Stephen B.

Humility is a rare trait—especially among rappers, who tend to preen and bop about like fighters convincing boxing promoters that they are in their prime. Stalley, however, subscribes to a different G code.

Perhaps it's his humble beginnings in a small town outside of Cleveland, where a blue-collar work ethic was instilled in him from an early age. Perhaps it's because he's a former star athlete who knows firsthand that talent without hard work will only get you but so far.

Whatever his reasoning for keeping a level head, it's working. Last year Rick Ross reached out to Stalley to tell him what a fan he was of his music and moves within the music industry. Shortly after that, Ross signed Stalley to his Maybach Music Group imprint.

Despite being on a flashy label, Stalley has kept it Blue Collar Gang all the way, releasing a mixtape last month entitled Savage Journey To The American Dream. SOTC talked to him about the response to his latest offering, his roots, his label, and why he'll never share the same fate as Pill. Come along for the savage journey...

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Close to 75% of the New York State prison population comes from seven New York City neighborhoods—Harlem, South Bronx, Lower East Side, Bed Stuy, Bushwick, South Jamaica and Brownsville/East New York. Ka never went to prison, but he is from perhaps the most violent on that list, the Brooklyn area that spawned the likes of heavyweight champs Mike Tyson and Riddick Bowe, not to mention heavyweight professional-beater-uppers M.O.P.

Ka and I met up in front of Guitar Center in the Atlantic Center and took a quick lap through Fort Greene to talk about Brooklyn and his music. Though he shared a lot about his memories of Kings County, he asked to speak off the record on more than one occasion to answer a question about his days as a wayward Brooklyn youth. He also kept the steering the conversation back to the music, something that I think speaks to his unwillingness to engage in tough talk about his past. It's just the music he wants you to put forth.

Ka's entire aesthetic is stripped down. His videos and beats are simple and straightforward, leaving nothing but a tsunami of words he floods your senses to sell you on his vision. Take it or leave it. The strategy would be suicide save one thing... the guy can actually rap.

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Junichi Nakane

The good thing about family is you don't have to see them all the time to still feel the love when you do reconnect. Last year, Show & AG's hard-hitting "Show &A"—the first joint venture from the Diggin' In The Crates members since 1998's Full Scale—showed that the duo is reinvigorated and ready to take on the new generation of rap consumers. More important to them then reaching new fans however is making music for their generation, an audience Show feels "no one is catering to." To ensure that hip-hop still speaks to the 32 and older crowd, Show & AG offered Still Diggin', an instrumental album, last month; today, they released Mugshot Music: Preloaded, in advance of this summer's Mugshot Music: The Album. It's a big undertaking considering Lord Finesse, Diamond D and other members of their powerhouse collective DITC are nowhere near as visible as they were in 1990s. The duo isn't worried, though. They insist they feel no pressure—and even if they did it would just add to their drive to reclaim their spot in the rap universe. Here's what else they had to say about their reemergence and the days of yore.

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In honor of today being 4/20—every smoker's favorite day of the year—SOTC has compiled the 25 Best Rap Songs relating to weed. Though some may be more about bud than others, all are guaranteed to make your high all the more enjoyable. Be forewarned, though... this list doesn't have any happy hippy weed music—this is straight thugged-out entertainment. Locate your lighters.

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If you're really "in the streets" of New York City, then most of the people in your circle should be street urchins and guttersnipes also using the asphalt lawns of the Big Apple as their playground.

They're your closest friends, even though you didn't go to school together; you're not from the same hood or even the same borough. Yet somehow you're friends. The street is your alma mater. Racking, hustling, skating, rapping, writing graffiti, drinking, drugging... that's the curriculum.

Telli and Jah Jah, the remaining members of NinjaSonik (their DJ, Teen Wolf, left the group), are no different. Jah is from the Bronx; Telli is from Brooklyn. Both went to different schools and for the most part hung out in different hoods. Yet a love for skating and music bought them together. They recently released the EP No Swords, No Masks as a prelude to their next album, Peter Pan Syndrome, which is scheduled to drop this summer. Though in keeping with their usual sound and aesthetics, their new music makes it obvious that the duo wants to lay claim to the downtown rapper throne. Here's why they think they deserve it.

