1. Run The Jewels
RTJ2
Only thing competing with Killer Mike and El-P’s totally versatile, one-up-style rapping is El-P’s unrelenting onslaught of multi-layered, dynamic beats.
2. Future
Honest
A couple of legit bangers shake up this simultaneously sweet and stupid, sincere and insecure heart-tugger from our favourite hardest sing-rapper. Croak on, Romeo.
3. Freddie Gibbs & Madlib
Piñata
Well, shit. Sheeeit. Sit down, baby rappers. Street rap aficionado Gibbs and vinyl-digging producer Madlib combine on an instant, real-talkin’, 70s-loving classic.
4. Azealia Banks
Broke With Expensive Taste
As much a dance record as a rap one, Banks’s delightful debut borrows from 90s dance, merengue and jazz. Worth the three-year wait.
5. Travi$ Scott
Days Before Rodeo
Cinematic trap-hop. Southern electro-rap. Fearlessly outside the box. The soundtrack to our would-be night lives.
6. YG
My Krazy Life
Narratives that earned YG comparisons to fellow Comptonite Kendrick, unsingable party bangers and collabs with DJ Mustard and Drake. Turn. Up.
7. Shabazz Palaces
Lese Majesty
What we’ve come to expect from the alt-hip-hop duo: heavy topics (anti-establishment), heavy production (woozy synths, otherworldly washes of sound). A breath of weirdo fresh air.
8. Theophilus London
Vibes!
A disco-dappled, funk-fuelled, electro-pop-loving hip-hop/R&B fusion record. Just try to put a genre tag on it.
9. Schoolboy Q
Oxymoron
Hard gangster meets party-ready rapper. Q goes in in his caustic yap, while superstar producers make the 17 tracks ultra-slick.
10. Tre Mission
Stigmata
A self-produced debut blending grime with a distinctly 416 sound and a touch of southern hip-hop. Fresh features abound.