To complement its new book published in May 2017, Mixtapes (French only), Fake For Real is sharing its own selection of mixtapes. Focusing exclusively on Northern American hip-hop, and on projects released in the 2000's and 2010's (i.e. not in a time when mixtapes were, well, actual mix-tapes), these 100 records are not the same as those listed in the book. Quality prevailed here, over representativeness.
It's never been easy for a woman to find her way into the rap game. First, she had to fight hard to become an equal to the frequently sexist male rappers. And then, she had to deal with her rivals; the audience, or the industry, curiously, always wanted just one female star per generation. And then, once all of this is achieved, any female rapper needed to position herself against the many stereotypes about her kind. She had to decide if she was a tomboy, or a bad bitch, or an R&B sentimentalist. Despite these many obstacles, however, many made it. Females matter, in hip-hop, as demonstrated by our selection of outstanding projects.
A few years after we published it, and to celebrate the release in 2014 of our new book dedicated to the history of indie hip-hop, it was time to deliver an updated version of the selection we published first in 2009, listing 100 key albums related to this movement. Here starts our new countdown, extended now to 150 records.
We are close to the end. The last albums Fake For Real considers as the best from the independent hip-hop movement, will be revealed soon on our dedicated article, and we will publish soon, in May 2014, a full book dedicated to this matter (in French only, unfortunately). In the meanwhile, we are offering to YOU, our readers, the possibility to nominate your 10 indie rap favorite albums, as part of a poll whose results will be published in a few weeks or months.
Where is this classic album? Why aren't you listing such or such rapper? These are some of the questions asked to us, after we started publishing our top 150 indie rap albums list. The reasons why those are missing are obvious: we didn't have enough space to mention everything, we needed to make choices. However, to ensure that we are as complete as possible, this list will be completed by a second, mentioning records which do not qualify to the first, but deserve to be known. As for the other, this list will be completed, updated and enriched over time.
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