People love to be apocalyptic about the state of mainstream hip-hop, and if you express any satisfaction with it you're assumed to be an idiot and/or 12. But I will say that while my ability to find things to champion or defend on rap radio has reached an all-time low in the Young Money era, things rebounded a bit in 2012 with a lot of new stars and different sounds in the mix keeping things from getting too boring. For the first time in years, rap doesn't seem to be taking a distant backseat to R&B on playlists, and the majority of rap songs on the radio don't even have R&B hooks. I'm not thrilled with everything going on, but there's an exciting anything-could-happen feeling about things right now, and I'm actually pretty curious to see what 2013 will look like. As with the pop, R&B and rock lists, there is a Spotify playlist of all these songs:

1. Future - "Same Damn Time"
#12 R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, #92 Hot 100
When the year started I never would've guessed Future would be one of my favorite artists of 2012, but dude won me over. Great album, which ended up with 5 hit singles. "Magic" was the song that started warming me up to him, but then I realized how much the chorus was a lazy rewrite of Gucci's "Wasted," and then "Same Damn Time" dropped and it just felt like the banger of the year. Love the combination of foreboding bells and whistling G-funk portamento synths, really felt of the moment while not falling into any current production trends.

2. 2 Chainz - "I'm Different"
#17 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #63 Hot 100
This is a pretty recent pick to place this high, it's still steadily rising up the charts every week, but after a year of 2 Chainz guest verses and a spotty record of solo singles, it's been gratifying to hear basically the perfect 2 Chainz song on the radio, one without any of the trainwreck moments he usually sabotages any given verse with. Also a lot of fun to hear him on a faster, almost Bay Area-ish DJ Mustard beat, suits him better than a lot of the slower tempos you usually hear him on. Note the use of the Airplay chart for more recent songs, since Billboard totally fucked up the genre charts in October and made them more download-driven, which is one of the reasons radio is the emphasis in my year-end lists here.

3. Travis Porter f/ Tyga - "Ayy Ladies"
#9 R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, #53 Hot 100
As you can tell from this top 3, I'm pretty happy about the comeback of Atlanta on rap radio this year -- not that it ever really went away, but 2010-2011 represented probably the lowest ebb of ATL impact on the mainstream in the past decade, when Waka was the only breakout new artist and a lot of the established stars were mostly off the radar. In 2012, Future and 2 Chainz ran shit, as did to a lesser extent Travis Porter and Ca$h Out, and even Jeezy and T.I. got back in the spotlight a little bit. Anyway Travis Porter are some goofy motherfuckers and their singles produced by F-Ki always sound amazing and have such a unique texture to them, don't know why that guy isn't doing beats for everybody right now. Shame about the Tyga verse, though.

4. Meek Mill f/ Drake and Jeremih - "Amen"
#5 R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, #57 Hot 100
My top ranked rap single a year ago was "House Party," although in retrospect it should've been "I'ma Boss," but in any event Meek had an incredible 2011 and I was very anxious this year to see whether he'd keep the crazy aggro anthems coming or have to do some soft bullshit to get his album released. So it was a pleasant surprise that his Drake-assisted lead single was, while technical not as hard as his breakthrough songs, was still kind of great and consistent with his sound up to that point. Even the Drake verse ain't bad.

5. Young Jeezy f/ Jay-Z and Andre 3000 - "I Do"
#4 R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, #61 Hot 100
Now here's a song that Drake would have ruined, so grateful that Jeezy cut his verse. This song was huge and great but never seemed to actually get talked about much as being anything special, I think because people realized Jeezy just needed a hit real bad to get his album out and was leaning hard on big stars, and because it so obviously recalled "International Players Anthem." I really love Andre's verse on this, though, one of my top 3 verses from him over the last few years, and even as a solo Jeezy cut it would've been pretty dope.

6. Future - "Turn On The Lights"
#2 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #50 Hot 100
AutoTune ballads were one of my least favorite things about rap around 2009, so I was pretty amazed that someone was able to reinvent the form and make me love it in 2012.

