Hip Hop Leaders of the New School

So in with the new out with the old as we saw the golden age of  hip hop (80’s Run Dmc, NWA, LL Cool J, Beatie Boys, Big Daddy Kane Rakim, Eric B, Slick Rick, Grand Master Flash KRS One) era come to an end at the arrival of the platinum age (Snoop, Tupac, Jay-z, Wu-Tang, Biggie, Eminem, Common, Nas, Busta Rhymes, Redman, Outkast, ) era .

Golden Era

Platinum Era

Run Dmc & Beastie Boys Producer Rick Rubin with Jay-z in the Studio

Golden and Platinum Era Mashup

The New Wave

We are now witnessing the end of the platinum era of Hip Hop as most of the key players are now going on into their 40s and only a very few are still relevant and active (Jay-z, Eminem, Andree 3000) with the rest slated for rapper pensions. With the end of this era comes the new generation kicking the door down to take it all. XXL magazine recently put their top 10 rap rookies on the three different covers for their December issue. I don’t know about  some of these guys, they are all dope, but usually XXL is wrong on their “upcoming rookie” picks. So i have crossed out the suspect  ones and replaced them with my own rookies who didn’t make the list last year. As well as some of the new gen rappers who arn’t nessisary so rookie but are still post platinum era.

Here’s their top 10 rookies (in no particular order).
Wale
B.o.B
Charles Hamilton
Asher Roth
Cory Gunz Drake
Blu Wiz Khalifa
Mickey Factz J.Cole
Ace Hood Xv
Currenc$y
Kid Cudi

+ The Kid Daytona, Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West, Big Sean, The Clipse, Young Jeezy, Rick Ross,Lil Wayne, T.I

Show and Prove Tracks Below.

Wiz Khalifa – Never Ever

off his 2009 mixtape: Flight School

Cameron Jibril Thomaz (born September 8, 1987), better known by the stage name Wiz Khalifa, is an American rapper based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His techno-influenced single, “Say Yeah“, received urban radio airplay, charting on Billboard’s Hot 100, Rhythmic Top 40 and Hot Rap Tracks charts. He will release his major label debut album, First Flight, on Warner Bros. Records.

Drake – Juice

off his 2009 mixtape with : Heartbreak Drake 2

Aubrey Drake Graham (born October 24, 1986) is a Canadian actor and recording artist. He originally became known for playing Jimmy Brooks, the basketball star that became physically disabled after he was shot by a classmate on Degrassi: The Next Generation. As a rapper, he performs under the mononym Drake, and is often billed as the new version of The Fresh Prince. Drake continued to recognize a close affiliation with Lil Wayne‘s Young Money Entertainment,^[2] before officially signing with the record label in June, 2009. His first studio album, Thank Me Later, is expected to be released on the label in late 2009.

Asher Roth – Falling

off his 2009 studio Album: Asleep in the Bread Aisle

Asher Paul Roth (born August 11, 1985) is an American rapper. He is currently signed to a joint venture between Scooter Braun’s Schoolboy Music and Steve Rifkind’s SRC Records. His first professional release was on June 13, 2008 when the DJ Drama and Don Cannon-helmed The GreenHouse Effect Mixtape was released for free via Roth’s website Thedailykush.com.

Kid Cudi – Man on the Moon

off his 2008 mixtape: A kid named Cudi

Scott Ramon Seguro Mescudi, (born January 30, 1984) better known by his stage name Kid Cudi (pronounced /ˌkɪd ˈkʌdi/), is an American rapper and actor. He first gained major attention after the release of his debut mixtape A Kid Named Cudi.

Kid Cudi was later featured on Kanye West‘s 2008 album, 808s & Heartbreak, singing with West on the track “Welcome to Heartbreak“, and helping with songwriting on “Heartless” and “Paranoid“.

B.o.B. aka Bobby Ray – Satellite

off his 2009 mixtape: B.o.B. vs Bobby Ray

Bobby Ray Simmons (born November 15, 1988), also simply known as B.o.B or Bobby Ray, is an American hip hop musician from Decatur, Georgia. He is currently signed under the labels of Grand Hustle and Atlantic Records. In December 2008, he appeared on the cover of XXL magazine along with Asher Roth, Charles Hamilton, and Wale as “Hip-Hop’s Class of ’09”. In October 2008, B.o.B was featured on the cover of Vibe along with some of these same young musicians and was similarly identified as promising young talent. He has described his influences as “80’s music, techno, rock, funk, even du wop…”

His debut album, The Adventures of Bobby Ray, is expected to be released in 2009 under T.I.’s record label Grand Hustle.

