1) Nas + Damian Marley Distant Relatives  (Republic)

2) Reflection Eternal Revolutions Per Minute (Blacksmith/Rawkus/Warner Brothers)

3) Madlib Madlib Medicine Show #5-History of the Loop Digga-1990-2000 (Stones Throw)

4) Andre Nickatina Khan! The Me Generation (I-Khan Dist)

5) Devin The Dude Suite 420 (Koch)

Thanks to Inti at the Berkeley Amoeba Music store for this week's Weekly Hip-Hop Top Five Chart. It picks up where last week's San Francisco Amoeba chart left off, with continued Amoeba love being shown for LA producer extraordinaire Madlib and his ongoing twelve-part Medicine Show series, the hip-hop super-duo Reflection Eternal (producer Hi-Tek and emcee Talib Kweli), who had a memorable instore performance at Amoeba San Francisco May 24th, and the ground-breaking new Distant Relatives project, which is number one for the second straight week on the Amoeba hip-hop charts. Packed with an uplifting message of empowerment and clearly a work of activism through music, the son of Bob Marley, Jamaica's Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley, and the son of jazz musician Olu Dara Jones and hip-hop icon in his own right, Nas, join creative forces with pitch perfect results. Distant Relatives, which can be bought online from Amoeba at a reduced cost, is a reggae meets hip-hop album that never sounds forced. A project that undoubtedly will be raved about for a some time to come, Distant Relatives tackles pertinent issues about the continent of Africa. What is most impressive, though, is that the two artists manage to do so in a forcefully coherent but never overbearing way.

1) E40 Revenue Retrievin'- Day Shift (Heavy on the Grind Ent.)

2) E40 Revenue Retrievin'- Night Shift (Heavy on the Grind Ent.)

3) The Young Jazz Rebels Slave Riot (Stones Throw)

4) Madlib Medicine Show 3-Beat Konducta in Africa (Stones Throw)

5) Murs & 9th Wonder Fornever (SMC Recordings)

E40, aka Forty Wata, aka E-Feezy, aka the long reigning King of Bay Rap, is riding high with his latest two-part Shifts, the pair of simultaneously released CDs Revenue Retrievin'- Day Shift and Revenue Retrievin'- Night Shift (both on Heavy on the Grind Ent.) which for the third week in a row top the Amoeba Music Hip-Hop Charts. After two weeks of riding high at the San Francisco and Hollywood charts, this week the longtime Vallejo rapper locks down the number one and two spots at Amoeba Music Berkeley. The Bay Area has always supported E40 over the past two decades, both as a solo artist and with and his extended family group The Click, although I remember back in the very early days how some hip-hop fans just couldn't get their heads around E40's most unusual rapid pace flow, peppered with his homemade language (slanguage), unlike anything anyone had heard at the time. At first, I remember, it is mainly the younger kids who really dug "Mr Flamboyant" and other early tracks from this unique wordsmith. But by the mid 90's, when 40 and The Click were signed to Jive, most everyone else had caught up with his trademark rap style. By sticking to who he is artistically, E40 has proven that the key to success is to always be yourself. By so doing you are setting the trends, not following them, and end up sticking around a lot longer.

1) E40 Revenue Retrievin'- Day Shift (Heavy on the Grind Ent.)

2) E40 Revenue Retrievin'- Night Shift (Heavy on the Grind Ent.)

3) Madlib Medicine Show 3-Beat Konducta in Africa (Stones Throw)

4) Meth, Ghost & Rae Wu Massacre (Def Jam)

5) DonWill Don Cusack in High Fidelity (Interdependent Media)

In both the number 1 and 2 chart positions this week on the San Francisco Amoeba Music Hip-Hop Chart is longtime Bay Area rap artist E-40 with the his simultaneously released pair of CDs titled Revenue Retrievin' Day Shift  and Revenue Retrievin' Night Shift. Released this past Tuesday, both the Day Shift and Night Shift parts shot to the top of the chart partly in response to the well received lead off single/video "The Weed Man (feat. Stressmatic)" (see video below). Other guests who join the pioneering, "slanguage" making Vallejo wordsmith on the new two part CD series include such known names as Snoop Dogg, Too Short,  Mistah F.A.B., Ya Boy, Laroo, Dru Down, The DBz, Turf Talk, The Jacka, Gucci Mane, B-Legit, Mike Marshall, Suga T, J. Valentine, Droop-E, Mac Shawn and Clyde Carson & Husalah of Mob Figaz, who appear together on the song ""Lightweight Jammin'" which is on the Day Shift volume of the two CDs. As usual, Forty Water keeps it true to the Bay with all of those local artists joining him throughout the two CDs, which total up 38 new tracks --19 on each CD.

Back in '88, during hip-hop's so-called 'golden age,' for some magnificant reason damn near every rap release that came out was an instant classic: records like Marley Marl's "The Symphony," Eric B & Rakim's "Follow The Leader," EPMD's "Strictly Business," Too Short's "Life Is...Too Short," and of course Sir-Mix-a-Lot's "Posse on Broadway." 

A single off the famed Seattle rapper's debut album Swass on Nastymix Records, Sir Mix-a-Lot's song struck a nerve with rap fans everywhere at the time firstly because of the great lyrics and the track's 808 kick-drum fueled sick beat, and secondly because listeners made the song lyrics relate to their own town's Broadway -- whether they were in New York or San Francisco or wherever.

Of course, the Broadway in "Posse On Broadway" was the one in Mix-a-Lot's (born Anthony Ray) own hometown of Seattle in the Capitol Hill district, the one were they "stopped at Taco Bell for some Mexican eatin' But Taco Bell was closed, The girls was on my tip. They said go back the other way we'll stop and eat at Dick's. Dick's is the place where the cool hang out. The Swass like to play and the rich flaunt clout. Posse to he burger stand so big we walk in twos." (Scroll down to see full song lyrics.)

                    


1) Kid Cudi Man On The Moon: The End of Day (Motown / Pgd)

2) KRS-ONE & Buckshot Survival Skills (Duck Down)

3) Drake So Far Gone (Cash Money)

4) M.O.P. The Foundation (E1 Entertainment)

5) Q-Tip Kamaal the Abstract (Battery Records)

6) Nicolay City Lights 2 - Shibuya (Hard Boiled Records)

7) New Boyz Skinny Jeanz & A Mic (Asylum Records)

8) DJ Fresh The Tonite Show (The Album) (Town Thizzness)

9) DJ Shadow Diminishing Returns (Reconstruction Productions)

10) Young Cellski/aka 2Took Mr Predicter (Inner City 2000)