Trylemma's Favs of 2022

 

And a Happy New Year! 

Trylemma here to check in again for a special year-end post recapping my favorite projects of 2022. You may have heard all, some, or none, but the following are my picks for my Top 50 Favorite Projects of 2022. This year, I decided to just put them all in alphabetical order based on artist as it's getting harder to compare projects that simply fit different moods. (Small comments on select entries.) 

1. Aceyalone - Ugmosis (Amazing that Acey is still putting out fresh sounding albums)

2. All City Jimmy - Westside Boy 

3. Awol One - Happy Rebirthday

4. Backburner - Continuum

5. Blackwinterwells - Crystal Shards (A worthy project to be at the forefront of Hyperpop moving forward) 

6. Blackwinterwells - Protector

7. BRavenous - Ghosts of Rockingham 

8. Buck 65 - King Of Drums (After a couple weird releases out of retirement?, this finally sounds like a proper Buck 65 return) 

9. Cities Aviv - Man Plays Horn (One of the densest albums of the year lyrically and musically - so much here to return to) 

10. Claud Six - In Case We Shouldn't Make It

11. Cleen - Curb Servin' 22

12. The Cloaks - A Cloakwork Orange

13. Collective Efforts - The Long Way Home (Another amazing release from a thought-to-be-retired outfit)

14. CVE - We Represent Billions

15. D-Sisive - Knoblic Gardens (This is a late 2022 release, but it's already the second best project D-Sisive has ever dropped imo) 

16. Death Dealers Anonymous - Salvo

17. Def-I & Smoke - Water Edges

18. Factor - Time Invested II

19. Fantasy Camp - Casual Intimacy 

20. Fax Gang - Dataprism 

21. Gepetto - Summer Tape

22. Homeboy Sandman - I Can't Sell These (Covid is real, anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers are dumb - Sandman still manages to kill these beats) 

23. Kid Cudi - Entergalactic

24. Marrow - Fission Two

25. Memphis Reins & QM - Reign Clouds

26. Mixed Matches - Mixed Matches 

27. Mixed Matches - With You (The prettiest sounding album of the year imo) 

28. Moka Only & The SOULution - Midnight Sessions

29. Nan Fiero & Qnorapname - Attention Span (Also peep that Feo Faces EP that Fake Four dropped for free this month) 

30. Open Mike Eagle - A Tape Called Component System (The best Open Mike Eagle album since 2015 - which is very impressive) 

31. Oscar Goldman - Oscar Goldman

32. Paper Rose Haiku - Paper Rose Haiku

33. Pass - Flowers

34. RAP Ferreira - 5 To The Eyes With Stars

35. Rove - If Not Now (The mysterious Side Road OG finally drops an album, and it hits perfectly - I heard there's another one in store) 

36. $imple - Peace Or Else

37. Sadistik & Kno - Bring Me Back When The World Is Cured (I wanted to not like this album, but I failed miserably) 

38. Sahtyre & Left Brain - Gone Folder 22

39. Saskatoon Folk Rap Records - SFRR Tape (Best crew currently in rap) 

40. SB The Moor - In Babylon!

41. Sick Aura - Give Thanks

42. Skizza - Bridge City Underdog

43. Swamp Thing - Noise Machine 

44. Taylor Morgan - Nature Power (Taylor Morgan is lowkey becoming one of the best producers out there no doubt)

45. Thavius Beck - Leo (Thavius Beck? And rapping?!?!?!) 

46. Topr - Gross 

47. Wicca Phase - Full Moon Mystery Garden

48. Wool See - Cope Money (Tribute to a lost cat) 

49. Wstdyth - Meltwaterpul5e

50. Z-Man & Tahaj - Animal Slavery

And for the beat-heads and instrumental lovers out there - here's my Top 50 Instrumental Based Projects of 2022: 

