Every pop music artist's career goes through ups and downs & major changes and swings in popularity over time. It's only natural. You can only stay at the top of the Billboard charts for so long before you begin to slip. But of all  the once hugely popular artists of the past two decades Lauryn Hill's fall from grace seems to be the most dramatic.
Just 14 years ago Hill, who first came to fame as a member of the Fugees with such hits as their rendition of "Killing Me Softly with His Song," was on top of the world  with her groundbreaking debut solo album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill which sold 8 million copies, won her five Grammys, and topped near every chart and list even beating out Madonna for Album of the Year. Since then Hill's career went into a rapid downward spiral with the artist retreating from the spotlight, shunning publicity and the music industry at large, and spending time on raising her large family. But when, over the past several years, she has occasionally returned to the public eye to perform it has been to generally negative reviews and/or controversy like when she spoke out at the Vatican condemning the Catholic Church over its child sex abuse scandal. Furthermore she has been routinely portrayed in the media as just plain "crazy." For the legions of dedicated longtime Lauryn Hill fans, who continue to stand by the erratic performer - known for being chronically late and putting on disappointing renditions of her own hits - wanting to support their favorite artist has proven to be an incredibly frustrating endeavor. Regardless these fans seem to stand by Hill no matter what in the hopes that she will (literally) get her act together  and return to her greatness of yore. Luckily for them it seems that their patience with Hill, who headlines the Hollywood Palladium (buy tickets) on February 14th & The Warfied in SF on Feb 16th (tix go on sale today), might finally be paying off as it seems like Hill may be back on track and that 2012 might be the year for the return of Lauryn Hill. The last time she was in the Bay Area, late last August when she headlined the Rock the Bells (RTB) festival at Shoreline, she did an amazing encore that won a standing ovation from the remaining audience at the Mountain View amphitheater.

Dubbed as both the Operation Skid Row Music Festival and the Occupy Skid Row Music Festival, on January 15th Chuck D and Public Enemy along with a dozen or more (mostly old school LA) hip-hop acts will put on a free concert for the down-on-their-luck residents of Los Angeles' desolate Skid Row district. The list of other performers for this wonderful free all afternoon event, that will also be open for free to anyone from anywhere who wishes to attend, includes Cypress Hill, Kurupt from the Dogg Pound, Mellow Man Ace and Zzyzzx, King T, Rapper's Rapp Group, Sir Jinx and General Population, OG Kid Frost, L.A. Posse, and the Egyptian Lover. What makes this concert significant is that all of these artists have agreed to perform for free as a an unselfish token in this new year for the homeless population of LA's famed Skid Row area which contains one of the largest stable populations of homeless persons in the USA. A 2011 study estimated that Skid Row's population was at over 4300 people!

As with so many of the worthy events and happenings associated with Skid Row that I hear about this one too is also linked directly back to General Jeff - the longtime LA hip-hop figure, friend of Amoeba, hip-hop golden age recording artist, & community activist/tireless supporter of the rights of LA's Skid Row community. General Jeff (real name Jeff Page) is Resident Director for Central City East/ Skid Row & is on the Board of Directors for the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council as well as being VP of Outreach and Communications and is always down to volunteer his time, skills, and endless energy to the worthy residents of Skid Row with whom he has worked on behalf of for years. This morning I caught with General Jeff, who was up early busy at work while listening (he informed me) to the late great LA hip-hop artist Mausberg's Non-Fiction album.

Throughout Lateef the Truthspeaker's recently released album FireWire on Quannum Projects the longtime Bay Area emcee / Solesides founding member shows nothing but pride and love for his hometown of Oakland,  CA. 
LiveWIre contains countless shout outs to "The Town" including mentions of Interstate 580, SoulBeat TV, and Skyline High School. In fact the East Oakland born & raised emcee even arranged a Skyline High School rap reunion of sorts on the new album's lead single "Oakland" which features cameos from two fellow alumni of the Oakland high school: Del the Funky Homosapien and The Grouch.

