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Kev Choice – Oakland Riviera
A classically trained pianist, emcee, bandleader, and producer who has impressively straddled the worlds of jazz, hip-hop, and classical music for over a decade now, Kev Choice came into his own this year with a musical map to his hometown. Jazzy interludes named for Oakland streets (International, MacArthur, etc.) serve as segues between tracks that feature the seemingly eternally positive Choice rapping about the gentrification of the Uptown District and other changes taking place in his beloved East Bay. The former bandleader for Lauryn Hill still plays the keys with a who's who in East Bay hip-hop (The Coup, Too $hort), but we have a feeling Oakland Riviera is only the start of his solo career, not a blip on the map. ES
Fidel Cash – Ignorant Summer (mixtape)
Besides having a hotter rap dictator name than local mainstay J "high as fuck at the taco truck" Stalin, Hunters Point MC Fidel Cash earns a nod for Ignorant Summer, an omnibus of hood swagger that casts his raspy chameleon flow over contemporary hotnesses including Drake's "Draft Day," Dej Loaf's "Try Me," and Bobby Shmurda's "Hot Nigga." As that last one suggests, Cash takes it upon himself to shine some light on the Bay Area's popularly neglected criminal underbelly, but he's neither humorless nor nihilistic about it. (Ignorant Summer is hosted, if you will, by a deeply obnoxious motivational speaker who weighs in on everything from Ray Rice to the optimal rate of salad consumption for an aspiring hustler.) Another Cash mixtape, the equally strong Poe Lil Rich Kid 2, came out earlier this year, but Summer is more dextrous, more unpredictable, more straight-up fun. May his regime live on. DLB
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