7. Kanye West, Big Sean, Pusha T and 2 Chainz - "Mercy"
#1 R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, #13 Hot 100
To me there's a huge contrast between this song and the other big G.O.O.D. Music hit of the year; "Clique" sounded really exciting and impressive when it first hit radio, but has lost its luster more with every listen, as I realized that the beat is nothing special and there isn't a single good verse on it. "Mercy," by contrast, sounded puzzling and distended and obnoxious at first, but grew in stature over its months of ubiquity, as I realized that 2 Chainz had the best verse on any radio hit of the year (possibly of his career), the weird beat/hook were kinda dope, the Kanye section actually works better than it had a right to, and the Big Sean and Pusha verses, while stupid, helped kind of set up the superior second half of the song.

8. J. Cole f/ Missy Elliott - "Nobody's Perfect"
#3 R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, #61 Hot 100
On paper, J. Cole has a really impressive career: a debut album that hit #1 on the Billboard 200 and scored three hit singles, all while having a Jay-Z cosign and not using that to make hits. But it is clear that none of that matters and nobody gives a flying fuck about J. Cole, and that's probably a good thing, that guy does not need any encouragement. This song is really great, though, easily the best rapper/singer collab of the year, and demonstrated that Missy can still do R&B really well, which she should remember since her two comeback rap singles this year both sunk like a stone and killed all the anticipation for her getting back in the game even while this song was all over the radio.

9. Ca$h Out - "Ca$hin' Out"
#2 R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, #36 Hot 100
It's interesting to me that the rap industry is so plainly set up for certain artists to be one hit wonders and for others to get every chance to make a hit -- Ca$h Out and Kirko Bangz and LoveRance each made one of the biggest songs of the year but there was never any doubt in anyone's mind that any of them would be a big breakthrough artist like 2 Chainz or even French Montana. They might get a little burn on a follow-up single (Ca$h Out's "Hold Up" is kinda dope, despite the presence of Wale) or get featured on a few songs but that song's all they really got and they'll never drop an album.

10. Lil Wayne f/ Big Sean - "My Homies Still"
#20 R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, #38 Hot 100
Wayne's best solo single of 2011 was essentially a remix of a Rick Ross song featuring Ross, and his best joint of 2012 was a retread of "Dance (A$$)" with Big Sean, which is all pretty emblematic of how uninspired Wayne is this days. This song jams, though, way better than "No Worries."

11. Nicki Minaj - "Stupid Hoe"
#53 R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, #59 Hot 100
Another song that seemed to build off of "Dance (A$$)," but basically turned it up to 11 (I should mention that I almost put "Dance" near the top of this list because when it hit in late 2011 I wasn't ready to admit how good it was yet in my year-end list). "Stupid Hoe" wasn't really a hit but it was an incredibly song that got a lot of publicity mostly for how much people hated it, which is a shame. I had every reason to hate it -- for being a retread of a better recent Nicki song, for releasing a diss track as a single, for another seizure-inducing Hype Williams video -- and fucking loved it. Maybe the most gleeful diss track of all time, such mean-spirited fun to just decimate the corpse of Lil Kim's career.

12. Jay-Z and Kanye West - "Gotta Have It"
#14 R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, #69 Hot 100
I don't know what's more surprising, that The Neptunes produced this song, or that there was an enjoyable Neptunes-produced song on the radio in 2012 (how long has it been since that happened? Five years maybe?). Also really fun to hear a 2 minute 20 second rap song on the radio, brevity is such a neglected virtue in radio rap these days, probably most of the songs on this list are twice as long. And since I never really fucked with "Otis" or "Jigga's In Paris!" this was my weird default choice for best Watch The Throne single.

13. Driicky Graham - "Snapbacks & Tattoos"
#23 R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, #73 Hot 100
This song is pretty incredible from a production standpoint, and I'm willing to give Driicky some credit for how good the song is, since I once went to listen to it on Spotify and accidentally pulled up a Bow Wow mixtape version that was just awful.

