{"id":352947,"date":"2025-12-16T22:55:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T22:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/352947\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T22:55:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T22:55:07","slug":"james-gunns-favorite-alternative-hip-hop-songs-of-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/352947\/","title":{"rendered":"James Gunn’s Favorite Alternative Hip-Hop Songs of 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

We asked some of our favorite culture creators to give us their best-of lists for 2025; the rest of James Gunn’s top 50 alternative rap songs of the year can be found right here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Easily my favorite year in alternative hip-hop since the early aughts, when MF DOOM, Louis Logic, CunninLynguists, Atmosphere, Aceyalone, OutKast, Aesop Rock, and many more were releasing one banging track after the next and changing the face of what hip-hop could be. That said, I don\u2019t know if there\u2019s ever been such a sheer volume of great work out there, which made it difficult to restrict this list to only ten tracks. The folks at GQ asked if I could put the songs in order, which, of course, is specific to the day, hour, and minute of me making this list. That said, my Top Three are pretty solidly my Top Three Hip Hop songs of this year, as well as being solidly in my Top Ten of all tracks this year. \u2014JG<\/p>\n

My Top Ten Favorite Alternative Hip Hop Tracks of 2025 (or, more specifically, of Thursday, Dec 11, 2025, at 9:53 AM)<\/p>\n

1. Ghais Guevara, \u201cThe Old Guard Is Dead\u201d<\/p>\n

2. LaRussell, Homage Simon, Michael Prince, Shante, ClayDough, Tietta, MALACHI, Tiione, \u201c\u201c10s, 20s, 50s, 100s\u201d\/\u201cTest Ya Nuts\u201d\/\u201cOnce Upon a Time\u201d\/\u201cWHAT WE DOIN!?\u201d\u201d (Live on NPR Tiny Desk)<\/p>\n

3. Clipse feat. John Legend & Voices of Fire, \u201cThe Birds Don\u2019t Sing\u201d<\/p>\n

4. Backxwash, \u201cWake Up\u201d<\/p>\n

5. McKinley Dixon, \u201cRun, Run, Run Pt. II\u201d<\/p>\n

6. LaRussell x Lil Jon, \u201cI Got Flavor!\u201d<\/p>\n

7. Aesop Rock, \u201cRoadwork Rappin\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

8. KNEECAP feat. Mozey, \u201cTHE RECAP\u201d<\/p>\n

9. Little Simz, \u201cFree\u201d<\/p>\n

10. Open Mike Eagle, \u201cwoke up knowing everything\u201d<\/p>\n

To check out the rest of James Gunn’s top 50 hip-hop songs of 2025, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We asked some of our favorite culture creators to give us their best-of lists for 2025; the rest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[690,88,483,216,5210,777],"class_list":{"0":"post-352947","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-culture","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-hip-hop","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-textbelowcenterfullbleed","13":"tag-web"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}