This Summer is Hip Hop season. Companies are stacking releases, as Pac once said, “in fear of a wipeout in retail interchart movement.”

DX has a list, but here are my most anticipated:

May 5: The New South – Greg Street & Bubba Sparxx

The disc ends a three year hiatus for Sparxx. Here’s his classic Southern track, Deliverance:

May 12: Fast Life – Paul Wall

Ends a two year hiatus for Wall, and he claims this album will be deeper than his previous ones. Wall’s mostly known for being featured in Nelly’s Grillz:

May 19: Back On My B.S. – Busta Rhymes

Ends a three year hiatus. Busta, the Manson of Hip Hop, has lightning flow. If you watch no other video in this post watch this one:

May 19: Blackout 2 – Method & Red

I’ve never really gotten into the Wu, save Rza the superproducer’s soundtrack for Afro Samurai. Blackout 2 ends a ten year hiatus for Method and Red though. Probably worth seeing what a decade in the lab produces.

Here’s Da Rockwilder, one of the singles from Blackout! that drove it to platinum cert in the Great White North. Statistically speaking, Canadians love Method and Red:

May 19: Relapse – Eminem

Ends a five-year hiatus for Em. He and Dre recorded so much material they’ll be releasing a second disc later this year.

The general rule in hip hop is that when you combine a writer/lyricist of Eminem’s calibre with a producer like Dre it’ll be an instant classic. Tough hype to live up to. Em’s apparently spent the last couple of years addicted to various drugs, struggling with Proof’s shoot-out death, and dealing with the failure of his second marriage to the infamous Kim Scott. This album is supposed to be the outlet for all that, and I wanna hear it.

Here’s the radio single, in fine Em tradition a diss track railing against popular culture:

May 19: Lowdown: Suite 2: The Box – Moka Only

Victoria’s own (well, Langford’s own) M-O-K-A-O-N-L-Y, who really can’t tell you why he’s flowing so fly.

Moka’s best known for his collabs with the Vic/Van Battleaxe Warriors — The Swollen Members — with Victoria’s Nelly Furtado, and for destroying his career in fits of narcissistic rage. His iconic appearance, to me, were his four bars on Can’t Stop the Bum Rush, from T.Dot’s LEN, a classic late-90s party track.

If you listen to two tracks in this post, this should be the second. It’s 100% pure maple earup:

May 19: Strange Journey Volume One – Cunninlynguists

End of a two-year hiatus. Here’s the single, Never Come Down, about getting too high from eating pot brownies.

We’ve all been there. The key is to take a multi-vitamin, drink a big glass of water, take a couple deep breaths, and chill out. It’s impossible to get “too high” from weed, you’re just panicking.

I dig the shout-out to Google Earth:

There’s more great music hitting the street in June, including a new Mighty Mos Def*. But we’ll cross that fade when we come to it.

Note to the record labels: You made it so hard for me to find embeddable copies of these songs — so hard for me to make your music more popular — that I’m not going to pay for any of it. You took your money in the form of my time, you’re lucky I don’t send you a bill. To our readers: If you aren’t set up for infinite free music yet, get µTorrent and visit TPB. Enjoy responsibly.

* I used to think I liked Mos Def because he was talented. It turns out I like him because I’m genetically predisposed.