How We Select New Hip-Hop Releases

This is a desk guide. It explains the policy this site runs on. It is not coverage of any particular release, and it is written so that readers can hold us to it.

What counts as a release

For our purposes, a release is recorded work that an artist, a label, or an authorised distributor has made available to the public through an official channel, with metadata that identifies who made it and when.

That definition excludes a lot of things that circulate every day:

• leaked reference tracks and unfinished sessions
• re-uploads of someone else's audio
• snippets posted without a full release behind them
• announcement posts, countdowns, and "dropping soon" teasers
• DJ rips and radio captures of unclear origin

An announcement is not a release. We cover it only once the work itself exists on an official platform and can be verified.

The five checks

Every editorial release report passes the same checks before it is published. Artist-uploaded tracks publish immediately under the artist’s responsibility and are separate from editorial coverage.

1. Attribution. Is the credited artist the artist who actually appears on the recording, and does the label or distributor line match the artist's known releases?
2. Official channel. Does the link sit on the artist's own channel, the label's channel, or a licensed streaming page? A song uploaded to an unrelated account is not an official source, even if the audio is genuine.
3. Date. Is a publication or release date visible, and does it agree with the metadata on the other official platforms? When dates conflict, we say so rather than picking the most convenient one.
4. Version. Is this the final release, an edit, a remix, a live take, or a sped-up version? Versions are labelled. A promotional edit is not presented as the song.
5. Availability. Is the work actually live and playable in a normal browser, without a login or a region workaround? Broken or geo-blocked links are not published as entries.

If a check cannot be cleared, the piece waits. It does not run with a hedge in the first line and hope in the second.

Selection is not endorsement

We do not cover every release that arrives, and appearing here does not mean the desk thinks a record is good. Coverage means two things: the release passed the checks above, and there was something worth saying about it that a reader could use.

We do not rank releases. There is no score, no star rating, and no ordered list of the week that implies a verdict we cannot support.

How entries are labelled

Each entry carries a format, so readers know what they are opening: a song, an album, a feature, or a roundup. Each also carries a content rating of explicit, clean, or unknown. Unknown is used deliberately: we do not guess at a rating we have not seen.

Where a piece has no cleared image, we publish it text-first rather than borrowing artwork. Where an image is used, the credit and the permission note are recorded, and rights holders can ask for removal through the contact page.

Sources we relied on are listed at the foot of the entry, so a reader can repeat the check themselves.

What we will never do

• Publish a release report we cannot confirm at an official source.
• Invent artists, quotes, staff biographies, or traffic figures.
• Accept payment for independent editorial coverage, editorial picks, or a favourable write-up. Paid homepage promotions are separate, clearly labelled Sponsored, and have a defined placement period.
• Copy another outlet's reporting and present it as our own.
• Report listening or streaming numbers we have no way to verify.

Corrections

When we get something wrong, we correct the body of the piece and add a note at the foot of the article describing what changed. We do not quietly rewrite published work and hope nobody notices. Corrections involving a credit, a release date, or a link that turns out not to be official are treated as urgent.

If you think an entry breaks one of these rules, the contact page explains what to send.