Now that the calendar has flipped to May, and the schedules for the area's big sheds have been announced, and the Hot 97 Summer Jam lineup is on the verge of being made public, it's time to think of other musical concerns related to the year's hottest months. Today, let's wonder about what song will be the year's official Song Of The Summer—that jam rendered inescapable by blaring bodega radios, cruising cars with the sound turned up, and people gleefully singing along to it when it comes on the sound systems at parties. Previous winners of the title: Foster The People's "Pumped Up Kicks" (2011); Katy Perry's "California Gurls" (2009—hey, I didn't say everyone had to like the song for it to count); Rihanna's "Umbrella" (2007-09). Six contenders for the imminent summer's top musical dog below.

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Stalley (Savage Journey To The American Dream listening session)
Beats By Dr. Dre store
Monday, March 12

Better than: Buying a pair of $400 headphones.

Welcome to the Rick Ross and Stalley bobblehead show, in town for one night only. That, effectively, went down last night at Soho's Beats By Dr. Dre store as Stalley, the Ohio-based rapper signed to Ross's Maybach Music Group venture, hosted a listening session for his upcoming mixtape while standing on a small, cordoned-off stage. As each song was aired out, Stalley, face framed by baseball cap and beard, and Rozay, face cupped by less unruly beard, stood next to each other, smiled like they'd just gotten Groupon lobotomies, and bobbed their heads. Seeing the two of them in tandem was a quaint moment of hirsute hip-hop solidarity, but the dynamics of the night might be more damning of Ross's attempts to position Stalley as a mainstream fixture.

In blunt terms, no one really listened.

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The Grammys created the awkwardly named Best Rap/Sung Collaboration category ten years ago, around the time Ja Rule's various "thug love" duets were dominating the airwaves. The award recognized a growing sector of popular music that didn't quite fit into the preexisting rap, R&B or pop song awards, and its creation was a prescient move. In 2001, 13% of Billboard's Year-End Hot 100 Songs featured at least one rapper and one singer; in 2011 that number had doubled to 26% (after peaking at 33% in 2010). The category's a little more unpredictable this year, as NARAS snubbed the biggest dancefloor-friendly rapped-and-sung hits of the year ("Give Me Everything," "Party Rock Anthem," "On The Floor," "E.T.") in favor of more urban radio fare.

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When will Rick Ross stop improving? All bets are currently off, because right now—as in right this very moment, in the immediate aftermath of Rich Forever—Rick Ross is the best rapper alive. Not too long ago, he was arguably the worst. Lots of other rappers have made The Leap from distinctly unpromising beginnings, but it's hard to think of many who have traveled as far from as lowly an origin point.

Ross is all about big gestures, though. Rich Forever, his latest absurdly generous slab of Maybach Music, is twenty tracks long, runs well over an hour, and boasts features from Diddy, Nas, John Legend, Kelly Rowland, Pharrell, and more. It's produced entirely by MMG's production team—Beat Billionaire, The Inkredibles, Justice League—which means that it sounds bigger and more expensive than anything you can remember. And Ross has given it away for free. If he had released it commercially, it would have certainly have gone gold. But Ross insists this heaping platter is just an "appetizer" for the main course, which will be his delayed fifth studio album God Forgives, I Don't. As far as appetizers go, it's like being served a T-bone steak for two before the chef wheels out an entire pan of lasagna.

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Yes, the downer&b outfit The Weeknd pulled out of this Thursday's Full Frontal Vice party (and subsequently sulked about it because being popular is hard, you guys), but that doesn't mean the festivities have been called off—in fact, it's still on Skylight One Hanson's calendar, and now there's a new headliner: Rick Ross. Upgrade? Downgrade? Your call! The rest of the bill's rounded out by A-Trak, Death From Above 1979, Tanlines (who seem pretty psyched about their newly minted opening-act duties), Unknown Mortal Orchestra, a DJ set by Nick Zinner, and lots of other highly bloggable acts. RSVP here; flyer below.

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For a generation, the unexpected death of Aaliyah Dana Haughton 10 years ago today remains as significant as the deaths of Notorious B.I.G. and 2Pac. This especially rings true for millennial men, who were just realizing girls really didn't have cooties when Aaliyah released her debut, Age Ain't Nothin' But A Number, in 1994. In the years since the plane carrying her and her entourage crashed shortly after taking off, killing everyone on board, the fanboy-like appreciation for Aaliyah has only grown.