Charles Hamilton – Imagination

off the 2008 mixtape: XXL Freshman 10

“This Perfect Life” is the debut studio album by American rapper Charles Hamilton. It will be the first album distributed by a major record label for free download on Charles Hamilton’s own website, there will also be a physical copy that can be purchased in stores that will include a DVD of animated videos to help the listener get a better feel for the music.

Wale – New Soul

off the 2009 mixtape: Back to the Feature

Olubowale Victor Akintimehin better known by his stage name Wale (pronounced wah-lay) is an American hip hop artist. He rose to prominence in 2006, when his song “Dig Dug (Shake It)” became popular in Washington, D.C.. As of 2009, Wale has released five critically acclaimed mixtapes with his first album, Attention: Deficit set to be released on September 22, 2009.

Curren$y – Sail On

off the 2009 album: This ain’t a Mixtape

Shante Anthony Franklin (born April 4, 1981), better known by his stage name Curren$y , is an American rapper from New Orleans, Louisiana. He is best known for his 2006 single “Where da Cash At“.

As a teenager, he was signed to Master P‘s No Limit Records until 2005, when he signed with Lil Wayne‘s Young Money Entertainment, where he remained until late 2007. While still at Young Money, Curren$y created Fly Society with skateboarder Terry Kennedy, first as a clothing company, then expanding to release music. After releasing a series of mixtapes, he released his debut solo album, This Ain’t No Mixtape, in 2009.

J.Cole – Hold it Down

off the 2009 album: The Warm Up

Heir to the throne

Aubrey Drake Graham (born October 24, 1986) Canadian actor, rapper and singer.

Lil Wayne’s Protege Graduates From Degrassi to Hip-Hop (Rolling Stones Article)

The hottest MC in the game is an unsigned 23-year-old prodigy who’s got girls, executives and rap’s biggest names hanging on every word

This is what Drake-mania looks like up close: It’s just after 10 p.m. on a balmy Tuesday night in May and downstairs inside the cramped confines of New York venue SOBs, Drake is receiving what feels like a hero’s welcome. Kanye West, Ryan Leslie, Talib Kweli, the Alchemist and Bun B (who’ll later join the upstart MC onstage) are all here to acknowledge the much-hyped rapper before his performance, Drake’s last before he’ll officially begin work on his debut LP, Thank Me Later.

Upstairs it’s more of the same. The rap media cognoscenti are all present, as are the executives who have been bidding for Drake’s services, including a high-ranking Universal/Motown chief and Warner Music Group Chairman Lyor Cohen. And don’t forget the girls. Soon-to-be shrieking girls are lining up just in front of the stage, ready to scream at a moment’s notice. It’s hard to believe it, but tonight’s performance is a part of the New York radio station Hot 97’s Who’s Next showcase. It’s not even a proper Drake concert.

“I’m a new artist, by the way,” a cheeky Drake told the packed house when he finally made it onto the stage in designer duds, a striped Commes des Garçons shirt and crimson Nike Air Jordans. “I don’t know if you can tell by this show.”

Just one month earlier, Drake (born Aubrey Graham), was another buzzed-about rapper on hip-hop blogs, in the class of Asher Roth and Kid Cudi, but not among the newcomers picked for XXL magazine’s “Freshman 10” cover last December. His mixtape, So Far Gone, released in February of this year was critically lauded for its mix of melody and deft lyricism. But some derided the work as a knockoff of West’s 808s & Heartbreak due to Drake’s crooning and female-flavored numbers.

But then the Toronto rapper blitzed through the Big Apple last month — performing at a local college, making a club appearance with Cam’ron and doing interviews on the radio with Power 105’s DJ Clue and Hot 97’s Angie Martinez. He also freestyled on Funkmaster Flex’s show: “I’m in the Aston doing donuts/I will kill the game and never send it my condolensce/ taught to never love the chick and only love the moments/ New York City I can tell the people want it,” he furiously spit over the instrumental to Jay-Z’s “You, Me, Him, And Her.”

“That was probably, to be honest, the first time in a long time I was nervous,” Drake says now, recalling the moment. “I don’t get nervous for much. But it was like the first time I was like, ‘Wow, this is a legendary moment and a legendary opportunity that I’m being given.’ It was crazy to be standing in the Hot 97 radio room looking at Flex in the booth. Doing what I seen him do for so many years, for some of the greatest artist to ever be in this business. And to think it was just me there and it was all happening for me, it was definitely … Surreal is the word.”

