Mixtapes aren’t exactly what they used to be. Since the internet cracked the new-music bulwark and instigated flood-like access to new artists and their music, the chance for new artists to come up and make your way up against literally thousands upon thousands of trying rappers and producers has never been so possible nor competitive. The goal of a mixtape has always been to get your music heard– it is first and foremost a promotional tool. Yet in the internet era’s great race for music blogger attention, the mixtape bar has been risen (almost) to the point where it is no longer enough to catch a listener’s attention by rapping over some well known beats alone. The most successful and interesting mixtapes of 2010 were made up of entirely original production, like Wiz Khalifa’s Kush & OJ and Big K.R.I.T.’s K.R.I.T. Wuz Here for instance, which are both virtually albums. The only difference lies in the words we call them by.

Mixtapes are also, of course, compilation “tapes”. Although there were several outstanding compilation mixtapes this year (including Statik Selektah & Termanology (1982)’s The Diamond Collection), we have not included them in our list since there was so much great new music to choose from. Perhaps the better term for original material mixtapes is the “Free Album” or “Free Release”, to define this promotional entity that has picked up considerably in the wake of the internet’s competitive climate.

We Present: THE COME UP SHOW’S FAVORITE MIXTAPES/FREE RELEASES OF 2010!

The EP is one of my favorite entities. Albums tend to have a far greater chance of being botched both under the task of creating a cohesive album and the sheer pressure that comes with it. But the EP is more an in-between: you get the substantive flavor of an album, the variety of a mixtape and the most creatively uninhibited music all at the price of FREE. Usually.

Four of the EPs we chose below come from artists who also released full-length albums in 2010 (Nottz, Donwill, Von Pea and Fly Lo), each of which were also excellent. Honorable mentions go to Atmosphere’s To All My Friends, The Blood Makes The Blade Holy EP, Slum Village’s Villa Manifesto Digital EP, and Rick Ross’ The Albert Anastasia EP (which was virtually replaced by Teflon Don).

We Present: THE COME UP SHOW’S FAVORITE EP’S OF 2010!

Trends. Let’s see. We chose two tracks about cars, one about a bug. Six songs with Canadian production credits, eight with Canadian voices. Some are billboard charting million dollar commercial songs, others are basement bangers. Some beats are freshly composed productions, some are sample-based. One is about making a comeback, two are about coming up. One is about sports. Two are about inner demons. One is about embracing inner demons. And last, there are two songs written about girls, and two written by girls.

I’m no mathematician, but these numbers add up far beyond the twenty tracks we’ve selected below, and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

We could have included a much larger list. Honorable mentions go to Yelawolf and Big K.R.I.T. with “Hometown Hero”, or Yela’s striking acoustic rendition of “Pop the Trunk.” Or Wiz Khalifa’s hazy and synthed out rhymes and giggles in “Up” or “Mezmorized”, each user-designed soundtracks for laxing back and toking on a dub. Or hauling on a bong. Notable for their good music grind, is Kanye West, Big K.R.I.T. and Wiz Khalifa, who each have more than five tracks to their names that could have easily filled this list (look to the Favorite Albums list for further recognition there). But a playlist (and a year-end round up) simply isn’t one without variety nor scope, and we had plenty to choose from in 2010.

We Present: THE COME UP SHOW’S FAVORITE TRACKS OF 2010!

If you’ve ever spent some time looking the rap map, or know even the slightest about hip-hop for that matter (which I assume given you’re reading this), you know how important birthplace is for a rapper trying to chisel a reputation in the rap game. New York, Los Angeles and Detroit have historically harbored–and to an extent defined–the most dynamic hip-hop traditions both musically and culturally (loosely referred to as the East and West coast schools). But as hip-hop took off over the world through the 90s, Atlanta (The Dungeon Family), Chicago (Common, Kanye), Philadelphia (The Roots) and other cities started to make names and spaces for their unique dialects of hip-hop too. With each new crop of freshmen hip-hop artists, including 2010′s, hip-hop dialectically snowballs as new and under-represented places grow and support upcoming artists and in turn, cultivate hip-hop reputations of their own.

This year, quite a few new spaces became legitimate hip-hop destinations. Gadsden, Alabama; New Orleans, Louisiana; London, Ontario; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Meridian, Mississippi each took on new worldly reputations thanks to their home grown stars that have been busy making names for themselves in 2010. Shad, Yelawolf, and Big K.R.I.T in particular, paint vivid lyrical stories of their experiences, and people of their home soils, bringing their hometowns along on their rise to the top. In 2010, the rap map got a little more worldly.

Honorable mentions go to Nicki Minaj who dropped her debut record Pink Friday and broke a slew of billboard records, the Californian phenomenon Odd Future (OFWGKTA and in particular Tyler, The Creator), who enjoyed a moment as trending topic during their highly hyped debut New York performance and scored a boatload of underground fans and a couple of major magazine co-signs, as well as Toronto’s own producers Boi-1a and Rich Kidd, who are quickly on the rise to the upper echelons of major producer superstardom.

We Present: The Come Up Show’s FAVORITE COME UP ARTISTS OF 2010!

Yo. The year is almost out! To see 2010 out the door properly, we’re counting down its last days by looking back and revisiting our favorite music over the year. We’ll be dropping one themed favorites list per day straight up until New Years Eve.  By the time it’s all over, hopefully we’ll have the best of hip-hop in 2010 re-covered, re-capped, and remembered. It’s LIST-O-MANIA!

