Julian Benbow's top 10 hip-hop CDs of 2010

KANYE WEST “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’’ He took a year off to gather up all the ingredients (the boom-bap of “College Dropout,’’ the instrumentation of “Late Registration,’’ the polish of “Graduation,’’ the Auto-tuned emotion of “808s & Heartbreak,’’ the pain of family tragedy, a shattered engagement, a VMA implosion, a dash of the RZA, some Mobb Deep, some Michael Jackson, some Bon Iver) and voila! Pop culture’s public enemy No. 1 makes rap’s “Thriller.’’ (Thirty-five-minute movie and all!)

NAS AND DAMIAN MARLEY “Distant Relatives’’ The chemistry oozed out of them. Growing more and more politically charged, Nas uses Marley almost as a sounding board to explore slavery, history, truth, fiction, and conspiracy theories, and the two of them could go back and forth forever.

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