The newly-minted Vinny Cha$e

XXL magazine revealed their annual freshmen list today. Among the10 picks for future rap fame (plus a boxed-out bonus picture of Chief Keef's head), New York City is represented by the monolithic Action Bronson, Pro Era leader Joey Bada$$ and Angel Haze. In the interest of municipal pride then, here's five hometown rap chaps that we'd happily see replacing some of the more quizzical picks on the cover.

See also: The Ten Best New York City Rap Albums of 2012

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Harry Fraud

Editor's note: In Tweets is Watching, Phillip Mlynar asks local artists questions based solely on the contents of their Twitter timeline.

Hit man Harry Fraud dropped his new Adrift project today, which the hip-hop producer has teased on Twitter to be a mix of "stuff you may have heard and stuff you may have missed as well as a few others things I been holding on to." Adrift will be followed by a soon-coming EP with Brooklyn spitter Eddie B, and then a further collaboration with his blunt brother Action Bronson. Taking a minute out from his hectic production schedule, we hit up Harry and asked him to explain away his timeline references to Sublime albums, Danny Brown's rapped reaction to MTV's hottest MC list, and downtime spent surfing with manatees.

See also:Harry Fraud's Top Five Producers This Year: "Alchemist, Alchemist, Alchemist, Alchemist, and Alchemist"

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Flushing's own Action Bronson raps a lot about food. You know this already. We attempted to make a meal out of his words. Five courses in all. We're still full.

See Also:
-Rapper Action Bronson Makes Us Want to Eat His Words
-Every Food Reference on Action Bronson's New Album Rare Chandeliers
-Five Action Bronson Wrestling References Explained

So we asked ourselves: can you make an five-course gourmet meal using only foodstuffs rapped about by Bronson? The answer is: yes. And it involves so much butter, oil and animal fat, it would probably kill men from lesser cities. But this is New York (unofficial food slogan: "sack up and eat"). Let's get to work.

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Unquestionably New York's biggest do-no-wrong rap story of 2012 was Bronsalino, the Albanian Queens-native chef in which rap fans witnessed the face (well, cadence) of the blessed Tony Starks. Lobbing the early career peak Blue Chips onto the web for free and following it up with Rare Chandeliers for good measure, Action Bronson signed to VICE Records and made countless critics' lists by the end of the year flowing unpretentiously on typical rap fare (girls, chronic, hookers,) and his own patents (food, obscure athletes, food). We caught up with him backstage at Philly's Blockley Pourhouse to learn about oxtail, weed and uh, Mac Miller.

See also:
- Action Bronson's Best Tweets
- Five Action Bronson Wrestling References Explained

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Action Bronson

Tonight one of New York's favorite new hometown heroes, Action Bronson, plays Brooklyn Bowl. While there's been much discussed in regard to his frequent references to food, be it invoking particular dishes as a metaphor, a by-product of his vivid storytelling or employed to advance a narrative, not many have tried to dissect his other favorite subject: professional wrestling. This could be due to wrestling (or, as the WWE would rather you call it, "sports-entertainment") usually holding a self-contained audience in pop culture and, as a result, its references in popular music often go over the heads of most listeners. For instance, how many of your friends can tell you what "Watching Grunge legdrop New Jack through a press table" in Weezer's "El Scorcho" actually means?

That in mind, to help listeners understand and appreciate certain Action Bronson lines they otherwise may not have caught, here's our five favorite Action Bronson wrestling references explained.

See Also:
- Every Food Reference on Action Bronson's New Album Rare Chandeliers
- Action Bronson's Best Tweets

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Roc Marciano

Boom-bap be damned! The latest micro-movement in hip-hop involves rappers layering their rhymes over production that either ditches the idea of using drums entirely or mixes any errant snares so low down in the mix as to be barely audible. Hooked around the interchangeable Action Bronson, Roc Marcy and Alchemist trifecta, here's a primer on the quiet storm that's beginning to define the tail-end of 2012's rap schedule.