14. Chief Keef f/ Lil Reese - "I Don't Like"
#20 R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, #73 Hot 100
The whole hysteria about Chief Keef this year, both among his champions and his detractors, kind of mystified me, I don't know what the big deal is, teenagers are making grimy shit like this in every city. But I got a new appreciate for this song after the absolutely horrible Kanye remix (or the unlistenable follow-up "Love Sosa"), and kinda felt good for Keef that he was able to make the original version a bit of a radio hit in its own right after the remix hype died down.

15. T.I. f/ Lil Wayne - "Ball"
#11 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #50 Hot 100
T.I. in 2012 is just kind of a sad shell of what he was a few years ago, more as a rap star than as a rapper; he can still throw together a hot song here and there, but that VH1 show may have killed his swag even more than the snitching allegations. This song is basically catnip to me, though, this feels like the Travis Porter song in being a throwback to a faster, more fun era of Southern radio rap.

16. Nas - "Daughters"
#78 R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
After so many late career singles that just tried way too hard and got nowhere (too many of which sampled "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida," it was nice to hear something this relaxed and assured from Nas, he really should've been able to make songs like this for a while now but I guess he finally feels like he's aged into it. This shoulda got more radio burn for the neo-soul crowd, if this came out after "I Can" it would've been huge.

17. E-40 f/ YG, IamSu! and Problem - "Function"
#62 R&B/Hip-Hop Songs
E-40 has pretty much given up on mainstream success and focused on keeping his cult happy, releasing a staggering 7 albums in the last 3 years (9 counting the joints with Too $hort) and not aiming for national radio with any of them. But this year he ended up with his highest charting song since "U & Dat," and it spun off a pretty high profile all-star remix. This is one of those times I kinda wish I lived on the West coast where I might have actually heard it on the radio.

18. DJ Drama f/ 2 Chainz, Meek Mill and Jeremih - "My Moment"
#23 R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, #89 Hot 100
Despite his stronger catalog as a mixtape DJ, Drama has always struggled to play catch-up with Khaled in terms of making posse cut radio hits, including this year when the awful "Take It To The Head" outshined anything he did. But man, I'll take this and "We In This Bitch" over anything from the last 3 or 4 Khaled albums. This song is kind of an easy one for me to rep, though, all three of these guys are right in my wheelhouse.

19. Juicy J f/ 2 Chainz and Lil Wayne - "Bandz A Make Her Dance"
#2 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #31 Hot 100
Mike Will Made It was clearly the producer of the year, but a lot of my favorite beats of his weren't the hits, and this song I've kinda gone back and forth on enjoying and being sick of. It was better as a Juicy J solo track, but it wouldn't have been as big a hit without the guests, I guess. It's sad how Wayne can tie 2 Chainz for the most appearances on this list when one is having the best year of his career and the other is having one of his worst.

20. French Montana f/ Rick Ross, Drake and Lil Wayne - "Pop That"
#2 R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, #36 Hot 100
I think of this and "Bandz A Make Her Dance" as the year's big haunted house strip club joints, and again this kind of horror movie crunk sounds better when it's not on the radio every time you get in the car, but obviously this song jams. This may be the first posse cut in history where Rick Ross has the best verse, though, after years of filling space on Khaled tracks. Anybody could've been on the first verse, though, this would've been a hit for Eli Porter.

bonus bile:
The 10 Worst Rap Radio Hits of 2012
1. Wale f/ T-Pain, Rick Ross and Meek Mill - "Bag Of Money"
2. Tyga - "Rack City"
3. Drake f/ Lil Wayne - "The Motto"
4. Drake f/ The Weeknd - "Crew Love"
5. 2 Chainz f/ Drake - "No Lie"
6. Nicki Minaj f/ 2 Chainz - "Beez In The Trap"
7. Fat Joe f/ Chris Brown - "Another Round"
8. Lupe Fiasco - "Bitch Bad"
9. Kendrick Lamar - "Swimming Pools (Drank)"
10. LoveRance f/ 50 Cent, IAmSu! and Skipper - "Up!"

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 09, 2012 at 8:42 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.