• Lil Wayne's I Am Not a Human Being is a 12-song EP slated to drop September 27. It features Nicki Minaj, Drake, and a song called "Gonorrhea." Weezy will "start from scratch" on Carter IV.
  
• Speaking of Young Money's proudest disciples, Nicki is on the cover of Complex this month, while Rolling Stone got in touch with Drake.
• Nas to drop another batch of Lost Tapes on December 14.
  
• Bink, the overlooked Blueprint producer, talked to Vibe about how he still, in fact, exists.  
  
• Kanye West to haters: "If I'm a douche, put me in your coochie." Kanye will likewise open the new season of Saturday Night Live as its musical guest
• Jay-Z and Coldplay will co-headline a New Year's Eve show in in Las Vegas.
• MF Doom dropped a badass concert album, Expektoration...Live.
• ATG previews Saturday's Virgin Mobile FreeFest, looks forward to Ludacris and T.I.
  

Already back for seconds, ATG's favorite multi-culti MCs follow up the well-received Shut Up, Dude with the similarly titled Sit Down, Man. This time around, their growing profile has seen higher billed producers join the fold, including Boi 1da, Devo Springsteen, Teengirl Fantasy and the duo's longtime dream collaborator, Diplo. Features have been upgraded as well, with El-P and Chairlift stopping by with assists (Do I even need to point out that those two would never be featured together on any other record ever?). 

The biggest summer hit of 2009 was from an unknown Canadian breaking hearts without an album. This year found its cultural cornerstones scored by big rap songs from big rap albums. Whereas summer '09 became book-ended with would be comebacks from Raekwon and Eminem, 2010 hip-hop has seen its brightest stars converging on the opportunity to top charts. Drake sold nearly half a million in a week. Em over 700,000 copies of his sober, wordy work. I heard Rick Ross's Teflon Don blaring from four separate outlets (car, truck, nice car, loudspeaker) on one August night walking between Bloomingdale to the New York Avenue metro, and through to Dupont Circle.

Detecting an inviting climate, second tier rappers like Paul Wall and Guilty Simpson and Curren$y got their songs carbon manifestations available in stores and moved away from the tired formula of converging with stupid blogs to build buzz. M.I.A. sort of crashed and burned after a high profile New York Times piece tore into her guarded public image and reviews of her third album soured after the near-comic level of blind fanaticism that blanketed her old stuff.

Interesting comebacks surfaced: white people loved Big Boi's return to form. Rhymefest, after teasing El Che for three years, finally got a chance to see another commercial release tank miserably. Bun B's otherwise regional release elevated to national news when The Source awarded Trill O.G. its once prestigious five microphone rating. The last five mic rating this eroding-in-relevance rag handed out? Lil Kim's The Naked Truth. The award did lead rap fans down warm memories of how fraudulent and stupid The Source has been since the late '90s.

With the climate covered, ATG prepped a list of top summer albums. But the writers split over finalists while carb loading at Tom's Restaurant Monday night. This before transferring colors and taking trains out to Yankee Stadium, where most of the list hung out and exchanged anthems behind unifying, bright colors and sunglasses at night. The tight-knit fraternity became, for better or worse, an indistinguishable mob of hitmakers. So, here are the songs that got me through the move, the heat, the job search.


J. Cole - Villematic

Nas - Last Real Nigga Alive, Pt. 2 (Power, Paper, Pussy)

Drake featuring Jay-Z - Light Up

Ron Isley featuring Lauryn Hill - Close to You (Cover)

Yelawolf - Looking For Alien Love

Big K.R.I.T. featuring Yelawolf - Hometown Hero (remix)

Blu - So Perfect

Yelawolf featuring Gucci Mane - Wanna Party

Trek Life - Ready to Live

Rick Ross featuring Jay-Z, John Legend - Free Mason

Curren$y - Breakfast
 
Eminem - Cinderella Man

Badio - Kiss the Sky

Big Boi featuring Andre 3000 - Lookin' For Ya


Now back to mid-September.

Right on schedule. For this edition, J. Couch and I break down the divisions into separate nuggets of streaming files. This way, you don't have to sit through a 50-minute podcast. Even if said podcast culminates with a perfect Super Bowl matchup, as ours did in 2009. We'll do the AFC on Tuesday, the NFC on Wednesday, roll out big predictions and playoff trees Thursday.