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Lil Wayne w/Rick Ross, Keri Hilson, Far East Movement, Lloyd
PNC Bank Arts Center
Tuesday, July 26

Better than: Sorry For The Wait.

Before Lil Wayne took the stage last night at the PNC Bank Arts Center, the PA was playing cuts from Sorry For The Wait, the stopgap mixtape released as an apologia for the delays plaguing Tha Carter IV. People cheered for the woozy beat backing "Sure Thing" and his flip of Kreayshawn's "Gucci Gucci" as darkness fell over New Jersey and the screens flanking the stage asked us if our concert experience was being ruined by anyone.

The room then suddenly darkened further, only lit by the red glow of the Young Money logo and a couple hundred smartphones' screens. Clattery electro-metal poured out of the speakers. Pyro sputtered. "I work hard every day; I try not to sleep," Weezy's disembodied voice said over the loudspeakers. Then a hatch in the stage opened, and there he was, the man of the hour, sitting on what looked like an office chair, wearing pants printed with Keith Haring doodles and a hat to match. He was only in that chair for a second, though, leaping out of it and racing down the runway while launching into "No Love." He ran around the stage, smiling and mugging for the assembled cameras and fans in front of him.

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Hot 97 Summer Jam
New Meadowlands Stadium
Sunday, June 5

Better than: Sitting at home and moping like 50 Cent.

Rick Ross closed out Summer Jam.

Just so there's no revisionist history here, let's remember how incredible that statement is. Three years ago, Ross was the punching bag of hip-hop, the laughingstock of the streets. After recording countless verses that fetishized Tony Montana fantasies, someone pinched him—Ross' cartoonish thought bubble vanished into thin air, and he was rudely snapped back to reality. He wasn't a druglord superhero; he was William Roberts, a grown man playing dress-up, a former correctional officer who wanted to be a rapper so badly that he rewrote his personal history. Two years ago, he wasn't being played on New York radio.

And here, onstage at Giants Stadium, was Rick Ross—his chest puffed out, his black-and-yellow Hawaiian shirt open wide but still somehow stretching tight—cheered on by fifty thousand strong. They welcomed his street anthem, "B.M.F.," chanting a chorus and cadence that, in various incarnations, has blasted out of car windows on 125th ever since it came out last summer: "I think I'm Big Meech, Larry Hoover." Rick Ross can make up a lot of things, but even he couldn't make this up.

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This week "How To Love," the third single from Lil Wayne's forthcoming (if delayed) album Tha Carter IV, debuts on several Billboard charts, including bows at No. 69 on the Hot 100 and No. 50 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. "How To Love" is also the 15th song by or featuring Lil Wayne to appear on a Billboard chart this week; on the R&B chart alone, he's on 12% of the entries in the top 100, and he appears on three songs in that chart's top ten that include its current No. 1, Kelly Rowland's "Motivation." Put simply, Wayne is everywhere.

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Last week, the Detroit-based rapper and one-time J Dilla collaborator Elzhi released Elmatic. It's the second time a rapper has re-written and re-made Nas's hallowed Illmatic, with Fashawn attempting a similar feat last year. As a listening experience, Elmatic is less than convincing, leaving you continually pining for Nas's original lyrics (which isn't surprising, as they've been recited like holy hip-hop scriptures by rap fans since 1994). But beyond its artistic merits, Elmatic is more notable for being an addition to the tiny body of hip-hop songs covered by other rap artists.

Cover versions may abound in other genres, but hip-hop has a history of shying away from them. This may be due to the high importance of lyrical originality--as Masta Ace put it on the Juice Crew's "The Symphony," "There's a sign at the door: 'No Biting Allowed.' " Even homaging other artists through invoking short snippets of their lyrics is seen as grounds for a dis (Nas to Jay-Z: "How much of Biggie's rhymes is gonna come out your fat lips?"). So while there's an accepted tradition of freestyling over someone else's beat on a mixtape, and the sub-strain of what are technically answer records like Salt-N-Pepa (as Super Nature) responding to Doug E Fresh & Slick Rick's "The Show" with "The Show Stoppa," whole-hearted rap covers remain the genre's curio. Here then is a tribute to the brave souls who have dared reinvent the raps of others--with varying results.

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