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.

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.