Passion of the Weiss Muxtapes #3 and #4: The Best Hip-Hop Songs of the Year Thus Far
In case you missed it, Sach O of Oh Word touched down briefly last week, taking a break from trying to find Manuel Noriega in the Philippines (He has a mansion?) to bless the blogosphere with one of his hilariously entertaining rants. If you’re too lazy to click over, the gist revolves around the assertion that Portishead and Erykah Badu have pretty much bodied all hip-hop made in 2008. Dart Adams of Poisonous Paragraphs fired back in the comments section with his claim that there have been 50 worthwhile rap records released this year and then wrote this post where he pointed out that “hip hop is far from dead, but the way we used to hear it and become exposed to it may be dead forever. If you’re not scouring the internet or the bloggerverse for that new shit then chances are you have no idea what (if any) new Hip Hop albums dropped last Tuesday.”
Personally, I’m somewhere between the two. Yeah, Badu and Portishead dropped two monster records this year that pretty much sonned nearly every hip-hop full-length. But Bun B, El-P, EMC, Elzhi, Metaform, Why? and The Kidz In the Hall have all made albums that I would’ve happily purchased had the Internet not turned the music world into a cheap all-you-can-eat buffet. Moreover, the year has produced a bonanza (yes, a bonanza) of great singles, many of which are on albums still forthcoming (in theory).
So if you’ve glossed over most of what I’ve posted this year in hopes of the rare chance that I’ll make fun of the Iron Sheik or something, the muxtapes are below. I purposely omitted songs that were on my first tape, so “Royal Flush” didn’t make it despite being easily one of the year’s best songs. Next time, I’ll do best non-hip hop stuff for the four of you into that sort of thing. In the meantime, peep the tapes below to find 24 of the finest rap songs made by rappers that contain rapping, sometimes in rhythm, occasionally on-beat, often high. In the words of William Mulholland, “There it is. Take it.”
The Passion of the Weiss Muxtape #3: The Best Hip-Hop Songs of the Year Part 1
The Passion of the Weiss Muxtape#4: The Best Hip-Hop Songs of the Year Part II
Stumble It!

May 16th, 2008 at 5:27 am
Good lookin’ out, Weiss. Anytime a blogger mentions me or puts one of my post in their shared RSS feeds an angel gets his or her wings….well, not really. All that ends up happening is my Technorati Authority number goes up. I’m trying to reach 100 before the year is over!
Seriously folks, I don’t care about hollow accolades or “internet stardom”. I merely want to enlighten heads that there is still excellent music out there. Besides, “internet stardom” won’t get you into young starlet’s pants will it? No! To do that you gotta at least write a book.
LOL.
One.
May 16th, 2008 at 10:34 am
[…] ich bereits hier, hier und hier auf muxtape.com aufmerksam geworden bin, hab ich mich jetzt auch mal registriert und gleich mal ein […]
May 16th, 2008 at 10:47 am
I finally broke down and did this. Enjoy
Free Wesley Snipes, Vol 1
http://discovietnam.muxtape.com/
May 16th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
That Evil Streets Remix is outrageously good.
May 17th, 2008 at 11:39 am
Good look, Weiss. Very enjoyable - I missed some of these, despite scouring the bloggerverse on the daily.
And here’s at least one looking forward to the non-hip hop as well.
May 17th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
“Yessir” by Kurutp and Pete Rock continues to blow my mind. It’s like watching your ex lose 15 pounds, get a boob job, and marry Dave Navarro–was that the person I shit on the past few years? Kurupt rhyming coherently about his life over a mellow, album-cut PR beat using new flows? Holy shit that track is excellent.
May 18th, 2008 at 6:41 am
Sweet!
I hope this is still up in August so I can download them when I get back so I can hastly form opinions about these songs and act like I never left.
May 18th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
As always you display impeccable taste in music, and its so refreshing to read a hip hop blog that doesn’t mention lil’ wayne every other sentence (thankyou in particular for not including the atrocity that is Lollipop in either of these muxtapes - quite frankly that song is an offence to the genre!) Keep up the good work!
May 28th, 2008 at 12:03 am
[…] fantastic hip-hop is produced on the (semi) regular, but as we’ve discussed, you’ve got to dig deeper than the Universal Music Group hegomony (hey Def Jam, thanks for […]