Hip Hop in 2012: Year End List of Lists

Hip hop has had an interesting year. 2012 ushered in a slew of new talent, mainstream and underground, ratchet and non-ratchet, with many side stories overshadowing the music, as the purely entertainment side of hip hop often does.

As is standard at the end of the year, in music and in general, organizations who deem themselves arbitrators of cool decide who was the best in the preceding year, with some venturing to predict what hip hop might deliver in the coming year.

Our New York Hip Hop Names To Know in 2012, written by Chaz Kangas, was pretty on point, as artists spotlighted within went on to achieve a fairly successful year. Action Bronson’s buzz went up and landed him a deal with Vice Records… New Stones Throw signee and hometown underground hero Homeboy Sandman released an acclaimed album and went on a sizable tour… A$AP Rocky continues to draw attention, the most recent being a leaked debut album… Brown Bag AllStars have made progress, collectively and individually…

This year, we’re veering away from the list upon list upon list thing. Not only is it a bit cliche, but most are clearly designed for page views, rather than thoughtful commentary. That being said, there are some year-end lists in hip hop that have caught, or will be catching, our eyes. So in the spirit of our “recap of recaps” type posts we’ve delivered in the past, we’ll be compiling a nice “list of lists,” to help navigate the year-end listopia.

We’ll be adding to it as stuff comes up.

Major sites like HipHopDX, who tend to roll out Best of lists in dribs and drabs will be listed, as well as some that particularly speak to our niche, such as Philip Mylnar’s “The Ten Best New York City Rap Albums of 2012.” In either case, we welcome your comments below… Who got it right, who got it wrong.

Butdon’t worry. We’ll be announcing what we thought was the best album of the year in a separate post, as well as during the last episode of The NY Hip Hop Report for 2012.

In the meantime, here is our 2012 Hip Hop Year End List of Lists:

The 2012 HipHopDX Year End Awards
Categories such as emcee of the year, verse of the year,  producer of the year, story of the year, and album of the year, HipHopDX covers all the basics with generally well thought out opinions. A reader’s choice help them shield themselves from ivory tower accusations.

The Ten Best New York City Rap Albums of 2012 (Philip Mlynar, Village Voice)
Mlynar does really well with this list, (even if 1999 isn’t an ‘album’ and Roc Marciano isn’t from NYC), Mlynar’s choices covered a nice gamut of NY styles, from artists who spit gritty street fare to those who liberally lace their rhymes with intellect-dripping wordplay. As good a synopsis of the variety and quality of NY-area rap as anything we would have come up with, though we’re sure we both missed some more obscure, but worthy entries. Pretty interesting number one though. Pay attention 2013.

Al Lindstrom’s 2012 Hip Hop MVP & 6th Man Award
Not a list per se, and only one clip from a year-end roundtable, but an interesting discussion between journalism and industry heads was had nonetheless.

The Noisey Guide to Hip-Hop in 2012
A lengthy but enjoyable A-Z romp through some of rap’s highlights and lowlights in 2012.