Tickets go on sale this Friday, Jan. 25 at 10am EST. Let us know what you think about this year’s lineup in the comments section below.

As such, we didn’t want to throw all 100 songs at you in a single post. Instead, we’ve broken our picks up into two parts, with the first arriving today. We’ll be sharing our top 50 songs tomorrow so for now, enjoy browsing through cuts from the Alchemist, RATKING, Ta-ku, Lapalux, Captain Murphy and many, many more.

Click below to peep 50 of our favorite songs of the year.

It has also led to some huge leaps in technology as seen in Chairlift’s incredible video for “Met Before”. Director Jordan Fish and his team essentially allowed the viewer to choose their own adventure (remember those books?) and create a new experience each time they watched it. Elsewhere, Romain Gavras continued to showcase how he can make a music video into a mini-movie with his epic clips for M.I.A. (again) and Kanye West and Jay-Z. And hats off to Greg Brunkalla and kid-of-the-year Dante Hoagland for showing us all how Danny Brown got that gap in his teeth.

But it wasn’t all flashiness and explosions that caught our eye. One of the best videos of the year, Lushlife’s “Magnolia”, cost no more than $80 to produce while rap troll Krispy Kreme probably spent half of that doing front flips and crouching on tree branches in “Haters Wanna Be Me”. And we have to imagine that Willis Earl Beal spent more time than money animating and directing his emotional video for “Evening’s Kiss”.

Click below to begin viewing the best music videos of the year. Peep our picks for best album art of 2012 here.

The Potholes family is proud to bring you Robot Soup, the fourth entry in our producer showcase series. The compilation arrives a season after its summer-themed predecessor, Cosmic Island, which served as the follow-up to Space Toast and Midnight Snacks and received over 2,000 downloads in its first two weeks.

Like the other compilations in the series, Robot Soup contains never-before-heard instrumentals from some of our favorite producers here at Potholes, including the likes of Thelonious Martin, James Pants, Suzi Analogue, Elaquent, Kidkanevil, and B.Lewis. Each artist brings his or her own flavor of toasty percussion, laid-back loops, and cinematic sounds, yet the tracks melt into a cohesive oeuvre that emanates the crisp, comforting, and reflective feeling of the cooler seasons.

As with all Potholes compilations, Robot Soup is a free release from us to you. The brilliant artwork crafted by Potholes’ own in-house artist ,Theodore Taylor III, has been printed to 50 limited edition posters and can be purchased for $5 on the Potholes Music Bandcamp page. All profits will be donated to charity for music education. You can stream and download Robot Soup via the links below. x

DOWNLOAD  ROBOT SOUP  ON BANDCAMP

Track listing:

1. James Pants – “Sailing on Amber”
2. Starchild – “All is Fall”
3. Birthday – “Lexus Music”
4. Elaquent – “Kaddish”
5. Suzi Analogue – “TooFineDit”
6. Stacy – “Small Games”
7. Thelonious Martin – “Real Love”
8. Sourface – “Guess Who”
9. Les Professionnels – “Move! (Lushlife Remix Dub)”
10. Monster Rally – “FJ”
11. Ben Jamin – “…Offside”
12. Kidkanevil – “SoOoOoOra”
13. L!STED – “(P)ills)
14. KC 2.0 – “Winter Months”
15. Awkward – “The Last Punch”
16. Evil Needle – “Falling Leaves”
17. B.Lewis – “Da Dum”

With that in mind, I’m glad to see Lush dropped a free live album, Live In Blava, that stems from a show last September in Bratislava. You’ll hear cuts from his latest release, Plateau Vision, along with some old favorites. 

Head over to Lush’s site to download.

You can purchase the tape at Spring Break Tapes and stream it below.

Best Albums Of 2012 So Far

Most Disappointing Albums Of 2012 So Far

Most Anticipated Albums Of The Rest Of 2012

Navigate through the pages by clicking the numbers below.

Certain breakbeats are transportative. For heads slightly older than me, those James Brown breaks instantly turn back the clock to Cross Colors, Cazal Shades, and Diadoras, or whatever. For me, the drum loop from “It’s a New Day” by funk-soul pioneers Skull Snaps always gives me chills. It was used, wholesale, on so many of my favorite jams growing up. There was a time, around 1994, where you’d hear the break like twice-an-hour on commercial rap radio.

In any case, with this podcast, I’d like to take a quick survey of songs that I dig, that are based around this classic break (including one of my own). It speaks volumes that so many classics have Skull Snaps, as it’s commonly called, in its DNA. DJ Shadow, MF Doom, and Black Moon have used it, but so did Crazytown and Alanis Morrissette. Either way, the first four bars of “It’s a New Day” transcended their time-and-space in 1973, and had an indelible impact on my 1990s.

Sounds good, right? It is. Lush has made a playlist of the ’90s’ best hip-hop joints and we couldn’t be happier about sharing it with y’all. Next time you’re browsing through your mp3 collection with the intention of creating an essential boom-bap playlist, just throw this on. It’ll more than do the job. Also, as always, many thanks to Potholes’ own Theodore Taylor for the artwork.

You can stream the podcast here and download it below.

Download: Potholes Podcast (Lushlife) [Right Click Save-As]

Track listing:

1. Skull Snaps – “It’s A New Day”
2. Black Moon – “Who Got the Props?”
3. Camp Lo – “Cooley High”
4. DJ Shadow – “What Does Your Soul Look Like, Pt 3″
5. Lords of the Underground – “Funky Child”
6. Pharcyde – “Passin’ Me By”
7. Das EFX – “Mic Checka”
8. Lushlife – “Magnolia”
9. Digable Planets – “For Corners”
10. Hieroglyphics – “All Things”
11. MF Doom – “Who You Think I Am?”
12. Pete Rock & CL Smooth – “If it Ain’t Rough, It Ain’t Right”
13. Main Source – “Just Hangin’ Out”