Better than: Waiting in line outside of Supreme.

There was a problem. Three 6 Mafia couldn't get to the stage; 50 people blocked their way, a fire hazard if there ever was one. A man got on the microphone. "Ladies and gentlemen, please clear a path. Please cooperate, or else there won't be a show." No one moved; no one could. Fifteen minutes passed; everything felt hot. Oxygen hid. A guy standing across the stage muttered, "They should just plow through. This is so wack and not punk rock." Four feet away, a girl yelled back in agreement. Ten minutes later, there was progress. Now only one man—wearing a Yankees hat—stood in the way, unable to find standing room while already standing in the room. The host got back on the microphone: "You're fucking the show up for everybody, and most importantly, you're fucking it up for Supreme. If you respect the brand, respect the instructions." A fight broke out; the Yankee got pushed far enough so that Three 6 Mafia could now squeeze by. Right on time, 30 minutes late, the show started.

@djfinesse/Instagram

Better than: The second-best sex ever, apparently.

Joe Budden's lyrics are a minefield of emotions, bringing skeletons out of the closets and into the streets; there are times he's put the TMI in traumatic. Moments after getting jumped by Raekwon and Method Man in 2009, Joe Budden turned on his web camera. That same year, he released a song that discussed his 89-year-old grandmother's time in the hospital; in a later song, she was 90 and fine. Joe's love life is too-well-documented, making sudden stars of Tahiry, Yaris, and Somaya, among other King cupcakes. On 2011's "Ordinary Love Shit Pt. 3," he revealed the ugliest details of his super-ugly relationship with model Esther Baxter—miscarriage, abuse, cheating, police, pills, etc. Its release prompted a no-holds-barred fight to the bottom on Bossip and Twitter. He's comfortable putting himself out there for free, so it's no wonder that the crew from Vh1's Love & Hip-Hop filmed portions of the show last night.

And yet, it's not the tough stuff that makes him cry, that curls his always-open mouth in a knot. Last night, while running through a decade-long catalog—a tour-de-force that stretched for two hours—he kept himself together for almost all of it, performing all three parts of the hard-to-swallow "Ordinary Love Shit" trilogy for the first time ever; delivering lyrics about not wanting full custody, about fear and pain and death and sadness with nothing less than hardened eyes. No. Budden cried when he related the story of his 10-year-old son telling him that he's at ease in his own skin, a conversation included at the tail-end of "Truth or Truth." There he stood in front of us, so close, and yet so far.

Brook Bobbins

Fool's Gold Day Off: French Montana, Danny Brown, Brothers Macklovitch, Just Blaze, Flosstradamus, Flatbush Zombies, Nick Catchdubs, Ricky Blaze, Party Supplies, #BEEN #TRILL, Telephoned, and more
City Winery
Monday, September 3

Better than: Rain.

Last year, free shows flooded the city, with each night bringing mostly the same crowd but different publicists; an endless bacchanalia of sights and sounds and RSVP emails. Drink taps flowed like fire hoses; beautiful women instinctively flocked. Heineken served hot dogs and beer ahead of shows by Kanye (in a Brooklyn bank-turned-arena), J. Cole (at the Bowery Ballroom) and Pusha T (at Santos); they also stuck TV on the Radio (atop a downtown billboard. Bacardi had Childish Gambino in Terminal 5 and Ciara at South Street Seaport. Red Bull hosted Dipset, Black Moon, Wu-Tang, Mobb Deep and Slick Rick in their respective boroughs. Jadakiss did an entire set amongst shoppers at the Apple Store in June; a few months later, Nike gave Nas a microphone while Carmelo Anthony holograms seemingly exploded out of the Hudson. 2012, in comparison, has been... quiet, don't-wake-the-baby level quiet.

@LeftyJeenus/Instagram

Better than: an easy hair-burning joke.

"You just don't do a Michael song—you try and do the best you can." So said Ne-Yo, dabbing at his forehead, having sweated through his "Smooth Criminal" costume. On screens behind him, Michael spun and stopped on pointed toes, a smile and a wink, leaning so far forward you thought his nose and heels would somehow both touch the ground. Here and now stood Ne-Yo, effort running down his face and shirt and pooling around his back; his red shirt stained ombre. He'd just sung three songs off of Bad—tracks 10, 8 and a brisk version of 2—in a performance completely reminiscent of Tupac's hologram. He continued his thoughts on Michael Jac-karaoke, saying, "You attempt and pray it works," before beginning the EDM portion of his own catalog.

@hot97/Instagram

Fabolous.

Better than: Getting lost coming home from Queens.

CBS sitcoms, Tom Wolfe and Republicans alike have all painted New York City as a noisy, grimy nightmare, a melting pot of sex and kvetching, guns and soupy hot dogs, where steam rises like prices and trash falls like dreams. No place for families, a godless murderzone where the women are as fast as streets are clogged, where stress stains the ceilings and piss, the sidewalks. Bright lights lit by hellfire and Wall Street's cigars. Millions of people—all strangers—passing one another, every face as hard as their concrete surroundings, a Darwinian experiment thrown to the rats.

It's almost out of character for the city, then, that Angie Martinez's BBQ on Saturday night was so low-key, so relaxed, a small-town block party held in often-overlooked Queens. Grids of dominos and games of spades played out among the trees and open sky; pitchers of sangria and lemonade held down the picnic tables. All that made the night distinctly New York were the names involved, a polka-dot collection of bold-faces: Questlove mixing VIC's "Get Silly" into dead prez into "Dance (A$$)" onstage while Joe Budden, Fabolous, Sanaa Lathen and Gabrielle Union Instagrammed one another in VIP. A scruffy Miguel stepped over legs and under arms to get to the bar, as DJ Khaled engaged in flirt-fighting with his fiancée over a smoking cigarillo. We found love in a hopeless place.

