Words by Robin Johnson & Ben Sherak

It’s a wrap for the first seven months of 2014 and that means it’s time to acknowledge the songs that were most impactful, catchy, interesting, fun, original, and well-crafted. We’ve rounded up the cream of the crop for one list: The 15 Best Songs of 2014 (So Far).

15. Future – “Move That Dope” Featuring Pusha T & Pharrell (Honest)

Of all the entries on this list, “Move That Dope” is most indicative of hip-hop radio’s status quio, but if that includes vivid writers like Pusha, innovative weirdos like Future, and all-around talents like Pharrell, the radio just might be a great place to love hip-hop. Future, breaking drunk-robot form, uses a human voice to deliver inhuman, confounding flows that challenge the listener in teh ebst of ways. Pusha continues to expertly poeticize his Kanye-sized attitude (“Wearin’ designer shit that I misspell”) and Pharrell smoothly slides out of the producer’s chair long enough to deliver a wrap-around-the-beat double-time finishing move.

14. Chance The Rapper – “Home Studio” (No Album)

“Home Studio” is the only bonafide rap record that Chance released this year, but it’s packed with enough giddy wit to last an album. Chance packed this jolt of celebration with line after line of swift lyricism: “You gon’ set a bad example for the average bear / You a Yogi, you should idle while in child position,” “Just don’t count your sheep before they hatch, your chicken ‘fore your eggs, or eat your dinner ‘fore you say your prayer,” “Beat the tortoise by a hair (hare) in a old ’44 Taurus on a spare with a wax finish,” This song is just bursting at the seams with wit.

13. Alex Wiley – “Vibrations” (Village Party)

Village Party, strange young Chicagoan Alex Wiley‘s second release in two years, was a record of astounding melody, innovation, and ADD. It was catchy and piercing at almost every turn, and neither adjective could be more fitting for the tape’s biggest standout, “Vibrations.” Wiley summarizes his attitude and mission statement nicely here–”I just do my own thing, OK, and hope it all works out,” before burning the house down with one of his typically head-spinning double times and tearing into a hook that’s at once passionate and party-ready. This track even does auto-tune well.

12.  Drake – “Trophies” (Young Money: Rise Of An Empire)

If Drake wasn’t acting out skits on SNL, he was either hosting the ESPY’s, gearing up for a tour with Lil Wayne or dropping some very dope guest verses. This single from the Young Money compilation album was so clearly its highlight that it’s hard to imagine it as being on that album. There are few better examples of Drake’s all-around dominance than this record.

11.  Isaiah Rashad – “Heavenly Father” Featuring SZA (Cilvia Demo)

Just signed last year, Isaiah Rashad has already proven to be on the level of TDE’s previous rap artists. “Heavenly Father” is sheer poetry at heart and his EP, Cilvia Demo, proved that despite being only 23, his soul is well beyond his years. Isaiah Rashad deserved his spot on the 2014 XXL Freshman List as well as to be voted on this list, twice.

10. Mac Miller – “Erica’s House” Featuring Treejay (No Album)

The funniest song of the year’s thusfar also one of the best. Mac Miller, cozying to his role as the rap game’s increasingly trippy former-bro cousin, raps like he’s bored with the acid he just took. He’s self aware, he’s absurdist, he’s hilarious: “Let’s go to Syria and have a war / Stop fuckin’ calling me Macklemore / That’s not my name, well kinda…it’s kind of my name” he drools on the intro. “I love like a folk singer and fuck like a crack addict,” he croaks in the first verse. “Still having sex with blind people / They say my pussy smell like pine needles / Bust a nut in the poultry section at John Eagle / Look a chicken in the face like, bitch, I’ma eat you,” he proclaims proudly in the third. Mac Miller has become some strange Odd Future-Madvillain hybrid, with a sprinkle of a calmer Eminem, and we’re all the better for it.

9. Imagine Dragons – “Radioactive” (Remix) Featuring Kendrick Lamar (No Album)

The fact that Kendrick appears on this list two (and a half) times without having released a solo song this year is a testament to his sway, not only over trends and fans, but over the quality of any record he touches. A greater testament to that: the fact that Imagine Dragons‘ “Radioactive” is a more or less a moderate/solid Coldplay song, that, molded by King Midas Kendrick’s hands, is suddenly the 9th best hip-hop song of the year. Introduced during the chill-inducing Grammy performance, K.Dot’s frantic, poetic closing statement on the Dragons’ hit is a moment that stays with you long after the record is off. The verse is sort of a “Control” aimed at his demons and the surrounding universe, and the results are something that bleeds far deeper and more powerfully than a mere boast.

