Drew Millard’s holding the only Baby Saint photos known to man.
Everyone knows the best and worst year ever for hip-hop was 2015. There was such a ponderous volume of fire content, trash content, and trashfire content that the puny number of hours in a year (8,760) is vastly eclipsed by the number of hours it would take to listen to every song, watch every video, read every interview, scoff at every hastily written thinkpiece, and choose a side in every single twitter beef that occurred in the 2015 calendar year (1,000,000,000,000).
Fortunately for you, I paid attention to all of it, and so I assembled this handy-dandy timeline of all the important rap crap from 2015*. It’s all accurate and correct, and if you think it didn’t happen then you must be processing reality wrong and need to see a doctor. Because again, this is a real list full of true things, and all this stuff happened.
December
- In an unprecedented backroom deal, Drake hires some random college student to infiltrate Rap Twitter and find all the cool memes.
- Tyga is banned from Russia, despite having never expressed any interest in going there. When reached for comment, Vladimir Putin explained, “This was simply a precautionary measure.”
January
- Big K.R.I.T. releases new mixtape in which he covers the entirety of Nappy Roots’ Humdinger — claiming any similarity between the two records was entirely coincidental.
- Drake’s new rap twitter spy tells Drake about some pretty good memes while unsuccessfully trying to make a few of his own. Drake lays in wait before deploying the memes himself.
February
- Immortal Technique gets his own Alex Jones style podcast called InfoWorldStar. A bunch of people tune into the first episode, because why the fuck not really.
- Kevin Gates is promised a release date by his label, but only if he can make ear-fucking a “thing.”
- Tyga submits a new theme song for Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Kris Jenner rejects it without even listening to it.
March
- Jaden Smith reveals he has been ghostwriting for Jay Electronica, who reveals he has been ghostwriting for Nas, who reveals he has been ghostwriting for Will Smith.
- Tyga pays for confidence-building sessions with the pickup artist “Mystery.”
April
- Missing the guiding hand of A$AP Yams and desperate to glom onto some sense of rebellious cool, A$AP Rocky signs to Burger Records, starts only wearing denim, and cuts five seven-inches with Ty Segall in 80 minutes.
- Someone writes a thinkpiece about how Drake didn’t do too much this month.
May
- Up to his weird-looking white-dude braids in frustration at being referred to as an “industry plant,” Post Malone murders a rap blogger by drowning him in sauce.
- An aging, jaded rap critic unleashes a stream of invective on Twitter so crushing in its cutting, salient pessimism that no one writes, tweets, or even thinks about hip-hop for a week.
June
- For the first time ever, Hopsin smokes weed.
- Fabolous makes yet another song based on a months-stale meme. Drake’s meme jockey posts some dumb joke online making fun of him.
- Eric Sundermann sets up a kissing booth in the middle of Bedford Avenue.
- Kendrick Lamar does some stuff.
- Pharrell gets an even bigger hat.
- Tyga starts wearing Pharrell’s previous big hat.
July
- Drake posts a meme on Instagram, it gets several thousand “likes.”
- Diplo reappropriates all music.
- Eminem finally plays a game of catch with his dad and decides never to rap again.
August
- Exasperated with her boyfriend’s antics, Nicki Minaj trades control of Meek Mill to Beanie Sigel for a crate of NBA jeans and a few old Kanye beats that Beans had laying around in his basement.
- Kid Cudi’s all like, “Uh, rap, but for dogs!” and a bunch of people are all “Yeah!” and then a bunch of other people are all “No way!”
September
- Vince Staples takes a week off Twitter, traffic across all rap blogs flags considerably.
- In a desperate ploy for public attention, Tyga endorses Jeb Bush on SnapChat. Only then does he learn that not a single one of his fans watches his Snaps all the way to the end.
- Jidenna rolls up to some award ceremony in one of those steampunk spider tank thingies from Wild Wild West.
October
- Game buys J-Rock and YG’s albums off them wholesale and releases them as The Documentary 2 and The Documentary 2.5, respectively. Only J-Rock manages to record a replacement album.
- 2 Chainz drinks a potion that magically transforms him into a combination of Dave Chappelle’s Rick James and Lil’ Jon impersonations. No one realizes that the change—that Tity Boi privately refers to as “The Grand Switcheroo”—ever happened.
November
- Young Jeezy celebrates his newest album by performing it with the London Philharmonic Orchestra while wearing a fedora.
- Beaten down by the public flogging that was his 2015, Tyga zips himself up in a Bape hoodie and refuses to come out.
*Please note that this list actually starts at the beginning of the Music Internet Calendar Year, aka December of the previous year when everyone releases their “Year End Content.” As a result, it’s possible that some of this stuff actually didn’t happen this year, except that it did, so you still can’t @ me about any of this.
Best Rap Albums, 2015
Margaret Thatcher—Iron Lady Reloaded
Lupe Fiasco—Hair Conspiracies
K Camp—Nuts!
Makaveli—New Raps 2k15
Sexman—Fuckin Music
Dave the Rapman—Rap, Uh… Rap… Fuckin, Uh, Rules
Red Pete—Rap Stinks!
Kid Cudi—Fuck Red Pete
Lil B—Immaterial Witness
Foot Fucker—The Mixtape: The Album
