I'm Brian Hyatt. This is Rolling Stone Music Now. Today I'm going to bring you the latest entries in our series on some of the best music of 2023, even as we continue to journey further into 2024.

This time we'll take a deep dive on a bunch of genres,

Afropop, hip hop, R&B, and more.

To do so I have with me, Monka Percante,

and Andre Gee, who both made great lists of their favorite music in

2023. To start out here's my conversation with Andre who takes us through his

picks for the best hip-hop of 2023.

You sent me your list of your favorite hip-hop of 2023 and it's just start to finish really interesting stuff. It just shows how much

interesting stuff is going on in hip-hop away from maybe what people see as the

center. Hip-hop is at this point where you can be unfamiliar with the artist and they have

400,000 monthly listeners and they just have their own world going on and you're like

oh shit I really like this how have I not been in tune with this all this

time there's plenty of really good unique music out there you just gotta look for a

little bit it's not gonna be necessarily within the sphere of the mainstream all types of

intriguing sounds and artists doing their own things out there so hopefully this

discussion will somebody listening will come across a new artist they're not familiar with.

Let's start with The Loopers is the artist and the album is Microphone Fiend.

And this is one that's, there's some stuff that is pretty experimental and this is one of those. Pretty out there, really enjoyed it. Yeah, yeah, I obviously really enjoyed it as well. The Lupers has always been one of my favorite rappers because he's just like you said experimental

and just creatively ambitious and I feel like that's reflected throughout this project.

So on microphone theme, the him a song.

B him I hold my head

him on a big

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