1) Big K.R.I.T. Live From The Underground (Island/Def Jam)

2) Curren$y The Stoned Immaculate (Warner Brothers)

3) Casual He Still Think He Raw (Hieroglyphics Imperium)

4) The Jacka The Sentence ( Siccness)

5)  El-P Cancer4Cure (Fat Possum)

As outlined in both the chart and accompanying video above with E-Lit at Amoeba Berkeley, the new number one on the Amoeba Hip-Hop chart is the major label Def Jam/Island debut from the phenomenally popular Southern mic wrecker Big K.R.I.T. Live From The Underground. The arrival of this guest heavy album, including the surprise guest spot by blues legend BB King, follows hot on the heels of a series of mixture reissues such as Return of 4Eva from the Mississippi MC that fans can't seem to get enough of. Another artist that commands a diehard following is prolific Bay Area rapper The Jacka who returns to the Amoeba chart this week with The Sentence, which as E-Lit notes, is the final/third part of his ongoing rap trilogy. 

1) The Throne (Jay-Z & Kanye West)
     Watch The Throne (Def Jam) 

2) Lil Wayne  Tha Carter IV (Cash Money/Universal)

3) The Throne (Jay-Z & Kanye West) Watch the Throne - Deluxe
    (Def Jam) 

4) Lil Wayne  Tha Carter IV Deluxe (Cash Money/Universal)

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

This week's hip-hop five chart from the Amoeba Hollywood store proves that the big names (Weezy, Kanye, & Jay-Z) are holding their own with both Lil Wayne's Tha Carter IV and Jay-Z & Kanye West's Watch The Throne both still holding down top slots in not just the regular CD versions but also the Deluxe versions of each release. 
Speaking of Lil Wayne, the artist who was recently incarcerated at Rikers for 8 months, does not seem to have lost any momentum at all in his ever rising career. The latest achievement for Weezy is being placed in the 2012 Guinness Book Of World Records for having the most US Hot 100 hits. Over the past decade the artist has had an astounding 60+ tracks that entered the Hot 100 chart.  This will not be the rapper's first time in the Guinness Book Of World Records. He previously got inducted for having the most “likes” on Facebook in one 24 hour period. Also charting on the Top Five this week at the Los Angeles store is Blu & Exile's sleeper hit Below The Heavens.
 

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. 

2009 was another good year for Bay Area rap/hip-hop, with a string of new releases dropping over the past twelve months, including the thirty four full-length releases listed below. Appearing in no particular order, these choices are based mainly on releases culled from the Amoeba Music San Francisco Weekly Hip-Hop charts compiled by Luis at the Haight Street store over the past year. Not every single Bay Area hip-hop release is included here (feel free to nominate any worthy omissions in the comments below), but many of them are, and they give a good sense of the vibrant Bay Area music scene for the year of 2009.

Three albums appeared on early 2009 Amoeba Hip-Hop charts but did not make the list below since they technically were each 2008 releases (released late last year):  E40's The Ball Street Journal, released on Sic Wid It and distributed through Warner Brothers; San Quinn's From A Boy To A Man (SMC/Fontana); and Keak da Sneak & San Quinn's Welcome To Scokland on Ehustl, which combined the best of "the Sco" (San Francisco) with the "O" (Oakland) on an album that was extremely popular in the Bay in '09.

North Oakland rapper Mistah F.A.B. may not have released a new solo album in 2009 but he did pop up on countless other artists' releases over the past year, including most recently on The Grouch's just released Three Eyes Off The Time. Mistah F.A.B  appears on the CD track "Already" with hella popular Fresno emcee Fashawn. F.A.B. also appeared on Fashawn's critically & commercially acclaimed official debut album, following a string of mixtapes, Boy Meets World on Loud, which was a hit at all three Amoebas. Mistah F.A.B. also released joint full-length projects in 2009 with both the Alchemist and Glasses Malone, with whom he unleashed The Sideshow CD.

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.