1. The Come Up Show’s Favorite Producers of 2010
2. The Come Up Show’s Favorite Lyricists of 2010
3. The Come Up Show’s Favorite Verses of 2010
4. The Come Up Show’s Favorite Come Up Artists of 2010
5. The Come Up Show’s Favorite Tracks of 2010
6. The Come Up Show’s Favorite EPs of 2010
7. The Come Up Show’s Favorite Mixtapes/Free Releases of 2010
8. The Come Up Show’s Favorite Albums of 2010 (coming!)

A whole wack of 2010′s best verses dropped in the last quarter of this year, many from Kanye West’s star studded and high-stakes G.O.O.D Fridays free music series campaign, and others simply because the period from August to November is music’s most wonderful time of year. Each year, a dump truck of new material sorta floods the music world during this time, overwhelming our ears with incredibleness just before it’s time for critics to make their lists and check them twice. It’s easy (or easier) for us all to get blinded in the year-end flurry and forget about all the really great stuff that happened in the first part of the year. Some critics take notes throughout the year to keep track of the stuff they really liked, and others, less organized (like us), spend hours upon hours digging just before the deadline to make sure nothing is missed, hear the stuff they may not have had a chance to, then decide how it all washes out.

Jay Electronica’s “Exhibit C” needed no re-calling because it stood out for us since the very beginning of 2010, although in the end, this track misses the 2010 cut off by weeks. (Unfortunately, since the year-end lists for ’09 would have already been submitted by the time of its release, that lyrical gem is forever caught in a critic-less pothole). Other honorable mentions for 2010 include Tyler, The Creator’s verse from “Sandwitches”, a crash-digest of what shot OFWGKTA into the fringes of superstardom this year, including their juvenile fixation with rape, skateboarding, and violence. And Yelawolf’s performances on both his breakout “You Aint No DJ” (Big Boi) and break-in “Hometown Hero Remix” (with Big K.R.I.T), are perfectly pointed examples of why Gadsden, Alabama now has a big fat pin on the rap map.

Naturally, a couple of our selections cross over with our winners for The Best Lyricists of 2010. Yet whereas that list focused more  on overall lyrical performance throughout the year, The Come Up Show Favorite Verses of 2010 is a celebration of particularly outstanding musical moments that shine a little brighter than the others.

We Present: The Come Up Show’s FAVORITE VERSES OF 2010!

Jay-Z once said the best emcees leave words knocking around in your head long after you’ve heard them. True lyricists in Jay-Z’s conception, will have you catching hidden rhymes, meanings, metaphors, people, places and ideas on the fourth or fifth listen, and sometimes, try as you might, you might not fully understand those words until you grow up a little and revisit them a couple years later. It is the hip-hop head’s ultimate and unrelenting quest to decode these lyrical treasures.

Following Old Dirty Bastard’s lead, the first decade of the 21st century has seen a batch of new emcees more centered on drawl, theatricality, melody, and highly idiosyncratic flow than the above described “traditional” spitting (Spitta excluded). Not that today’s crop of emcees are any less lyricists, but there is an added level of experimentation and diversity with flow and delivery, like Yelawolf and Wiz Khalifa for instance, whose distinctive voices are more the central focus than their lyrics are (it’s Wiz’s “hehhemhhehh” snicker and easy-bake oven drawl that gets me, not his lyrics). Wiz, Yelawolf, KiD CuDi, Waka Flocka, Lil Wayne and even Nicki Minaj, are perhaps better suited for a “Flow of The Year” category than for the traditional “Lyricist Of the Year.”  After all, do snarls, barks, squeals, belly trembles, throat snarls and helium voices really work as lyrical criteria?

We’ll tackle this trend in the next decade. But for now, our selective list comprises what we see as the very best of both new and old school emcees. Honorable mentions go to Nicki Minaj, who spat the verse of the year on “Monster” and pushed the envelope more than a few times with her alter ego Roman Zolanski; the un-fuck-wittable Yelawolf, whose flat out skills behind the mic put to rest anyone unsure over his tats and light colored skin; Jay Electronica and his always-cryptic illuminati talk; and MellowHype, a couple young Californian kids from OFWGKTA whose free album BLACKENEDWHITE contains freakishly well-written shit about rape, drugs, and satan that is sure to tumble around in your cranium for a while, just like Jigga said it would.

We Present: The Come Up Show’s FAVORITE LYRICISTS OF 2010

Here at The Come Up Show, we could have made a much longer list for our favorite producers of 2010. Notably, 2010 was a year of outstanding debut records from long-time hip-hop producers Nottz (You Need This Music) and Ski Beatz (24 Hour Karate School). And everyone’s favorite Dutch beatmaker, Nicolay of The Foreign Exchange, once again created some of the most original and timeless beats of the year for he and Phonte’s project Authenticity. 2010 was also a break out year for double threat emcee/producers Big K.R.I.T and J.Cole, who produce their own beats and also hold their own on the mic. Two artists of this breed make the list below.

But we had to draw the line somewhere, so in the end, very selectively and collaboratively, we chose five producers who were not only the most consistent and excellent throughout 2010, but who were also game changers. We chose the producers that are pushing the envelope of hip-hop now, and will be who will be looked back upon in the future– in the next decade and beyond–for bringing something unique and fresh to the table.

Rather than rank our lists, we place each of these selections on the upper shelf, beside one another. This is the kind of production thats been sitting in our itunes playlists year round, the kind of stuff we keep coming back to time and time again.

We present: The Come Up Show’s FAVORITE PRODUCERS OF 2010!