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.

Bay Area hip-hop got much love in the Big Apple over this past weekend when both Andre Nickatina and Zion I & The Grouch (aka Z&G), who headlined concerts at NYC's Highline Ballroom and Knitting Factory respectively, had the packed venues loudly & appreciatively showing much love for the Bay Area.

Sunday night at the Highline, in Manhattan's Chelsea district, longtime San Francisco rapper Andre Nickatina stopped the music and led the packed house in a back-and-forth chant of "Mac Dre, Mac Dre." Throughout the rest of the excellent show, for which up-and-coming SF rapper Roach Gigz opened, he had the supercharged audience (many donning SF Giants hats) singing along to the lyrics of songs such as "Killa Whale." Two nights earlier over in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Zion I & The Grouch similarly had the packed Knitting Factory crowd (many clearly Bay Area transplants) singing along in unison to the Zion I Bay Area hip-hop anthem "The Bay."

"It's like being at a rap show in San Francisco," enthused one Andre Nicatina fan Sunday night in New York as the artist formerly known as Dre Dog launched into one of his newer songs, the title track of his recent album My Middle Name is Crime, a collaborative full-length with The Jacka (with the absent Jacka's verses played back on tape).

1) Eminem Recovery (Aftermath, Interscope, Shady)

2)  Skyzoo & Illmind Live From The Tape Deck (Duck Down Music)

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

4) Waka Flocka Flame Flockaveli  (So Icey Ent./Asylum Records)

5) Gucci Mane The Appeal: Georgia's Most Wanted (So Icey Ent./Asylum Records)

New releases on the latest hip-hop top five chart from the Hollywood Amoeba Music store include both Gucci Mane's third & latest (and best) album to date The Appeal: Georgia's Most Wanted and the anticipated debut from Mane's protege, Waka Flocka Flame, which surprisingly does not disappoint. Note this rapper's cameos to date had been kinda lackluster and the subject of much dissing on the Internet. (If you haven't heard it, check out the Shawt Bus Shawty parody that spoofs him, Gucci, etc.) Titled Flockaveli (no doubt in a nod to 2Pac's Makeveli), the 23 year old Waka Flocka Flame (known round the dinner table at home as Juaquin Malphurs) is part of the popular Atlanta based So Icey Boyz (signed to Gucci Mane's So Icey Entertainment) and also is a member of Gucci's Brick Squad. Waka appeared on Gucci Mane's last album, 2009's The State vs. Radric Davis. Also last year he created a buzz with his mixtape Shoot Me Or Salute Me. The title would prove to be darkly ironic considering that the rapper was shot some months later (January this year) in a roadside robbery when he stopped at a car wash on National Highway in GA. 

Yesterday super-talented, longtime Oakland hip-hop group Zion I headed out on the road for the beginning of an intensive two-month tour in support of their soon-to- drop new album Atomic Clock on Gold Dust Media which will be arriving in Amoeba Music on its November 9th release date.  To download an advance free copy of the new album track "Many Stylez" featuring Rebulution (with whom they are out on tour with)_ click here. Yesterday while en route to the airport for the kickoff of the intensive Zion I tour (approx 40 dates over the next eight weeks).

I caught up with the hard working duo's emcee Zumbi to ask him about his and musical partner/producer Amp Live's latest album, which is their seventh full-length. I wondered how lyrically Atomic Clock is different from past Zion I releases, in particular their last album, The Takeover (Gold Dust), that dropped back in early 2009. "It's different from The Takeover because on The Takeover it was, I would say, a very conscientious process, like revising a lot of the record. Like I wrote [the song] "Antenna" about four or five times. There was just a lot of thought about every aspect of that record, like editing little phrasing and a lot of hook editing over and over again, just different phases of redoing the songs," he recalled.

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

2) Slaughterhouse self-titled (E1 Entertainment)

3) Mos Def Ecstatic (Downtown)

4) Dudley Perkins Holy Smokes (1 AM APPROACH)

5) Mr Capone-E Diary of a G (Hi Power Entertainment / KOCH)

At the Amoeba Music Hollywood store this week many of the same best sellers from the past several weeks are still holding strong in the sales charts, with the Black Eyed Peas' latest The E.N.D. locking down the number one position. Meanwhile, up north in the San Francisco Amoeba Music store, Luis reports that among the new local Bay Area releases to arrive on Amoeba SF's shelves this week include Lyrics Born's Variety Show Vol 4 on Mobile Home Recordings, whose 22 tracks include guest spots from such fellow Quannum acts as Lateef the Truthspeaker,The Gift of Gab, and Joyo Velarde. Also just arriving into Amoeba SF this week is The Grouch/Instant Messengers affiliated hometown emcee Alexander Spit, whose new full-length CD Open 24 Hours is sponsored by the hip-hop clothing company The Hundreds.