Fake For Real

Those familiar with Starlito's - strong - latest releases may have noticed this: the Nashville rapper now frequently collaborates with a man called Mobsquad Nard. He featured on several of his projects, Manifest Destiny, Hot Chicken and Funerals & Court Dates 2. His very first appearances, though, predated these collaborations. The Jacksonville rapper, actually, started being noticed with his song "Right Ni", in 2015. And afterwards, he has been taken in charge by Cinematic Music Group, the Sony subsidiary already supporting rap luminaries like Joey Badass, Mick Jenkins and G-Herbo, which allowed the young man to start being covered by the media.

In case some still have doubts about why mixtapes are so great, or if they wonder why rappers give for free what, actually, are real albums, they should have a close look at Future's career. Twice, he's been the herald of a new evolution of Atlanta's trap music based on Auto-Tune raps and vulnerable lyrics, a subgenre at the very core of the 2010's. By 2011, True Story and Streetz Calling had paved the way to Pluto, his first album. And after his second opus, Honest, hadn't met expectations, the rapper went back to the mixtape format, with a series of releases respectively titled Monster, Beast Mode and 56 Nights. Altogether, these had restored the critics' faith in Future, and helped DS2, his third album, collecting rave reviews.

Maybe people got bored, after all the craze around mixtape series like Dedication or Da Drought. Or, possibly, all were convinced now that Lil Wayne was on a downward slope. Or maybe it was no longer surprising, in the 2010's, to have major rappers releasing better mixtapes than their official albums; it had become a standard. Another theory might be that Weezy himself was now outpaced by the new transformation this musical format was quickly going through, while they became actual albums, instead of compilations of freestyles and existing tracks. Anyway, whatever the rationale was, the situation with Sorry 4 the Wait was the following: it didn't create as high expectations as the rapper's previous mixtapes.

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.

There's not just one Peezy in the rap game. While the buzz is growing around OMB Peezy, another guy with the same name deserves our attention: Team Eastside Peezy (per a new trend, rappers include now their bands' name to their own: will we talk soon about WTC Raekwon?). His Ballin Ain't a Crime mixtape is, indeed, one of the best in 2017. Contrary to the young rapper from Alabama, though, this Peezy is experienced. Based out of Detroit, his collective is active since the early 2010's. Now almost 30, Phillip Glen-Earl Peaks already released several albums or mixtapes, like Mud, Sweat & Tears in 2015, so far his most noticeable project.

Antipop Consortium's very name, as well as its first album's cover art, hinted clearly about the trio's purposes: they were all about arts. Originally identified through the Nuyorican Café and the Rap Meets Poetry movement, High Priest, Beans and M. Sayyid – and E. Blaize, the DJ – belonged indeed to N.Y.'s spoken word scene. Their influences were jazzmen such as Sun Ra and Ornette Coleman, their collaborators alt-rap figureheads like Company Flow and Mike Ladd, and they would also work with luminaries like Arto Lindsay, Alec Empire and Vernon Reid.

According to Elizabeth Harris' Twitter profile, she will be "going to suck 2017 dicks in 2017". No surprise then, if her first album – or her second, depending on how they are counted – stays quite similar to her three 2016 projects: Cum Cake, S.T.D., and Audacious. With Queen Elizabitch, once again, the Chicago rapper delivers hardcore pornographic lyrics, making Lil' Kim look like a girl scout. The humorous "CPR", for example, is dedicated to her passion for sex, and it is full of suction and orgasmic sounds. "I got 3 holes for it like a pretzel", does she say on it; or "I fuck doggy style so much I need to go to the vet". And on "Cumshot", she expects her partner to ejaculate in each of her orifices. Hey, that's classy!

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.

Coming from the city of Mobile, in Alabama, Rich Boy started making some noise in 2006 with "Throw Some D's", a single about his new Cadillac – a luxury car he had undoubtedly bought with dirty money. To keep the momentum, Maurice Richards – his real name – contributed the following years to the mixtapes of more notorious rappers like Ludacris, or beginners like a certain Drake. And also, he released a first album, which would become a moderate success. What needs to be retained from his discography, though, is a mixtape he would record in 2008, to herald a second opus, Break the Pot, he would finally release much later, in 2013.

Kool Keith has been twice a crucial character, in hip-hop's history. In the 80's, he was the main rapper of the influential Ultramagnetic MC's. And later on, in the mid-90's, he was Dr. Octagon. As such, he reinvented rap once again. Playing the role of an extraterrestrial killer gynecologist, he pushed it out of its comfort zone, with the help of a new generation of talents from both New York and the Bay Area: the beatmakers The Automator and Kut Masta Kurt; the DJ Q-Bert; Sir Menelik, a rhyme partner; and even DJ Shadow, who contributed to the project with a remix.