As the remaining minutes of 2007 are suddenly ticking off way too fast for comfort (we hardly knew ye, etc.), the year-end lists are splintering into the minutiae of genre and sub-genre and even format, and
New York's list of the ten best hip-hop mixtapes of the year, compiled by dependable rap (and otherwise) crit Chris Ryan in the "the year [mixtapes] were nearly broken" by tape impresario DJ Drama's bust by the feds at the beginning of the year, is a nice change-of-Christmas-shopping-list from the Year-End Analysis routine. Having only heard five of them, I can't exactly start asking "the whaaaa?" or talking shit about some Stack Bundles (R.I.P.) tape I've never laid ears on. So though I can vouch for the quality of, say, No. 8 pick
Geek'd Up Music by Fabo and Young Dro (and I'm pretty sure dead relatives have heard
Da Drought 3 at this point), perhaps members of the peanut gallery who've made multiple trips to their local mixtape spot this year can offer independent assessment on these ten.
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Idolator
This nearly-eight-minute remix of Lloyd's "All Around The World" is pretty much an excuse for every MC on the track—The Game, T.I., Busta Rhymes, Rick Ross, Pitbull, Ace Hood, Yung Joc, Young Dro, and DJ Khaled—to rap over the "Ashley's Roachclip" beat. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the best parts of it are the parts where Lloyd's smooth falsetto from 
In the current climate of ruthless blog scrutiny, good records can easily disappear with little or no press and supposedly major albums are forgotten within weeks of release. With that in mind, we bring you Second Spin, where we'll take a look at records that have either slipped between the hype cracks or re-evaluate albums after the press cycle has left them for dead. (The occasional just-released rave may sneak in there, too.) This time we look at 51 tracks of "grindpop" from some Brooklyn art-punks, 20 tracks of grind minus the pop from two Seattle misanthropes, and 25 tracks of hardcore hip-hop from an ATLien with a very different definition of "grind."
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