One morning last month I caught up with Lateef at World Ground Coffee cafe on MacArthur in East Oakland's Laurel District where he was grabbing a hot drink before heading out on the road, along with fellow Solesides/Quannum member Lyrics Born, to travel up to the North West to do some shows. The two emcees, who as well as having their own individual careers collaborate together as Latryx, (but had not in a long while) had just done two nights of "reunion" shows at The Independent in San Francisco along with such other local artists as Bayonics, Honor Roll, and Hopie Spitshard. "Awesome" was how Lateef described those two shows. In addition to being one of the founding members of the Solesides crew/hip-hop collective that morphed into Quannum Projects Lateef is also part of The Maroons (with Chief Xcel) and has another side career recording with Fatboy Slim. He told me that he and Lyrics Born were busy working on the long overdue follow up Latryx project - that he and Lyrics Born, along with some help from individuals like DJ Shadow and Chief XCel, began almost two full decades ago - but haven't released anything new in over a dozen years with the exception of a few new bits on a mixtape CD (and now a download for sale on LB's site) Latryical Madness Vol 1 mixed by DJ Zeph .  "We are about six songs into it [new Latryx album] right now with production on there by Amp Live, Cut Chemist, the Bangerz [formerly Finger Bangerz] are on there doing some stuff. And a few other cats as well: DJ Shadow and [Dan the] Automator is supposed to give us some stuff. And Chief Xcel is supposed to give us some stuff. We've got a bunch of stuff," he said.

This is the third and final of the Best of 2011 Hip-Hop Amoeblog posts. The first Best of 2011 Hip-Hop installment featured a hundred of the hip-hop album releases that were popular sellers at the three Amoeba Music stores over the past year while the second Best Of 2011 Hip-Hop featured favorites of the year chosen by current and former Amoeba hip-hop department employees  Meanwhile this Best of 2011 Hip-Hop post is this Amoeblogger's personal favorite 30 albums of the year. But before I get to these (all below) first let me briefly mention a random list of a few of the interesting hip-hop news stories or events/happenings that generated attention over the past year.

In 2011 hip-hop lost some great artists and most of them were young; tragically taken from this earth long before they should have been. These included 44 year old, Golden Era hip-hop star Heavy D who died of a heart attack while climbing the stairs to his Los Angeles apartment back in early November. Even more recently, just three weeks ago, Special One of The Conscious Daughters (aka TCD) died suddenly the result of a blood clot. The Bay Area hip-hop community was really shaken by this news but glad to learn that the rapper's longtime partner in rhyme, fellow TCD member CMG (Cash Makin Girl) would continue the TCD legacy and about a week ago announced that she would be (sometime in early 2012) be releasing a posthumous TCD album. A famous Bay Area rapper who didn't die but was rumored to have in the latter half of 2011 was Too $hort. This was around the time that $hort had a run in with fellow Bay rapper Messy Marv who foolishly started a beef (at first on the internet and then in rhyme) with the "godfather of Bay rap."

1) The Roots Undun (MCA)

2) Elzhi/Will Sessions Elmatic / Elmatic Instruments (Fat Beats)

3) Oddisee Rock Creek Park (Melo Music)

4) Blu & Exile Below the Heavens (Sound in Color)

5) Snoop Dogg Doggumentary (Priority)

This is the second in the three part Best of 2011 Hip-Hop series for the Amoeblog. The first Best of Amoeba Hip-Hop 2011 featured all the releases in 2011 that were popular sellers at the three Amoeba stores over the past year. The next, third will be this Amoeblogger's personal favorites of 2011. Meanwhile this one features the hip-hop picks by Amoeba staffers (both current and former) from the three Amoeba stores. The above top five is from the great Luis F. Soria who, up until recently when he left Amoeba to undertake some other projects, was the main hip-hop man at Amoeba Music San Francisco. He is missed but his former position, has been taken over by Robert whose list is down below, is in good hands.