It really has been a fantastic couple of weeks for music -- I think this year has already been amazing, and so many more great albums are right around the corner! I seriously already almost have my top 50 of the year and it is only March! Tomorrow is April. And May comes afterwards. We have only had three months of new music so far but I already have many favorites. I am still listening to awesome new albums by PJ Harvey, Joy Formidable, Mogwai, J Mascis, Adele, Toro Y Moi, Bright Eyes, The Twilight Singers, La Sera, Esben & the Witch, Cut Copy, Hercules & Love Affair, & Wanda Jackson! I am telling you, this is turning out to be an incredible year for music! I am absolutely in love with the new Kurt Vile and Puro Instinct. Those will most likely end up being my favorite albums of the year. It just keeps getting better. Last week we had new albums by The Strokes, Keren Ann, James Blake, Beach Fossils, & Duran Duran. This week we have the new Radiohead, Pains of Being Pure At Heart, Hunx & His Punx, Moon Duo, Josh T. Pearson & The Obits! There are new albums by Bill Callahan, Cold Cave, The Raveonettes, & The Kills next week! Later in April we have new albums by The Crystal Stilts, TV on the Radio, The Vivian Girls, Sonny & the Sunsets, The Gorillaz, Dengue Fever, Jonny, Panda Bear, & Explosions In the Sky. New Okkervil River album comes in May, and later in the year there will be new albums by Patrick Wolf, Battles, Fleet Foxes, Wild Flag, A Place To Bury Strangers, Mars Volta, M83, The Shins, & Jens Lekman!

1) Paris Acid Reflex (Guerrilla Funk/Fontana)

2) Mighty Underdogs Droppin' Science
    Fiction (Definitive Jux)

3) Murs Murs for President (Warner)

4) T.I. Paper Trail (Grand Hustle/Atlantic)

5) Black Milk Tronic (Fat Beats)

Thanks to Tunde at the Berkeley Amoeba Music for this week's Hip-Hop Top Five sales-based chart, which finds the Bay Area's own Paris in the number one slot and his thought-provoking, lyrically charged, recommended new album Acid Reflex on Guerrilla Funk/Fontana. If you missed the interview with the controversial artist when it was published last week, click here to read the Amoeblog Paris interivew.

Reactions to Barack Obama's victory on Tuesday were upbeat (to put it mildly) in hip-hop circles. Longtime Fillmore, San Francisco rapper San Quinn told Amoeblog the next day, "Hopefully with him winning it will give little black kids in America a new sense of hope to know that instead of drug dealers and rappers and basketball players and football players and many other stereotypical but true things that we choose to be, including killing off each other, that now we have a chance if we keep our slate clean to be the president of the United States."