To say the experience has been surreal only for Drake would be an understatement. Back in 2006, he was better known as a child actor from the N’s Degrassi: The Next Generation, where he played hoopster-turned-wheelchair bound teen Jimmy Brooks for seven seasons. But Drake, a high school dropout born to a Jewish mother from Canada and African-American Memphis man, decided to invest his earnings from acting into jumpstarting a music career.

First, he reached out to popular mixtape maestro DJ Smallz, who helped Drake put together his first project, Room For Improvement. Traces of Drake’s style were evident back then. He rhymed alongside some unknowns and recruited R&B singer Trey Songz to appear on the collection as well.

“Rappers hit me up all the time and big themselves up and I don’t believe half of them,” Smallz says. “When he told me he was on a TV show, I didn’t really research it. But I listened to the music and I thought it was great. I worked on the tape and thought it was crazy.”

The following year, Drake poured even more of his assets into himself as he independently released his second mixtape, Comeback Season. He even financed a video for one of the songs, “Replacement Girl” featuring Trey Songz. The clip received a few plays on BET and briefly landed on the network’s flagship show 106 & Park, but ultimately fell short of producing the desired results.

All wasn’t lost, however. Comeback Season showcased Drake coming more into his own as an artist, from the braggadocio freestyle over Kanye West’s “Barry Bonds” track to swooning intro of “The Presentation.” “That was when I was becoming more comfortable and saying, ‘OK, we really have something,’ ” Drake says of the mixtape. “I was just like, let’s make it more like an album.”

The mixtape, though, was most notable for its final track, “Man of the Year,” featuring Lil Wayne. The superstar lyricist got wind of the rising talent when veteran rap impresario J.Prince’s nephew urged him to check out Drake’s MySpace page. Shortly after Weezy recruited Drizzy into his Young Money fold. Later Wayne’s manager (Cortez Bryant) and one of Kanye’s West’s managers (Gee Roberson) would assume co-managerial duties for Drake.

Under Wayne’s tutelage, Drake’s rhymes took a steroid-like leap in potency. “Wayne told me to just remember it’s about your thoughts, you got to think about what you want to say beforehand,” Drake says of Wayne’s mentorship. “And then from there, you make it rhyme or you make it connect. But the more important thing is, What’s your message, What’s your point. And that should be the bare essentials of a line or a verse — what do you really want to say and what do you want to say about yourself?

“I think he gave me that advice truly for me to set myself apart as a rapper,” he adds, “because I know Wayne sometimes raps for the sake of being a phenomenal rapper. And other times you’ll get a song where he tells a story and gets personal. But when he gave me that advice it was almost like him giving me like a cheat code. Here, I’m gonna give you something; I’m gonna give you a piece and see what you do with it. And So Far Gone is what I did with it.”

So Far Gone is the dark and sometimes moody narrative of Drake’s journey into adulthood that’s been powered by the upbeat “Best I Ever Had,” where he not only raps on the track but sings on the song’s chorus. The track has landed in regular rotation on Hot 97, Los Angeles’ KMEL and Philadelphia’s the Beat, among other cities’ stations. But it’s the collection’s triangulation of lady-endearing songs, gutsy displays of lyricism and the usurped hipster sounds of Peter Bjorn & John, Lykke Li and Santigold that have paved the way for Drake’s 50 Cent-like ascension from fringe artist to bonafide star.

“It’s just one of those moments in time, where the right person comes with the right music to the people,” Bun B explains. “Everything is working in his favor. He’s obviously very talented, I don’t think anyone can dispute that.”

As of press time Drake still remains unsigned. Rumors have swirled that he’s set to join Lil Wayne at Universal Records. But industry insiders believe he’ll eventually land at Atlantic Records where one of his mangers is also an executive.

In any event, in the week since his SOB’s performance, the rapper’s buzz has again shot up yet another notch. Speculation has run rampant about his relationship with Rihanna after Page 6 reported the pair were spotted kissing at a Manhattan night spot; he’s now in London with her working on her next album. He won’t confirm who will be working with him on his album, although Wayne will executive produce and Drake has said he hopes Kanye West and Jay-Z would contribute.

For all the drama following Drake around these days, he’s decidedly grounded. He jokes that he still has to overcome the three strikes against him — being an actor, light-skinned and Canadian. But his easygoing nature and articulate thoughtfulness conceal a silent confidence that just might hint that this whole mania thing could be a brewing pandemonium.

“I still have people who are finding out about me, who are still going through that process,” Drake says. “And they may have to go back and discover a Comeback Season or a So Far Gone. I know the process they have to go through. But I know that eventually they’re gonna love it, the music, so that’s why I say, Thank Me Later.”

Check out So Far Gone the third mixtape from Canadian rapper Drake. The mixtape had over 8,000 downloads within 2 hours of release.