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We at Hip-Hop Wired pride ourselves on being fully immersed in the music of the culture we rep proudly. Part of our duty as a publication and crew is to school the masses on who is doing what musically and there’s no better way to do that beyond our CRT FRSH (Certified Fresh) bi-weekly playlist.

As the God Rakim Allah famously said, it’s been a long time, we should’ve left you, but we needed a bit of time to recharge and reset our brains so we can bring brand new heat to the culture. This entry of CRT FRSH is another 35-track collection of Hip-Hop music from all types of artists from the United States and abroad.

It is clear that few Hip-Hop fans could avoid the massive releases of Kanye West’s DONDA and Drake’s Certifed Lover Boy, two albums that clearly stand as two of the biggest releases thus far in the year. We open with Yeezy’s “Hurricane,” which features The Weeknd, and a focused Lil Baby continues his streak in bodying all features he’s on. We naturally follow it up with Drizzy’s “Champagne Poetry,” which set the tone for the project and already spawned a pair of explosive freestyles from Lupe Fiasco and Freddie Gibbs.

Baby Keem might have one of the most sonically diverse albums of the year in The Melodic Blue and the track with his big cousin Kendrick Lamar, “range brothers,” has been polarizing due to the obvious trolling occurring at the end of the song. Young Thug continues to push his sound into new zones with “TIck Tock,” and Fivio Foreign’s “Story Time” is a bone-chilling affair that might have some spots hot at night as the summer wanes.

Wu-Tang Clan affiliate Bronze Nazareth returns to the scene with “The Precipice” with some heat from Roc Marciano. Texas spitter Maxo Kream also resurfaced alongside Tyler, The Creator for the “Big Persona” track. Little Simz has one of our favorite albums of 2021 with Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, and the Nigerian-British MC’s “Miss Understood” is the album’s booming closer. We also bring Zambia to the mix with Chanda Mbao’s “Zombies” and MJ Wemoto’s “good mood saka huya” and both joints are fire.

The rest of the playlist rounds out with joints from Flee Lord, Zombie Juice, Smoke DZA, DJ Muggs and Hologram, Action Bronson, Curren$y, Mickey Factz, Nottz, and Blu, Planet Asia, Common, Conway The Machine, Outlawz, Benny The Butcher, and more.

Check out the heat below.

Photo: Getty