8.  Common – “Kingdom” Featuring Vince Staples (Nobody’s Smiling)

Ten studio albums in and Common still has it. Linking back up with his main producer, No I.D.,  “Kingdom” carries a triumphant melody and a much needed message towards Chicago’s gun violence.

7. Big K.R.I.T. – “Mt. Olympus” (Cadillactica)

When K.R.I.T. released “Mt. Olympus,” he kicked down the door and came straight for the jugular. The Mississippi country boy just wants to be heard and K.R.I.T. takes the opportunity to snap on this one. His upcoming album, Cadillactica is set to be released later this year and when it does, hopefully the world will be listening.

6. Schoolboy Q – “Prescription/ Oxymoron” (Oxymoron)

Not only was Oxymoron amongst the most celebrated albums of the year, but Q also brought gangsta rap back to the forefront. He showed us just how disturbing it is be an Oxycodon addict and then, to turn the narrative on its head, showed us what it’s like to sell it right after. Chilling details coupled with production handled by TDE’s in-house producers Digi+Phonics makes this one of the best tracks of the year so far.

5. Freddie Gibbs & Madlib – “Real” (Piñata)

Madlib‘s never sounded angrier. Not that he actually raps here–it’s entirely Freddie‘s show, and more on that later–instead, the rollicking first beat for “Real” is the most animalistic, beast-on-a-hunt feeling beat that the perma-stoned West Coaster has ever produced. Even the second instrumental on the two part assault, while sounding like vintage Beat Konducta, still packs a serious whollop, with a kick drum like a cannonball. Meanwhile, Gangsta Gibbs lets off one of the most passionate and thorough disses in recent memory (in history?). Most people quote the vivid tales that Freddie lays out as plain evidence against Jeezy (“You ain’t take security, so we ain’t take a seat,”) but what really makes this record special (aside from Freddie and ‘Lib’s pure ferociousness) is how Fred shows us that the beef is tied to true emotion, that it was born of a friendship–“I looked up to you, put that on my mama.” That cuts deep.

4. The Roots – “When The People Cheer” Featuring Greg Porn and Modesty Lycan (…And Then You Shoot Your Cousin)

The Roots really can do no wrong. They are veterans in the game and their music always comes with stellar production and a meaningful message. Taking a conceptual approach to every song on the album, “When The People Cheer” sets the tone of the album hitting on anti-rap themes and community stereotypes of seeking guidance in the wrong places. Between Greg Porn and Black Thought’s verses, it’s nearly too much poetry for one song, which is why it landed in the top 5.

 3. Rick Ross – “Sanctified” Featuring Big Sean and Kanye West (Mastermind)

Ross, Big Sean and Ye’ swap hooks and verses in between sips of sanctified refreshments, all the while sporting DONDA apparel for this one. This is Ross’s song, but Ye takes the most time at the podium to address the critics and to justify his rants.  Ye hasn’t dropped the follow up to his Yeezus album yet, but he did manage to take over someone else’s song and steal the number 3 spot on this list.

2. SZA – “Babylon” Featuring Kendrick Lamar (Z)

SZA is holding her own as TDE’s first female signee while representing the label’s more eclectic side. Her EP, Z, as stated by Kendrick Lamar, is laced with hidden messages and “Babylon” is one of the deeper songs that has a dual meaning. SZA sings about a complex love/hate relationship in a spiritual context. Kendrick Lamar’s clever wordplay adds more meaning to thought, sending the emotional roller-coaster ride out of control. TDE has clearly taken over this list, and for good reason.

1. Young Jeezy – “Seen It All” Featuring Jay Z (Seen It All: The Autobiography)

Young Jeezy prides himself on authenticity. In fact, he’s one of the realest rappers out here (unless you’re asking Freddie Gibbs). Before rapping, drug dealing was Jeezy’s means of survival and the testimonial track “Seen It All” gives us his truthful encounter of selling white. Hov takes us back to his Reasonable Doubt days as he recounts his vision of pushing keys through Marcy Projects. Originally made for Jay Z’s Magna Carta Holy Grail, the single will be featured on Young Jeezy’s upcoming studio album Seen It All: The Autobiography. It’s no doubt why “Seen It All” is number one–it’s the G-code standard for sifting out rap counterfeits.

