1) Ghostface Killah Apollo Kids (Def Jam)

2) Andre Nickatina & Tha Jacka My Middle Name Is Crime EP (I-Khan Distribution)

3) Kanye West My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam)

4) David Banner & 9th Wonder Death of a Pop Star (b.i.G.f.a.c.e. / Entertainment One Music)

5) Kid Cudi Man On The Moon 2: The Legend of Mr. Rager (Universal/Motown) 

Shout out to Luis at the San Francisco Amoeba store for supplying this week's top five chart. Since it's the first week of the new year, the chart entries are all late 2010 releases, with all but Kid Cudi and Kanye West dropping in December. Both Wu Tang Clan member Ghostface Killah's recommended, classic soul fueled Apollo Kids (Def Jam), which I wrote about in last week's Hip-Hop Rap Up, and David Banner & 9th Wonder's Death of a Pop Star (b.i.G.f.a.c.e. / Entertainment One Music) each dropped on December 21st and despite their release date (a period when typically albums get lost in the holiday madness) fans have managed to discover both wonderful releases.



While on the surface the pairing of mainstream rapper/producer David Banner with less mainstream North Carolina producer 9th Wonder might seem like an unlikely match, it is not. Banner's history dates back to Crooked Lettaz, his late nineties group that preceded his major label mainstream successes with such hits as "Play" and "Like A Pimp." And with this release, on which he has wisely fully relinquished all production duties to 9th Wonder, he marks a return to his roots. Deliberately titled Death of a Pop Star, Banner has connected with the smaller scale label Entertainment One (aka e One) -- formerly Koch -- in order to maintain more creative control (something he claims he did not have with the bigger labels).

1) Cee Lo Green The Lady Killer (Elektra Records)

2) Kanye West My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam)
 
3) Ghostface Killah Apollo Kids (Def Jam)
 
4) Michael Franti & Spearhead The Sound of Sunshine (Capital)

5) Andre Nickatina & Tha Jacka My Middle Name Is Crime EP (I-Khan Distribution)

Special thanks to Amoeba Berkeley's DJ Inti, whose year end list is posted on Amoeblog, for this final Amoeba hip-hop chart of the year. "Due to the holiday shopping rush, some releases that haven't shown up in a while show a spike in sales," Inti told me, explaining that the Michael Franti/Spearhead album released back in early summer is back on the top five for the Telegraph Avenue store. Meanwhile, the more recently released albums from both Kanye and Cee Lo continue to sell well and likely will into 2011. Speaking of Kanye, a leaked version of the new video for his album track "Monster" surfaced earlier today on several sites including YouTube. Click here to see the video/song that features Jay-Z, Nicki Minaj, and Rick Ross but be forewarned that the audio quality is poor.

New hip-hop releases at Amoeba, as in albums dropping over the past week or two, include both Ghostface Killah's impressive new solo release and Andre Nickatina & The Jacka's collaborative EP release, My Middle Name Is Crime, on Nickatina's I-Khan Distribution label. The 8 song release from these two much celebrated Bay Area rappers follows their series of singles together. 

1) Ghostface Killah Ghostdini: The Wizard of Poetry in Emerald City (Def Jam)

2) Crown CIty Rockers The Day After Forever (Gold Dust Media)

3) Jay-Z The Blueprint 3 (Roc Nation/Atlantic)

4) Raekwon Only Built 4 Cuban Links Pt II (ICEAL)

5) Brother Ali Us (Rhymesayers)

Thanks for this week's Amoeba Music Hip-Hop Top Five chart go out to Tom at the Berkeley store where, in addition to updating the Amoeblog on the top selling new hip-hop albums, he reports that, as of yesterday,  the Telegraph Ave. store has, "got all the Halloween decorations up and it looks mighty spooky." What's spooky to me is how quickly the summer just flew by and the fact that it's almost Halloween again. Dang! Time really does fly. Case in point is Ghostface Killah -- it seems like it's only been a few years since the Wu-Tang Clan rapper dropped his first solo release, Ironman, but actually that release came out thirteen long hip-hop years ago, in 1996! His latest album, Ghostdini: The Wizard of Poetry in Emerald City on Def Jam, which is this week's number hip-hop release at Amoeba, is actually the eighth solo release from the Wu rapper, who took his name from the 1979 kung fu film Mystery of Chessboxing.