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@RMag7/Twitter

Slaughterhouse w/Flatbush Zombies
Best Buy Theater
Thursday, March 29

Better than: Spending the next few nights in the bookings alongside Joe Budden.

There's Joell Ortiz. Here comes Crooked I. Royce just bopped onstage... but where's... uh oh. "Where's Budden at?" shouted the tipsy Nets hat next to me. Two songs into last night's Slaughterhouse show at the Best Buy Theater, Joey's glaring absence was addressed. Royce announced that the police had arrested Joe Buddens just prior to him coming on stage due to a warrant from an "unpaid ticket from 2007." Jersey had came ready to rep, and people started chanting, "Joey! Joey! Joey!" after the announcement. The NYPD waited over five years to execute that petty warrant; you'd think they would've at least waited until after this momentous night in Budden's career to place him under arrest.

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Since the days of Wild Style and Krush Groove, rappers have put their music on hold and delved into the film world. A bunch of these efforts were pretty bad—remember Ice-T in Leprechaun in the Hood—while others were so bad they were good. Cam crying in Killa Season or KRS fleeing the scene without a word in Who's The Man? had some unintentional comedy, as did DMX trying to explain to Nas what our purpose on earth is ("Shorty can't eat no books!") in Belly. And then there were the ones that were actually straight-up good.

The 18 films that follow didn't get much in the way of Oscar recognition, but if cinema is meant to entertain, well, they do that and then some.

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After a couple of failed attempts at riding under someone else's banner (No Limit, Cash Money), Curren$y ventured out on his own and struck gold, amassing hundreds of thousands of loyal followers and lighting (pardon the pun) the way for rappers like Wiz Khalifa and Mac Miller to carve out their own territory in cyberspace. As other rappers took his cue and rhymed more about smoking drugs rather than selling them, the term "weed rapper" was born, and an entire subgenre was written off as just stoners rapping about their favorite pasttime.

What is a weed rapper, though? Every time I interviewed Jim Jones he was smoking. Same goes for Snoop and Raekwon. Does that make them weed rappers? Guess it just boils down to subject matter then, huh? I guess Cypress Hill are weed rappers then? No? Oh.

It probably doesn't help a whole hell of a lot that he named his recent EP with Styles P #The1st28 (as in 28 grams in an ounce), but I thought we were done calling Curren$y a weed rapper. Luckily, Spitta's has a great defense against the "weed rapper" ball and chain: Keep doing exactly what he's doing. The kid's output is unmatched, and his flow will eventually absolve him of any talk of being a one-dimensional rapper with bud as a crutch.

In further defense of Spitta being stuck with this limiting title, here are ten joints where his topics of choice stray from marijuana.

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His rap moniker is an acronym for King Remembered In Time, but the way he's going about crafting timeless soulful music, Big K.R.I.T. is being remembered as a king right now. Just ask those who sold out his recent show at the Highline, where just two years ago he was booed while opening for Jay Electronica. 2010 faded away when the crowd at the Highline lost their minds to the wild "Country Shit," with the Big Apple crowd rapping along and jumping around like Danny Boy and Everlast.

K.R.I.T.'s career is really beginning to bubble, and he just added the mixtape 4Eva N A Day to the pot. He's not only kicking substantial raps devoid of the usual rosé and Murciélago references, he's composing beats for some of his lyrical heroes, like T.I.

While en route to JFK for a flight down to SXSW, K.R.I.T. took some time to update SOTC on the growth he's experienced since our chat in June, and to let us know what he has on his calendar for the rest of 2012 and beyond. Always humble and always thoughtful, here's the return of forever.

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Today marks 15 years since the Notorious B.I.G. was shot and killed in Los Angeles, and even now there are constant reminders of his passing. I guess after that long, you get used to seeing reminders of him pretty often—the music, the bootleg t-shirts, the use of his image and most memorable lines by every streetwear brand. There were also certain items that always brought Young Christopher, and while this list would vary person to person (especially for those who knew him) but here are the five items that I think he made his own.

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