How I Got Over
- Necro - DIE!
- Metawon - Choplifter
- Luke - The Dopeness
- Count Bass D & DJ Pocket - In the Loop
- Meth, Rae & Ghost - Wu-Massacre
- Chosen Few - New World Symphony
- Little Brother - LeftBack
- Infinito 2017 - We Are Dark
- Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip - The Logic of Chance
This isn’t an album for everyone. It doesn’t have the most accessible production, but it fits the style of the album perfectly. Billy Woods and Priviledge took a step forward from their already great discography with a sociopolitical tirade full of cleverly placed references. It’s constructed very well, and trying to catch everything adds to the replay value.
This wasn’t Moka Only’s best lyrical performance, but it’s not really his lyricism that makes him a dope emcee. His delivery over some of Factor’s best production was a great fit. This is probable the best album in either of their discographies. That’s impressive considering Moka Only has 50+ albums and Factor has 30+ albums.
People wrote Freeway off after he lost that battle to Cassidy, and the low-budget Philadelphia Freeway 2 didn’t help, but he bounced back with his best album to date. Freeway has a great delivery, and he’s the type of rapper who’s always going to be the same, so his albums rely on the quality of the production. Jake One provided great production, so the album is great.
The production on this album is outstanding. The emcees aren’t high profile, and none of them really gave a performance that would make me have to check out more of their work if I’m not already familiar with them, but they all held their own.
Great production from Factor as usual with a who’s who of west coast and Canadian emcees (and iCON the Mic King).
Homeboy Sandman is one of the few emcees who can make an album dope all on his own. He’s probably the only emcee from whom I’d be interested in an acapella album. The production on the album is pretty good, but I was a little disappointed, because after seeing the lineup of producers, I thought this had a lot of potential to be the best album of the year and his best album to date.
She’s pretty good for a female emcee, but I wouldn’t bring her up if someone was looking for female emcee recommendations. Factor made this album as dope as it is (again).
You don’t see too many hip hop collaboration albums by an American artist and a British artist. Usually, it probably wouldn’t work, but between this album and last year’s single, they’ve proven that they have a lot of chemistry.
RJD2 could learn a lesson from this album. If you want to make a hybrid hip hop/folk/indie pop album, it’s better to keep a little bit of rapping in the vocals, and rappers who have a sing-songy rapping style (Myka 9, Pigeon John, Ceshi, Josh Martinez) work very well for that type of album.
Iron Braydz gave a very strong lyrical performance on this album.
Madlib started out the year on a high note with this album. Unfortunately, nothing else he’s released this year (which is a lot) has been on the same level.
This is the best EP of the year. It fits in with the rest of his discography.
Despite Onry Ozzborn being a bigger name than JFK, JFK is the better rapper in Grayskul. I wasn’t sure about him putting out a solo album because Grayskul works so well because of the contrast in their rapping styles, but JFK proved he can put out dope material on his own.
It’s definitely not as a good Train of Thought, but it’s a very welcome addition to 2010’s lineup of albums.
This is a refreshingly original album.
This was the pleasant surprise of the year. I didn’t think they still had an album of this quality in them. It’s a little Black Eyed Peasish at times, but Elephunk Black Eyed Peas, so it’s ok.
High Fidelity is one of my favorite movies, and Donwill did it justice. I’m only putting the mixtape ahead of the album because a mixtape is more fitting for the High Fidelity concept.
I’m so glad Donwill re-enacted the scenes instead of using samples from the movie. I laugh every time one of those skits come on because, you can tell he was really into it, and you can picture him in the studio overacting his ass off.
Despite only producing three tracks, Black Milk stole the show on this album. It’s a solid album all around, but Black Milk bumped it up to another level.
If only Factor produced the whole album instead of half of it…
It wasn’t as original as I hoped, but if Southern/mainstream hip hop isn’t going to change, this is the type of quality artists should be putting out.
D-Sisive is as dope as he was on Let the Children Die, but the production didn’t set the mood to the same effectiveness.
Digital Underground’s never going to put out the quality of music they put out in the early 90s, but they’re still pretty good.
All of the elements are exactly the same as Freedom, but it just didn’t come together the way Freedom did. Also, one of the worst album covers ever.
In my opinion, hip hop and reggae have never worked well together. This album actually works, but unfortunately Damian Marley completely controlled the direction of the album even though Nas was actually better on the album, so it could have been better if it was split more evenly.
I never thought I’d say this, but it doesn’t seem like The Roots really did anything new on this album that they haven’t done before.
Necro still sucks as a rapper, but he returned to the style of production that he used early in his career when he looked like one of the best up and coming producers in hip hop.
I’m definitely keeping an eye on Metawon. He has potential to be a top level producer.
This could be considered nerd rap, but it’s better than hearing rappers rapping about the same thing over and over.
I think they stretched it out a little too much by releasing this album and Hartsfield JAXson. They could have had one great album with just the best material instead of two pretty good albums.
The individual songs are better than the album when it’s all put together.
There’s not much to say about this album. It has good production and good rapping.
Whether they’re worse now than they were with 9th Wonder, I still say they’re better off without him. 9th Wonder hasn’t put out anything interesting in years.
He has a lot of good albums, but for some reason, he can’t make the jump to a great album.
They’re more technical on this album, but I still think Angles is a much better album. “Cowboi” is my favorite album closer this year.
