These are the 2017 hip hop releases that have made the biggest impression on me:
Snoop Dogg's
Neva Left is my choice for hip hop AOTY. He's been genuinely surprising me lately with how good his new laid-back vintage funky old school style sounds when by contrast most other artists who try that out end up sounding fake and try-hard. Snoop's voice is perfect for it and it comes across as so natural. Not quite as good as the
7 Days of Funk project he did with Dâm-Funk back in 2013 though but still an album I see myself throwing on years from now.
Thank funk he left that Snoop Lion crap behind.
dälek doing what dälek does best with
Endangered Philosophies. Noisy and grating industrial hip hop bubbling with anarchy and political frustration. Not really sure where in their discography I'd place this one, but it still hasn't surpassed last year's
Asphalt for Eden for me.
The Koreatown Oddity's
Finna Be Past Tense has been a grower for me. At first I almost completely dismissed it, but slowly after a few listens in different moods and contexts it untangled itself and eventually it clicked with me. Again, like many of the albums I'm listing here, the artist's previous records were better and The Koreatown Oddity is no exception.
200 Tree Rings is superior to this, but still this album crushed a lot of other 2017 hip hop records regardless.
This one completely took me off-guard.
The Wild by Raekwon is actually a fairly consistent and fresh boom bap record that isn't afraid of sounding modern. Kinda sad that the last solo Raekwon record that I really like was his fucking debut,
Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...
Mega Ran is one of the only "nerdcore" artists that ever did anything for me and I don't even really consider him a part of that whole thing, though there's certainly some overlap in style. The big difference is that Mega Ran (aka Random) doesn't rap like he's making fun of himself and the entire white race. Yes he's black but I've even heard black "nerdcore" rappers sound like nasally dorks. Anyways,
Extra Credit was recorded after a long year of Mega Ran touring the world, handling multiple projects and exploding in popularity a bit and so lyrically it's quite introspective and humble with an overwhelming veil of positivity. Definitely one of his strongest records.
Gems from the Equinox is the product of two legends in their own right coming together to record a nice and uncharacteristically terse (for hip hop) album: Meyhem Lauren, a new but place-well-earned emcee and DJ Muggs from Cypress Hill who arguably was creating grimy dungeon beats well before The RZA. Good stuff, under 30 minutes long.
Sean Price's
Imperius Rex was released 2 years after his death and so this album holds a special spot in hip hop history, as most posthumously released albums do. Sean Price was always a heavy hitting lyricist and though this one isn't as good as
Mic Tyson or
Monkey Barz it's still a strong statement made by an emcee who stood like mountain in an industry of ever-changing and ever-dropping quality.