See also:
- Meat Guns, Weed Brownies, and Riesling: Our Conversation With Roc Marciano
- Every Food Reference on Action Bronson's New Album Rare Chandeliers
- Party Supplies' Five-Step Guide To Making Music From YouTube

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Action Bronson

Action Bronson released his new Rare Chandeliers album today as a free download! As befits New York's finest rapping gourmand, the project brims with references to foodstuffs. So having had a chance to digest the latest of Bronson's banquets, here's a handy guide to the spread of tasty verbals sprinkled across the project--complete with dinner guest Styles P attempting to get in on the action by turning up to the feast with a Swanson TV dinner. Now go 'head and pass that fennel-laced lamb.

See also:
- Action Bronson And Party Supplies Team Up
- Action Bronson's Best Tweets

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Action Bronson w/Flatbush Zombies, Meyhem Lauren, Tanya Morgan
Music Hall of Williamsburg
Thursday, August 23

Better than: Hip-hop actually dying back when Nas called it in 2006.

What was Action Bronson going to do?

Last night, around midnight, the Flatbush Zombies, accompanied by A$AP Rocky, left the Music Hall of Williasmburg stage after whipping the crowd into an orgiastic frenzy of adrenaline. Crowd surfers numbered in the double digits; mosh pits sprang up like sudden whirlpools in a tempest. The energy was so high that the Zombies decided to film an impromptu video. How could Flushing behemoth Action Bronson hope raise the bar?

Well, after Halloween comes Christmas and Bronson played Rap Santa. He threw what looked to be about half a pound of high-grade marijuana, split up into dime bags, into the crowd. He also gave out shoes and steaks. You are not misreading that sentence. Steaks—two, from the rapper's favorite restaurant, Peter Luger's, and wrapped up nicely to go—were tossed into the crowd. As you can imagine, the crowd was pleased by these shows of generosity. They nearly lost their collective goddamn minds for good, some in the grand pursuit of weed and others just reacting to the sheer spectacle, a Robin Hood-slash-Henry VII figure committing a crime for the good of the people.

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Action Bronson.

There was a time when the best place to hear new music was Hot 97, when the sound of bombs going off would signal a song debuting across the city. But if anyone wanted those songs for themselves, they'd have to buy a whole damn album or sit around and wait until it came on the radio again. Yes, these were dark days indeed.

Until knights in shiny faux-velour Coogi sweats rode in to save the day. They were called mixtape DJs, and they offered collections of hard-to-find songs and mixes. They were awesome humanitarians snubbed from Nobel consideration due to dirty politics. But the Internet, like it tends to do to great things, basically killed that whole operation. Now, the iPod has made the mixtape an endlessly personal idea, blogs have songs the minute they're released, and Funkmaster Flex and DJ Clue are fighting like starving hyenas over scraps for the chance to "debut" a song on live radio.

Some DJs, though, still have enough restraint to hold on to a few gems long enough and turn them into a full-on compilation of quality unreleased music. Mick Boogie is one of the best of the remaining traditional mixtape DJs, and his latest, Represent The Stripes, is a hip-hop ode to the U.S. Olympic team. I'm not quite sure exactly how the collection as a whole ties into the Olympics, but if Mick Boogie says it does, then it does. Here are the songs that would best go along with cheering on the country's pole-vaulters and handballers.

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The worst result of 21st-century technological advances, at least from a musical point of view, is the dual proliferation of DIY recording equipment and social media, allowing millions of—notice the quotation marks—"musicians" to flood inboxes, festival backpacks, Facebook timelines and Twitter mentions with "hot" tracks. Rappers could be seen as the worst offenders, since rap songs are the easiest to record, needing only a mic, an instrumental and minimal mastering to work.

As a result, Internet browsers are all being transformed into freelance (and usually unpaid) A&R reps, sifting through hundreds of songs before finding something that's worth loading into an iPod. The job can be quite overwhelming—but have no fear. Every Wednesday, we'll bring you the week's best hip-hop tracks so you can clear your inbox and stop playing the guessing game. Here are the three and a half great songs that popped up this week.

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