In New York City this weekend there's a real treat in store for scratch DJs and fans of scratching and hip-hop DJ battles. Tomorrow (Saturday Aug 4th) the 2012 DMC US Finals National DJ Battle is taking place at Le Poisson Rouge in the Village. The winner of this anticipated DJ battle will go onto London, England next month to represent the US in the 2012 DMC World DJ Championships on September 28th. This Sunday (Aug 5th) in New York at the same Bleecker Street club will be the 2012 Grand Master Roc Raida Memorial Gong DJ Battle - bearing the name of the much loved X-ecutioner DJ who began the event years before he passed on in 2009. And to top things off for this NYC DJ weekend, that is been dubbed Ultimate DJ Battle Weekend, later today (Aug 3rd) will be the DubSpot Stylus Sessions # 2. Curated & produced by turntablist scholar John Carluccio this event will be video streamed live from the West 14th Street DJ school's headquarters.

At tomorrow's big US DMC battle, where competing DJs from all round the nation  will include DJ Sol Rising who won the 2012 Bay Area DMC Regional Battle back in April, the host will once again be the ever funny & entertaining Lord Finesse (of D.I.T.C. fame) while the Bay Area's DJ Snayk Eyez,  who is the 2001 DMC US Supremacy Champion, will do be among three DJs doing a special turntable routine performance. The others will be legendary 1986 DMC World Champion holder DJ Cheese, who after a long absence is back performing and recording over the past couple of years, and DJ Total Eclipse of The X-ecutioners. Meanwhile DJ Spictakular of the legendary Allies DJ crew will be doing a long partyrocking series of sets throughout the day long event that begins at 2pm and ends by 930pm tomorrow.

The Beastie Boys, Run DMC, LL Cool J, Whodini, and Jam Master Jay solo set all on the one bill? Wow! What a line-up that was for that historic hip-hop show at Philly's Spectrum Stadium back in July of 1986. This cool collectible item (a reproduction poster 14" by 22" that is printed on heavy cardboard) is just one of the many posters for sale from Amoeba - both in store and online from the Amoeba.com shop. Click here to find out more about purchasing it and click here for listings of more posters to buy from Amoeba's online store. The numerous posters on sale at Amoeba include rare, vintage, and current posters and include many genres of music including lots of rock and soul.

Rap/hip-hop artist posters at the online store include a cool 2Pac 1971 - 1996 poster, a 2Pac and Snoop poster, a Drake poster, an NWA The World's Most Dangerous Group poster, and both a Notorious B.I.G. commemorative poster and a BIggie Ready To Die poster. Please note that the amount of hip-hop posters online at Amoeba.com is relatively few in comparison to the range available in the three Amoeba stores.

1) Black Milk Album of the Year (Fat Beats)

2) Eminem Recovery (Aftermath, Interscope, Shady)

3) The Roots How I Got Over (Def Jam)

4) Big Boi Sir Lucious Left Foot... The Son of Chico Dusty (Def Jam)

5) Black Eyed Peas The E.N.D. (Interscope)

Thanks to Ricky Ray Rivere at the Hollywood Amoeba Music for this week's hip-hop top chart, which features some releases that have been out for a minute -- most notably the still-going-strong Black Eyed Peas' summer 2009 album The E.N.D. "It's a singles driven market," noted Ricky, adding that the Peas "always have a current hit single it seems." One of the newer chart entries is Black Milk's recently released follow up album to Tronic, the twelve track Album of the Year on Fat Beats that most people seem to be feeling.

Last Sunday, Sept. 19th, 2010, marked the one-year anniversary of the tragic death of New York DJ extraordinaire Roc Raida of the X-Men/X-Ecutioners fame. He was a much loved champion DJ & gifted turntablist (and really nice guy). The occasion has been marked by many over the past week both online and in the clubs.

Released last Tuesday, The Architect by DJ/producer Rob Swift (X-Men, X-Ecutioners, Ill Insanity) has been selling well at Amoeba Music. At the San Francisco store it charted at number three last week on the latest Top Five Chart. Put out by Mike Patton on his Ipecac Recordings, The Architect is the latest in a string of solo releases from the prolific turntable artist, who for this latest release constructed and modeled the album like a classical music composition.

In fact, The Architect is an ambitious project, even for an artist like Swift, who has made a career out of pushing the envelope with his innovative turntable-as-instrument recordings. The Architect, which he dedicated to his former X-Ecutioners band-mate Roc Raida, who died last year, is an excellent recording that raises the bar on turntablist/scratch albums.

I recently caught up with Rob Swift to ask him about the new album and how it came into being. "In June of 2008 I was in my bathroom shaving and my girlfriend, her name is Tess, walked into the bathroom and was like, 'I want you to listen to something. So she set up her iPod and little speakers and played a piece by Chopin for me. I forget what piece it was but I remember being blown away and been really touched and moved by this music I was listening to," he recalled. "So I finished shaving and came out of the bathroom and I was like, Tess you gotta play me more of that music. What is it? And she started to explain to me about classical music. And the funny thing is that all of us have been exposed to classical music at one time or another, whether in a movie or at Macy's in an elevator, or if you're watching commercials. So as much exposure as I have had to the genre of classical music, I don't think my mind and my heart was ready to accept it. But for some reason on that day in my bathroom, my heart was ready to embrace this genre."

1) FELT FELT 3: A Tribute to Rosie Perez (Rhymesayers)

2) Rakim The Seventh Seal (Ra Records)

3) Gift of Gab Escape 2 Mars (Cornerstone/RAS)

4) Edan Echo Party (Traffic Entertainment)

5)  Cellski Chef Boy Cellski: Culinary Arts Institutiion (Inner City 2k)




6) Messy Marv Draped Up and Chipped Out Vol 4 (Click Clack Records)

7) Sean Price Kimbo Price (Vision Mktg)

8) Fatgums X Bambu ...A Peaceful Riot (Gamma Gums Music/Beat Rock)

9) Wale Attention Deficit (Interscope Records/Allido Records)

10) OC & AG Oasis (Nature Sounds)

Thanks for this Thanksgiving week's Hip-Hop Top Ten chart go out to Luis at Amoeba Music San Francisco, where the number one new release is the highly recommended, Aesop Rock produced third release in the FELT series (featuring Slug of Atmosphere & Murs of Living Legends), FELT 3: A Tribute to Rosie Perez, which was written about here when it was number two on last week's hip-hop chart at Amoeba Berkeley. And this week's number two comes from perhaps the most influential and respected (particularly by other artists) hip-hop emcee of all time, Rakim, who has just released his latest solo album The Seventh Seal.  As immediately proven by the album's Rakim as Grim Reaper cover art, The Seventh Seal takes its title from the dark 1957 classic film of the same name by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. In the movie, a medieval knight confronts the meaning of life, death, and the existence of God as he plays chess with the personification of Death -- the Grim Reaper.