2008: As We Say Goodbye…

It’s that time of year… for us to say goodbye to the past and look ahead to what the future has in store. 2008 was a tremendous year here at this site. We found our niche and we grew. Going from 1,500 hits a day in January to over 10,000 hits a day today, I guess you could say it was a great year!

Coming off our run of American Ganster Remix Albums at the top of the year, we took direction to make our way to being an elite hip hop web site. What our site is probably known for the most is our posts of hip hop original samples. Along with a few other sites, such as Hip-Hop Is Read and Goon’s Dancing, we started a craze of compiling Sample Sets of your favorite hip hop records. These have definately been our most popular posts on the site. So popular that I enlisted the help of Sample King, Thomas. He’s been more help on this site than you can imagine. I don’t have a count of how many sets we’ve compiled to date, but here at the Top 10 Most Popular Sample Sets…

1. Kanye West: Original Samples Collection
2. Just Blaze: Original Samples Collection
3. The Chronic: Original Samples
4. College Dropout: Original Samples
5. Donuts: Original Samples
6. The Blueprint 2: Original Samples
7. Late Registration: Original Samples
8. Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers): Original Samples
9. Ready To Die: The Samples
10. Vol. 2… Hard Knock Life: Original Samples

I’m happy to say that we will continue putting out quality sample sets in 2009. And to kick it all off, we are dedicating the month of January to all the sample sets that we didn’t get around to finishing in 2008. That’s right… in the same vein as Freeway’s Month of Madness, the whole month of January on the site will be…

The Month of Samples

Each day during the month of January (starting tomorrow), we will release at least one new sample set a day; with a caveat that most of the sets are incomplete. We’ve had a ton of sample lists sitting in our queue for some time, and it is finally time to unload them and move on.

Also starting in 2009, I’ll be a contributing writer over at Mick Boogie’s web site for a weekly article dedicated to hip hop samples. Should be fun!

Samples weren’t the only thing that we excelled in 2008. We brought Sean Deez aboard as primary staff writer. He’s churned out everything from quality album reviews, movie reviews, show reviews, Top 10 lists, interviews… hell, he’s even got his own spot… Deez Steez! Point blank, this site would not be what it is today without the help of Sean Deez. Sean is currently finishing up his year-end lists, which you’re probably reading now. Stay tuned as we put out more of his lists over the next few days.

Of course, I can’t forget the other contributors on the site. Carsten has played a huge part in introducing us to hip hop overseas. Beads, while he started off writing album reviews, has recently moved up to being in charge of our New Artist Spotlights. So if you want your music heard or would like an interview, Beads is the guy you need to talk to. He’s gonna be introducing us to a ton of new talent in 2009. Our two newest members were actually recruited by Deez to help him on the review front… Freddie C and eA. We hope to hear much more from them in the new year as well. Last, but certainly not least, I gotta mention the Graphic Artist of the site, Krome. Krome has blessed us with her talent through the banners you see at the top of the site and a few miscellaneous album covers.

As you can see, 2008 was a great year. We’ve made a lot of new friends, posted some great articles and a few controversial ones. According to our statistics (aside from sample sets), here are our Top 10 Most Popular Articles of 2008…

1. Top 10 Most Anticipated Albums for 2008
2. “Nas Is Like” Sample Revealed…
3. Producer’s Spotlight: The Alchemist
4. Spectac & 9th Wonder – The Corner of Spec & 9th
5. American Gangster: Best of The Remixes, vol 1
6. All Samples Are NOT Cleared
7. Nas: Library of A Legend
8. Isaac Hayes: A Hip Hop Inspiration
9. This Is Hip Hop Remixtape: New York Edition
10. Top 10 Diss Tracks of All Time

The list above covers just about everything we do on the site. Our Remix Contest have been a huge success. We started at the top of the year with our contest dedicated to New York. We followed that up with our 90s Remix Contest. Then recently we remixed tracks for The Soul Movement Fam. And currently we are involved in our most popular remix contest to date. We will definitely continue to let new producers get heard through our site in 2009. More contests to come!

Later in the year, we also started dedicating full days, even weeks to some of hip hop’s biggest stars. To date we have had the site dedicated to Nas, Ghostface, Foreign Exchange, Kanye West, Scarface, Ludacris, Common, and Q-Tip. Check out our Exclusive Downloads section for some of the dope compilations we’ve put together over the year.

Aside from everything else, we’ve gotten recognition in the form of the SOHH Online Hip Hop Awards last month, winning first place for Music Lover Blog of The Year and coming in second place for Blogger of The Year. We’ve gotten props around the music industry by top cats such as Mick Boogie, Don Cannon, and Akon. I’ll die happy the day Jay-Z gives us a shout out.

I feel like this post has kind of rambled on, so I’m gonna wrap it up by wishing everyone a Happy New Year. Thanks to everyone who’s contributed to the site and made it what it is today. And oh yeah… we reached our goal! Back in September we announced that we hit 1 million hits on the site. I had said that I wanted to hit 1.5 million by the end of the year. Well we hit it just the other day. At the rate we’re going, it won’t be long until we hit that 2 million mark!

Alright, enough about 2008….. 2009 — LET’S GET IT!

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