This set was going pretty well for a while! Oh well.
Meat Beat Manifesto, "I Got The Fear, Pt. 3"
Meat Beat Manifesto had a bit of a strange start to their career. Their first album was destroyed in a studio fire prior to release, a story that the band has stuck to but their label denied happened. Their debut album then instead became Storm the Studio, which was really just four songs, but they put out multiple parts and variations of everything. That was then followed by Armed Audio Warfare, which was their attempt to re-create their actual debut record, so they kind of released their first couple albums out of order.
As for the album itself, it's pretty uneven, as you might guess from the description above. But when it's on, it's excellent.
Open Mike Eagle, "Protectors of the Heat"
I am, alas, relatively out of touch with hip-hop these days. That's because I'm old and hopeless. However, I'm not TOTALLY out of touch, and Open Mike Eagle is one of the underground artists I found from somewhere and really like. This is from Hella Personal Film Festival, which was a bit of a breakthrough record for him in that it showed up on a lot of end-of-year lists. It's excellent, my favorite of his albums so far.
Jan Jelinek, "Planeten in Halbtrauer"
Seems like just yesterday we had a Jelinek track! This is less glitchy than the other stuff we've gotten from him, and is also not coincidentally from a little bit later album, Kosmischer Pitch.
The Blue Meanies, "The Grinch"
This is why everybody hated you, third wave.
Quasimoto, "Welcome to Violence"
A project of Madlib, Quasimoto combines super dusty, jazzy beats with helium-powered rapping. Here, Madlib is donning an alter ego, Quasimoto, a perpetually stoned aardvark-looking thing, with the album narrated from this weird creature's perspective. It's one of the stranger rap albums you'll ever encounter, and I think it's amazing. This is just a little intro piece, though.