Best Kept Secret: Rhymefest

If you really want to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Thriller, stay away from this overproduced mess. First off, Thriller might be the best-selling, but if you want to remember Michael at his baddest, you need to hit up Off the Wall. It also comes in a deluxe reissue, but it does not come with Fergie, Kanye, and Will.I.Am remixes of the songs. Presumably you buy a rerelease because you love the original album, not because you're a big fan of schmaltzy remixes of Billie Jean.

What you should to do is save your money and go right to allidorecords.com and download Man in the Mirror, the new Rhymefest mixtape produced and presented by Mark Ronson. Ronson and Fest are two of the most imaginative artists working today, in hip hop or any other genre. Ronson works all over the place: he produced Lily Allen's Alright, Still as well as chunks of Amy Winehouse's Back to Black. For that album, he not only won Winehouse her Grammys and street cred, but also hooked her up with the Dap Kings, Brooklyn's own soul revival band. After Back to Black, he kept on working with them, releasing the super-underrated Version, a record of covers from mostly British artists covered by other mostly British artists. Amy Winehouse covers the Zutons' only good song, "Valerie," and Ol' Dirty Bastard delivers a posthumous rhyme over a laid back cover of Britney's "Toxic."

Meanwhile, Rhymefest has been holding it down for Chicago for as long as Kanye. I don't know much about his career before Kanye's Grammy winning "Jesus Walks," which Fest co-wrote with Kanye. I first became a fan after Blue Collar came out in the summer of 2006. This album may not be the hardest hip hop album out there, but it is the most fun, and if you ask me it's the best hip hop record of the last few years. Fest has a lot in common with Kanye in the sense that his production often steals the show from his rhymes. That being said, he's a better emcee than Kanye, and his beats are... dare I say it... also better than Kanye's.

Anyfest, apparently this mixtape came out at the end of last year. I didn't notice it until a few weeks ago. What we have here is a concept mixtape: Rhymefest raps over an entire album of Michael Jackson samples, including a few skits in which Rhymefest and Ronson have to put up with Jacko's studio antics. It's a postmodern tribute to a god of popular music, and it treats the man's work with a lot more respect than any of the remixes on Thriller 25. Ronson produces most of the tracks, and the whole thing gets guest tracks from Ghostface, Talib Kweli, Mary J. Blige, Dres, Camp Lo, and Chicago up-and-coming emcee Wale. Rhymefest has a proper release coming out in April (hopefully), but honestly he's already made one of the best hip hop records of the year. Click the album title below to download the .zip file.

Mark Ronson Presents Rhymefest: Man in the Mirror [allidorecords.com]
Michael Jackson: Thriller 25 [weeklydig.com]