1. A-Plus - Cigano Road Vol. 1

2. AG Flux - Summer In-Flux Vol. 3 

3. The Audible Doctor & J57 - 8-Bit Beat Tape

4. Awkward - The Mighty Engine

5. Daedelus - Simmers Over

6. The Dirty Sample - Beats To Murder Rappers To

7. DJ Brace and Illdigger - A Time To Remember

8. DJ Day - Life After You

9. DJ Drez - Soft Electricity

10. DJ Eons & Bad Shane - 41st And El Camino

11. Drummachinemike - Artificial Environments

12. Duke Westlake - Lucia Lodge

13. Edison - Concave Rabbit 

14. Elaquent - Long Drives To Nowhere

15. Elephant Gerald - Life Of The Party

16. Emancipator & Lapa - 11th Orbit 

17. Endemik Remote Ensemble - They Fired With Their Lives

18. Fat Jon - Plaything Cipher

19. Filthy Fingers United - World Ablaze

20. Freddie Joachim - Hiding

21. Free The Robots - Kaduwa

22. Funky DL - Lo-Fi Blue Beats

23. Grainbin - Grainbin

24. Headnodic - Junk Drawer Vol. 2

25. Jason The Argonaut - Deep Time

26. M. Fusion - The Nobom Chronicles

27. Maki - American Road Films

28. Mestizo - Water, Breath, Flesh, Food 

29. More Or Les - Beats For Bounty Hunters

30. Nickels - Duality

31. Nickels - Top Ten

32. Noblonski - Lazy Loops 4our

33. oddballTheatre - gumboTape

34. Omid - Yalda

35. Parallel Thought - Poly Rythmatic 

36. Raz Fresco - Ice Cream Cake

37. Scholarman - The Rising

38. The Shaolin Afronauts - The Fundamental Nature Of Being, Part Two

39. SignOne - Signal To Noise 5 

40. Sinitus Tempo - Journey 2 

41. Sinitus Tempo - XXXIII

42. Sully - Beyond The Construct 

43. Suff Daddy - Basically Sober

44. Theory Hazit - Lowkey LoFi

45. Thes One - Shelter In Place

46. Thndrthf - Witch Poison

47. Tone Definite - Sky Vibes Vol. 2

48. Uggish - And Now To Learn To Fish II

49. Yungmaple - Archive 1

50. Zoen - The Harvest 

Simantic - Simantic (2003)

 

 

Here's another Household Nameless release from the aforementioned mother lode I was given access to last month. Simantic is one third of Scotch Tape Portraits, the interstate collective that gave us Babel Fishh and E9ine on the beats. Simantic is an extraordinary wordsmith with beatmaking talent as well. Writes songs addressing poverty, politics and mainstream culture with a sense of humor and humility. Great stuff!

Oh and check out here for some of his newer material under the moniker Toeach Therón!

 

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Vizion - Vizion Quest (2002)

The one and only Trylemma returns!

Anyway, had a late meeting with my boss Thursday night and didn't have time to get a post ready for today. I want to upload something but truly don't have time for a proper write-up. Basically this is some Prairie rap gold from fast rapping Vizion, completely I believe produced by Factor. Enjoy!

 

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M. Phasis & Factor - Another 3 Days

 

Hello folks - Trylemma here with a special "guest" post for the end of this December week! Today's fossil is the highly obscure "Another 3 Days" EP from Canadian super-producer Factor Chandelier and Saskatoon OG M.Phasis!

Dimxsk and I recently had the chance to cop this jewel, something that we both knew about but had never heard or come across. The EP is a collaboration between Factor (who both produces and raps on the project) and M.Phasis, and is a follow up to their initial 2002 EP outing, "3 Days Later." It was one of the earliest outputs from Factor's Off Beat Productions label, which later transformed into Side Road Records (which later melded into Fake Four.) This EP was only available on small amounts of homemade CDRs at Saskatoon shows, so the rarity is real.

As a Factor stan, I was hyped just to have this thing finally. I'll admit, however, I wasn't expecting much based on the "3 Days Later" EP, which was a bit of a disjointed effort in my opinion. The songs sounded more like studio rough drafts and the samples didn't really work for me - though the entire project was created from scratch to finish in, as the title hints, 3 days. To my surprise, however, this follow up, which dropped less than a year after the original and followed the same 3 day scratch to finish format, greatly greatly improved on its predecessor. 

The songs on "Another 3 Days" sound very clean, the production is crisp, and Factor and M.Phasis really seem in pocket with both the beat selections and the instrumentals (all things that were sort of missing from the original EP.) There's some great bouncy tracks like "Better Days" (which sounds like it could have been the single off the project) and "Another Outro" that come across as joints that could have worked for Factor's collabo with Akuma, "Dawn of a New Era." There's also some really good more mellow tracks like "Doin' It" and "MF Anthem Remix" (which features one of two Kay the Aquanaut appearances on this EP and which is a much improved remix of a track from "3 Days Later") that are definitely building blocks in the staple Factor prairie sound. 

Clocking in at about 24 minutes, "Another 3 Days" is a really must listen for fans of Factor. There was actually meant to be a third installment in the 3 Days trilogy, but that unfortunately never came to be :(. Peep below for the DL! 

(BTW, I'm hoping to return to UGF in some capacity in the New Year!) 

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Dreamy Meat Cleaver - EP (2003)

 

 

Recently I was very generously given a collection of rips from the Household Nameless collective (as well as a huge selection of hip hop from the somewhat derisively termed "flyover" states.) To this charitable comrade, you know who you are, thanks!!!! And for the rest of ya'll, as per my promise going back years I will pass on anything gained from having this blog to you, our awesome readers. In that vein (Vain? Vane?), here is Dreamy Meat Cleaver!

This could not be a more interesting ensemble. We've got Babelfishh, Edison, and Samiam (as well as "Lacey" and a name written in illegible cursive that I can't decipher. Sorry if that was any of you.). It didn't take long to figure out that Samiam is Sam King, aka Lewee Regal who is absolutely dope singing or rapping with one of the most distinctive voices in the game right now. Lucky for all of us he's been working with Ceschi and Fat Mike of NOFX to put out a punk rap album that is already shaping up to be the album of the decade (save for the D.O.C.'s cringe worthy line about fingering people who probably don't want to be fingered on "Fast Ones". Damn shame too because that track is mindblowing. I'm doing my best to block that bit out.)

You can probably figure out what this is just from that list of names. It's abstract hip hop with folk punk overtones, sporting fantastic production the likes of which only Edison has ever really been capable (while that's not true it sounds good, and I do have a very high opinion of Edison's skill level as a producer).

Anyway enough from me. Enjoy!

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