Runners Up:

Alex Wiley – “Forever” Featuring Mick Jenkins
Ratking – “Canal”
YG – “Really Been” Featuring Kendrick Lamar
Freddie Gibbs & Madlib – “Uno”
Drake – “Days In The East”

The post The 15 Best Rap Songs of 2014 (So Far) appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

ScHoolboy Q, the squawking goofball who hangs out with Mac Miller and calls himself “chubby” on records and “whack” in interviews is the Gangster Rapper of the moment. The genre has been home to rappers both self-deprecatingly funny (The Notorious B.I.G. called himself fat and ugly) and eccentric (Cam’ron and his affinity for pink) in the past, but no one has ever been as sloppy or self-deprecating as Q.

The hook to “Gangsta,” track one on Oxymoron and a vicious ode to the Crip life that Q was long a part of, is a brute, uninhibited force. “Gangsta, gangsta, gangsta” he chants, with frightening venom. While certainly hyper-masculine, there is a vulnerable tinge to Q’s unhinged, mad-eyed performance. Cave-mannish lyrics aside, “Gangsta” remains important because of how far it lands Q from the forced composure of his Gangster Rap predecessors. ScHoolboy himself has often pointed, in interviews, to the dead-eyed 50 Cent as a defining beacon of the genre. Q has referred to himself as the hollow money machine Puffy countless times on Twitter. Absent from Q’s persona is the steely reserve of 50 and Diddy before him; it is replaced with tangible, approachable emotion.

The content of Q’s lyrics, given the context of recent interviews, further challenges the typical notion of masculinity. On “Gangsta,” he chants, “They say they want that gangsta shit,” Track four, “What They Want,” echoes the sentiment: “This that shit that they want…This that shit they gon’ buy.” In claiming that he is only responding to a demand, Q ceases to endorse these individual representations of gang life as being the whole story.

“It’s embarrassing for me to even really be talking about it in detail. …Why would I go and do all that type of stuff, and take time away from my daughter,” Q asked recently, on Hot 97. The ex-gangbanger is more than aware of how sinful his past life was. While he regrets it, he remains thankfully far from parodying gang culture. Instead, he is helping to portray it in a more honest, grim manner.

 Oxymoron reaches its ugly, cautionary peak on the semi-title track, “Prescription/Oxymoron.” In the opening half, Q details his addiction to Oxycontin pills in painful detail: “Dinner on my shirt, my stomach hurts / I had a ball sellin’ 80s but yo, the karma’s worse / I cry when nothing’s wrong.” To add to the lyrics’ wrenching effect, Q’s own daughter is featured on the track, crying out to her father, “What’s wrong, daddy? Wake up!” It is hard to imagine anything further from the polished cool of 50 Cent’s “What Up Gangsta,” a song that begins with the image of Superman’s S on his chest. ScHoolboy is so much more flawed, damaged, and passionate than 50 Cent. ScHoolboy is concerned with consequences—on Oxymoron, no deed, good or “gangsta,” goes unpunished.

Once the sad, clicking beat of “Prescription” slips us into Q’s coma along with him, the eager menace of “Oxymoron” slaps to life. Q becomes a cocky dealer, selling the very same pills that nearly took his life in the song’s first half.  Astute listeners will note that “Oxymoron” actually covers events that took place before “Prescription.” Q calls our attention to the consequences of a reckless, unsympathetic way of life by first wrenching us with an addict’s tale, and then showing us the dealer gloating about his sales.

ScHoolboy Q’s gangsta world is a distinctly human, unpolished mess in progress. The efforts on the part of the Black Hippy spitter to produce valuable tales of street life that are musically enjoyable and realistic are valiant, and, further, his very existence is important. As one of the year’s headlines and the culture’s tastemakers-to-be, Q’s authentic, well-rounded, challenging version of the “gangsta” persona is not only a solid step for hip-hop culture but for gender politics. If artists as stereotyped as Gangster Rappers can continue to push their boundaries, we move toward a world where the definition of masculinity more comfortably accepts reflection, vulnerability, passion, pain, and, ultimately, well-rounded people and honest success.

The post ScHoolboy Q, Humanizing The Gangsta appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.