Smoke DZA/SPACEGHOSTPURRP
Highline Ballroom
Monday, January 23

Better than: Emphysema, among many other things.

Monday night's show was originally Smoke DZA's: the poster for the Highline Ballroom said so, even. He walked across the stage with hands extended, resplendent in his bubbly yellow Polo parka, a heavyweight champion's belt slung over his shoulder. It looked too hot to be wearing a ski cap; its wool proved an effective tool in mopping up the sweat that it also produced. He yawled his catchphrase ("Riiiight!") like some use commas and periods, like others breathe: "Riiiight!" over the piano tinkerings of "Christmas in the Trap"; "Riiiight!" over the rumbling "What's Goodie?" It filled up empty moments, sometimes as an afterthought, a cough or a hiccup; sometimes he doubled the "Riiiight!" that was playing on the audio track.

It was weird, the New York stop on the "Kushed & Purrp" tour. For a night celebrating mind-warping indulgence, there were few Ziplocs in the building, a scant amount of clouds in the air. (Harlem's Smoke DZA, a member of the Smoker's Club, rites love songs about marijuana; SPACEGHOSTPURRP stirs Three 6 Mafia in with his Sprite.) "Why am I the only one smoking?" G.R.A.M.Z., an opening artist, asked the crowd. "They took y'all weed? Fuck." (I didn't get patted down, but then again, I didn't bring any weed in.) When asked what they were drinking, a couple of Coronas went up, maybe three, definitely less than four. The bar seemed pretty empty. "Coronas are cool," said G.R.A.M.Z.

Better than: A Republican debate.

Chris Webby has "203" inked across his right side, a gothic "Connecticut" burned into the skin beneath his neck. There are the scattered images of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Mario Brothers and Transformers among his tattoos; a search online suggests Simba exists on his leg, but I didn't check. Some tattooist put a coupling of eighth notes a few inches above his hip. He is suburban, aggressively so; the voice of parking lot angst, the face of middle-middle-class rage. When he tosses an unopened water bottle down at the floor, he scowls: "Motherfucker!"

Outside of the traditional hip-hop blogs, far away from radio, his is a bubbling movement, a frathouse contagion. Over more than two years on the way to six mixtapes—his latest, There Goes the Neighborhood, reached the top of iTunes' hip-hop chart—Chris Webby has racked up some 70,000 followers on Twitter, 150,000 fans on Facebook and 20 million YouTube plays. (He still does not have a Wikipedia page.) This is not to say that he isn't looking for mainstream appeal: at this very moment, he's staging a campaign to get his face onto the cover of XXL's next Freshman issue.

Swizz Beatz
IAC Building
Wednesday, November 30

Better than: Ja Rule's acting in The Fast and the Furious.

It seems cruel that as the recession continues to hit the "snooze" button, Swizz Beatz has picked up yet another job, another paycheck. He is the luxe James Franco, collecting 1099s like passport stamps: an NYU professorship here, a Reebok partnership there; Aston-Martin and the cartoon Voltron demand his services. Last night, in the lobby of Frank Gehry's IAC building, the higher-than-high-end British car company Lotus revealed its first product with Swizz's participation: the first chrome-painted coupe, which is not chrome metal, but... I don't know, the distinction was lost on me. Swizz felt it was a big deal, though, so he kept mentioning it.

As drinks were served in votive-candle glasses, Swizz's music played overhead, a mélange of nasal chants and stagger-beats. Alicia Keys stopped on the red carpet, leather jacket and soft hair. There was Carmelo Anthony, leaning so far down to have a girl put a wristband on him; nearby, Russell Simmons was making his way out, pretty early in the night. DMX's brother stood onstage throughout the night—Swizz shouted him out. Someone noticed Steven Baldwin "and his brother who looks like him." You know, Alec.

Better than: Canceling an hour before showtime.

This March, Frank Ocean released the free mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra on Tumblr, and it was subsequently passed around like a sex tape, picking up steam with every like, every reblog, every retweet, every "MUST LISTEN"-branded blog post. Immediately, Def Jam put out the Bat-Signal, a nationwide search for Annie, trying in vain to get this kid on the phone, desperate to give him a deal. An unnamed executive called someone in Los Angeles, who revealed that Frank Ocean was already signed to Def Jam, under the name Lonny Breaux. He'd been collecting dust on the label's shelf for a year and a half; frustrated, he put the music he'd made out himself. Def Jam had no idea that they already owned him.

Pill w/Jon Connor, AP, Nina B, Kasanova
S.O.B.'s
Thursday, November 17

Better than: Subway delays. Like, who enjoys that?

Two years ago, on the strength of the bubble-cooking anthem "Trap Goin' Ham," Pill was inescapable during CMJ week, a pop-up at every show. XXL picked him as one of its top 10 "freshman rappers" to watch. Andre 3000 gave Pill his "stamp of approval." Unfortunately, mountains of hype can quickly turn to a heap of mush if not kept properly. Nine months ago, he signed to Rick Ross' Maybach Music Group label and life was good. Now, not only has Pill been superseded by Meek Mill's frothy ascent and Wale's Billboard chart cut-outs, it even seems like Stalley has a higher profile than he does, scraggly beard and all. Pill was practically the only person not present at last month's jam-packed Wale show, the only core MMG member not onstage at October's BET Hip-Hop Awards. (During the show's broadcast, he tweeted, "Don't ask me, ask them. Str8 up." Sheesh.) Maybe he was working on plans for his comeback; maybe he doesn't have his priorities straight; maybe he wasn't invited. It is entirely possible that Pill is the Eduardo Saverin of MMG.