Today, a thorough examination of the NFC which stands for "Notably Finer Cities." There's Kansas City, Cincinnati, Jacksonville, Cleveland; then there's Seattle, New York City, Chicago, Atlanta. I'd much rather live in San Francisco than Oakland. The AFC boasts the two best quarterbacks, the best defenses and the overall better football culture, but its best teams stem from Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, and Foxborough. All this without making a Cleveland or Buffalo joke about ugly women.

Good thing football is big enough for the relative disparity in resources and population to mean little. Any other sport, the Packers moved to Orlando decades ago. But I digress, enjoy our considerately arranged podcasts.

NFC West

NFC South

NFC North

NFC East

Right on schedule. For this edition, J. Couch and I break down the divisions into separate nuggets of streaming files. This way, you don't have to sit through a 50-minute podcast. Even if said podcast culminates with a perfect Super Bowl matchup, as ours did in 2009. We'll do the AFC on Tuesday, the NFC on Wednesday, roll out big predictions and playoff trees Thursday.


One in three American televisions tuned into the NFC Championship; Brett Favre against America's Sweethearts in January and the Greek tragedy that unfolded. There are likely several million stories of drunk goons stumbling home and elated fans falling in love and the dying wishes of elders being fulfilled. A watershed game in the only sport that suffocates our attention span. A galvanizing moment.

I was just happy to see Brad Childress lose. Some friends were watching down the street and two of the bigger personalities put $50 on the game and the broadcast yielded to an enormous pissing contests between rivaling, would-be alpha males. One guy chanted "who dat" to no end. Words were exchanged. He was left at a Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Around here, there's no better sport to follow. A perfectly-structured league that offers cyclical hope to every participant and its sympathizers, that culminates with satisfying and empirical endings. A game devoid of major controversies polluting the results we see with doubt; we can talk ourselves into reasonably believing as much at least. A game built for gambling. A game for the weekends. A game for the brown leaves, for the blizzards. A game for once-in-a-lifetime celebrations. A game for picking up where we left off: Saints-Vikings, Cowboys on the cusp, San Diego hoping to not choke away another home playoff game, Carolina finishing strong and for their lameduck coach. A game for new beginnings: estranged protege Aaron Rodgers facing the mentor, Detroit in capable hands, Mike Martz draining the genius part from his crazy genius moniker.

Onward to predictions!

AFC West

AFC South

AFC North

AFC East

Reggie penned his first feature for The Awl Wednesday afternoon. It's a categorical analysis of celebrity offenses and their respective roads to public redemption. It's a fairly shallow analysis but the graphic is cool and as a blog post, it kicks ass.

Congrats bro.

I caught up with Prince George's County's Oddisee and West Covina, California's Trek Life just as their collaborative LP, Everything Changed Nothing, hit stores. It's a well-pieced effort worth your time.

Check out the interview in the City Paper.

Sort of. Spoke to Donwill for the Washington City Paper, previewing this weekend's Tanya Morgan show.

Read.

Your monthly run down of new, trending bangers, jams and slow jams. Photo by Callie Richmond for AThousandGrams.


Big K.R.I.T. featuring Yelawolf - Hometown Hero (Remix)

Southern home cooking via rising, well-received rappers from Tennessee and Alabama.


Charles Hamilton - Kat Stacks

The introspective, isolated Hamilton pops up from a semi-absence, raps impressively over a jacked beat and releases five mixtapes at once.


Drake - Do It All

Fresh rap from the genre's biggest summer star, set for some bullshit compilation.


John Legend, The Roots featuring Common - Wake Up Everybody

Legend and The Roots are making an album together, this is the first taste.


Kid Cudi featuring Kanye West - Erase Me

Once you get over fact Cudi's latest is not a rap song in any way, it's an agreeable little number.


Rich Boy featuring Drake, Lloyd - To The Floor

Nice slow burner for last call. I've always found Lloyd's insistence on going by his unremarkable first name to be a career obstacle. There has to be gravitas behind first name solo artists. You'll never hear, "we got a fresh new joint from Frank."


Rick Ross featuring Chrisette Michele, Drake - Aston Martin Music (Extended Mix)
Rick Ross featuring Raekwon - Audio Meth

The two best holdovers from Teflon Don. I'm telling you, the best album of the summer thus far. Recovery is a masterpiece but it's too thick and layered for a season when you need quick cuts between errands.