1) Lil Wayne  The Carter IV (Cash Money/Universal)

2) Blu & Exile Below The Heavens (Sound In Color)

3)   Candy's 22 A Girl and Her Gun
                   (Grimm Image Records)

4) Qwazaar & Batsauce Bat Meets Blaine
          (Galapagos4)

5) Blu Jesus (Nature Sounds)

Thanks to E-Lit at the Amoeba Berkeley store for the latest Top 5 Hip-Hop chart plus overview of what's new and what's hot in his opinion. These include two of the E-Lit's favorite releases for all of 2011; Qwazaar & Batsauce's Bat Meets Blaine on Galapagos4, and Astronautalis' This Is Our Science in whose indie rock meets hip-hop hybrid E-Lit hears traces of both Tom Waits and Nick Cave. Other new/recent releases of E-Lit's include Oddisee's Rock Creek Park (Mello Music) which is named after an area in the now Brooklyn, NY based Washington DC artist's home, and Otayo Dubb's Cold Piece Of Work. This San Francisco Bay Area MC, who is part of the Beatrock Music collective is teaming up with Equipto tonight for a double record release party - combined they've dubbed themselves EQUIPTOTAYO. As you'll recall about five weeks back San Francisco's ever prolific Equipto (known for his solo work, longtime membership of Bored Stiff, and collaboration series with Andre Nickatina) had an Amoeba San Francisco instore for his just dropped latest solo album, Ilyich.