Best of 2009: Album Leftovers

No, I’m not done with 2009. It was that great for rap music.

I overlooked some albums in the rush to spit out some 2000-odd words and cut off a few more to keep it at a nice round number of 10 for the Best Albums posts. I should’ve also noted that I have not been able to keep up with too many releases from November and December. I’ve only barely scratched the surface on albums from the Clipse, Souls of Mischief, Z-Ro, Juvenile, and Ryan Leslie, so apologies to those projects. At any rate, here are some more projects that I enjoyed plenty this year, in no particular order and again, with download links for the artist-sanctioned free releases:

Ryan Leslie – Ryan Leslie
Obviously, I couldn’t put this on a Best Rap post, it not being rap and all. But if I had, it would’ve ranked pretty highly. Ryan Leslie is a great pop producer and just a real sweet dude, which is pretty cool. Except for my obsession with ignorant rap music, I’m pretty square. I mostly like my R&B to be less playerating and womanizing, more monogamously lovely but without sounding like it’s for old people. And that’s basically what Ryan Leslie’s music is. He actually released a second album this year but that fell in with the late-year batch that I didn’t get to.

Misc. Nocando raps

Wow, so it just clicked in my head that I saw Nocando battle at school once. There was a freestyle battle contest at UCLA during my third year. It was supposed to be open only to students but dude heading it up kinda realized the student rappers were really, really crap. So he brought in some rappers he knew from Project Blowed, including Nocando and Dumbfoundead. The whole thing still ended up being pretty bogus, albeit funny. Dumbfoundead eked out a victory in the final round against this hilariously wack, enormously fat chick who literally spit “It’s murder, you just a chicken nugget, I want a hamburger, I’ll eat you.” Before that, Nocando went up against this Korean preacher rapper rapping about wanting to save Nocan through Jesus. And he lost because the Korean dude brought half his congregation of big-eyed anime-looking fanatical Christian girls with balloons and flowers and shit to cheer for him.

As an apology to Nocando for the wackness of that experience, I’ll just become a bigger fan. The clip above is notable for using socio-political commentary like 9/11 racial profiling in the context of a battle rhyme. After the jump, a video of a random cipher in which Nocan brags about being broke and getting rejected by a girl. And then a music video with more dope raps about being broke (you’ll just have to deal with the bad lip-synching for that one).

Nocando – Is A Virus EP

Nocando – Is A Virus EP [via Steady Bloggin']

This whole week, I’ve pretty much been listening exclusively to the G-Side tape and also this Nocando Is A Virus EP. Nocando is an emcee from Los Angeles’ Project Blowed school of rhyme. Noz’s taste in Blowed shit would suggest that all rappers from Good Life/Blowed were either chop shop, machine gun, fast rappers or just big freaking weirdos who may or may not rap like goats from time to time. Nocando falls into neither category. He’s just a good rapper with an obnoxious dose of arrogance and an off-beat humor that is hilariously juvenile and self-deprecating. And he’s emotionally believable. A lot of rappers take on a wholly different “serious adult” persona when they make their decidely “serious adult” songs and it can come off as pretty hollow/cornball. Nocando is still the same immature bastard whether he’s just talking shit or airing out fake friends and girls.

This short, 6-song EP is full of next level B-boy beats. If you’re still interested, he released another free EP earlier this year called The Patient EP.