New York Hip Hop – Birthplace Magazine NY Hip Hop – Music, News, Information and Events – New York, NYC, NY

We're back with another installment of "10 Must See Videos by NY-area Hip Hop Artists," a semi-regular series where we take time to collect and deliver recently released, entertaining visual displays from hip hop artists and filmmakers in the New York City area.

Freestyle Mondays, NYC's longest-running weekly, live band, open mic, freestyle rap series, celebrates 10 years, starting 2012 in a new location, but with the same winning formula and eager participants that continue to rank Freestyle Mondays as one of our favorite reasons why New York hip hop doesn't suck.

One of the first releases of good ol' 2012 comes from Raekwon, who delivers the 17-track mixtape 'Unexpected Victory,' featuring the likes of Busta Rhymes, Fred The Godson, Vado and LEP Bogus Boys with production by folks like Scram Jones, 9th Wonder and Statik Selecktah.

Despite what some New York hip hop purists want to believe, 1990s New York hip hop does not define the genre. Today's music is no less "real" than that of hip hop's Golden Era. This doesn't mean that good, New York flavored hip hop doesn't exist, but is also doesn't mean that it has to sound the same as the 90s.

XXL's popular, provacative but largely unimportant "Freshmen Class" will be back for 2012, and while we await the official results, there is a new Reader's Choice option this year, which will be surely be equally, popular, provacative and largely unimportant.