Fresh local hip-hop from Man Mantis, Fly 4 Ward, ILL Silla, DGirl the Bombshell and more

SP Double - "Life or Life"
Against painfully expressive guitar and vocal samples, SP Double delivers an appropriately reflective freestyle for the new year. The track is brutally personal and honest, "the realest words I ever wrote," Double claims. The titled question, "Life or Life," is rhetorical (note the lack of a question mark), and the answer is somewhat of a dead end, but it's freeing at the same time -- a long, tangled web of frustration finally let free.

DGirl the Bombshell - "Connected"
You could call DGirl the Bombshell's subject matter somewhat shallow; her boasts of money, high fashion and the like are meant to project a rather superficial image. Her rhyme schemes, however, are deeply interwoven and layered, and her is style is assured (bordering on cocky) and on point. While many Denver rappers are content in the underground, Dgirl makes no qualms about her aim for mainstream success. She hopes to deliver that with her sophomore mixtape, Mascara Music 2.

The HighTops - "SWAN SONG"
"SWAN SONG" is like a sample plate of styles: Babah Fly and Panama Soweto bring their distinctive but complementary styles to a beat that itself shifts between something light and ethereal and something heavy and kind of dark. Still, each sound has a common undercurrent that allows one to bleed into the next. Plus, the rhyming is in tip-top form, so even though you've got essentially four different tones on one track, it all flows together seamlessly.