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E-mail your lists to Al Shipley at shipley.al@gmail.com by midnight at the end of Monday, December 18th, and results will be announced on Government Names later that week.*
I've been covering Baltimore hip hop on the
Government Names blog
since 2004, but this year I really stepped my game up and started posting about every CD I could get my hands on, giving you information, mp3's to sample, and links so that you could purchase the music yourself. I really have no idea how much effect, if any, I've had on anyone gaining new fans or selling CD's, but I've gotten a lot of positive feedback from artists. Aside from word of mouth and download counts on my Rapidshare links (and untrustworthy sales figures, usually from the artists themselves), though, it's hard to quantify what fans are actually listening to. So I'm hoping this poll will answer some of those questions.
Since I fill my site (and other outlets like the Baltimore City Paper) with my opinion all year round, I'm gonna try and democratize my year-end wrap up and do a reader's poll. So basically, if you follow the scene at all, I want you to send me a list of your favorite Baltimore hip hop albums and mixtapes of 2006 (I'm not really trying to worry about Baltimore club or R&B or any other genres in this poll). You can list as many or as few CD's as you want, be it 1 or 100 or anything in between, as long as you number your list from favorite to least favorite, etc. And I want as much participation as possible, so basically if you've heard anything, I want your opinion. If you only copped 2 CD's and one of them was wack, then vote for the other one. And e-mail this poll to your friends, put it on your MySpace page, whatever, get the word out.
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Artists should feel free to tell their people to vote for them, but showing love for artists outside their camp, too. You might effect the outcome of this poll by firing up your fanbase, but
do not spam my poll or try to stuff the ballot box with fake entries, I want every vote to represent one real person. So if I feel like there's anything fishy going on, I reserve the right to throw out ballots or trash the whole poll and just put up my own personal best-of list. I'm just saying this to let you know: I want this poll to be representative of what Baltimore hip hop fans are really listening to, so don't fuck this up by trying to cheat or whatever. Nobody's getting a plaque or a statuette or a cash prize if they win, but I would like to think that this site has some authority and credibility in the scene and that placing highly on the poll is something that everyone who dropped a CD
this year wants.
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Below is an alphabetized list of links to all the Baltimore hip hop releases I wrote about on GN this year. By no means is that list comprehensive, since there are a lot of releases I haven't heard yet (Ms. Stress, NOE, Teop) or have heard but haven't posted about yet (ShellBe RAW, NC-17, Tate The Arsenal, The Homicide Rapper, Jade Fox), and I'm sure some things that I slept on entirely. But just consider those some nominations or suggestions, if you've forgotten what came out this year or want to pick some stuff up before voting. You have about a week and a half to send in your ballot.
Alevan - Came Here 4Tha Annexx Click - Banga Bill Presents Chapter 16: Tha Return Of Da BlueArchitects Recording Studio presents Street Radio Volume 2.5 
Thanks for spreading the word, C Love! I can't wait to see your list!