1) Drake Take Care (Cash Money/Universal)

2)  Childish Gambino Camp (Glass Note)

3) Mac Miller Blue Slide Park (Ingrooves)

4) Wale Ambition (Warner Bros.)

5) MF Doom Operation Doomsday  (Metal Face)

Special thanks to Robert at the San Francisco Amoeba Music for this latest Hip-Hop Top Five Chart that includes the 2011 vinyl reissue of MF Doom's Operation Doomsday   - the debut solo album by hip hop artist born Daniel Dumile that was initially released by Bobbito's Fondle 'Em Records in 1999. Two years, with an altered track list, it was reissued by Sub Verse Records in 2001 with a slightly altered track listing. Doom's own Metal Face label re-reissued it three years ago, and now again this year several months ago with new cover art designed by Jason Jagel, who also did the cover art for Mm.. Food. The other entries on this week's hip-hop chart at the San Francisco Amoeba store are Childish Gambino's Camp, Mac Miller's Blue Slide Park, Wale's Ambition, and Drake's hugely popular second album Take Care. The artist's latest video for the album bonus track "Motto" which is dedicated to Mac Dre features a quick outside shot of the Amoeba San Francisco store.

            

Drake ~ The Motto Featuring Lil Wayne & Tyga (Official Video) from OctobersVeryOwn on Vimeo.

For ever-popular rap star Drake's latest, brand new video, released yesterday, for "The Motto" featuring Lil Wayne and Tyga, the top selling artist whose recently released second album Take Care (from where this song is culled as a bonus track) went straight to number one on the Billboard pop album charts (and #1 at Amoeba too the week it was released last month) travels to the Bay Area.

 The video is an homage to the Bay in general and in particular to Mac Dre (the late great Vallejo rapper born Andre Hicks whose mom Wanda Salvatto appears at the beginning of video) and some other Bay Area landmarks including Amoeba Music San Francisco at the 1:10 mark in the above video - making it the latest in a long line of music videos, movies, and TV commercials to feature Amoeba Music. 

Drake's new excellent video features lots of other Bay landmarks (a lot of footage shot on Treasure Island) and familiar rap figures including E-40 and Drake lovingly shouts out Mac Dre and even paraphrases some of his music ("Feelin Myself") in the song/video. You can buy Drake's Take Care on CD and also Take Care on vinyl from Amoeba Music.

Record collectors/vinyl fanatics are sure to fully appreciate the latest video (above) from Headnodic which features a non-stop display of approximately 200 different record album covers. How many can you recognize?  The video for the song "The Mondays" featuring KAT 010 and is taken from the album Red Line Radio on Traffic Entertainment which was released back in July by the Bay Area producer who came to fame as a member of the Crown City Rockers.
The video, which is also directed by Hednodic, is described by the record-loving artist as, "an open love letter to vinyl." The track features Hednodic on the bass and drum programming, with Kat O1O on the Rhodes, Crumar Orchestrator, and melodica. Purchase the album Red Line Radio either from Amoeba.com or in one of the three Amoeba Music stores.

A founding member of LiveWire Records West Oakland's Shady Nate is a local rap hero and long a popular artist with both Bay Area rap fans and fans nationwide of the mobb street style of rap that he and his LiveWire potnas (including J Stalin, Philthy Rich, and Stevie Joe) all deliver. He grew up in West Oakland's notoriously violent Acorn housing projects on 7th Street not far from the West Oakland BART station - an area that has gone through much changes over the past decade - and, while a gifted hip-hop artist who has enjoyed moderate success from his art, has gotten caught up in the street life and spent a good deal of the past decade either incarcerated or under house arrest. However thanks to his ever optimistic, upbeat outlook Shady Nate has managed to write and/or record music and boasts an impressive discography that includes  - much of it with his fellow rap artists in the tight knit LiveWire collective - the label he launched in 2004 along with J Stalin and Jay Jonah.  I recently caught up with Shady Nate to talk about rap music, West Oakland, and how he got the name Shady Nate?

"I got my name from my hood: the notorious Acorn Projects - the only projects in Oakland period. They say everybody in my hood is Shady. I'm from a shady hood and Acorn niggas ain't cool and all that. So I named myself Shady Nate just to let people know what it is," Nate told me. Known for caring about his West Oakland neighborhood and giving back to his community (Nate has been responsible for throwing BBQ's in his neighborhood for the kids coming up over the past two summers) I was curious to know what Nate thought of West Oakland today versus ten, fifteen, or twenty years ago. Is it better or worse than when he was a kid coming up? "That's a tough one," he answered, pausing for a second and considering all of the so-called "development" that taken place in West Oakland in the past decade. "Yes they're putting money into the city; they're rebuilding but they're not putting money back into the right places. They're not putting money into the schools so while they're rebuilding the structures, the buildings, they're not rebuilding the community, the people. So the people is getting worse. It's a lot worse from when I was a youngster. People might have thought I was crazy but now the people that is coming up under me they is even more sick. I can't say it's getting better. I really think it's getting worse."