Diggin' In The Digits

Happy New Year, DITD listeners! Ben returns from his holiday hiatus and we kick off 2026 by taking one more look back at 2025, talking about our two favourite albums of last year. For once, it's an all Hip-Hop affair! 

TIMESTAMPS:
Weekly Music Roundup - (1:00)
Ben:

• Nas & DJ Premier - Light Years

Ben's No.2 - (5:32)
Charlie's No.2 - (20:11)
Ben's No.1 - (33:25)
Charlie's No.1 - (44:38)
Lighter No...

Welcome to Charlie's Weekly Music Roundup to hold you down where I talk about my spins in the past week with a little more detail than I do typically! As per usual, all works talked about are below. Enjoy!

• D-Ace & K.A.A.N. - Kaancepts
• Vic Spencer & August Fanon - Psychological Cheat Sheet 6

Ben's Album list

#5EUK Top EPs Of The Half-Decade (Pt. 1)
#5EUK Top EPs Of The Half-Decade (Pt. 2)
#5EUK 10 Songs A...

Welcome to Charlie's Weekly Music Roundup to hold you down where I talk about my spins in the past week with a little more detail than I do typically! As per usual, all works talked about are below. Enjoy!

• Big L - Harlem's Finest: Return Of The King
• Novelist - AUDACITY
• Paul Stephan, BexBlu, Awaiting Kvng - STILL REMINISCING
• Paul Stephan, BexBlu, Awaiting Kvng - Protect The Silence
• Pozzy - it's all up in the air
• Saiming - wha...

Welcome to Charlie's Weekly Music Roundup to hold you down where I talk about my spins in the past week with a little more detail than I do typically! As per usual, all works talked about are below. Enjoy!

• J Hus - Half Clip
• A-F-R-O - No More Patience
• Iman Europe & Kaelin Ellis - Chrysalis
• threetwenty - separate from the noise
• Nas & DJ Premier - Light Years

Thanks for listening. Below are the Social accounts for ...

Welcome to Charlie's Weekly Music Roundup to hold you down where I talk about my spins in the past week with a little more detail than I do typically! As per usual, all works talked about are below. Enjoy!

• Adi Oasis - Silver Lining 
• Big K.R.I.T. - Dedicated to Cadalee Biarritz
• Skyzoo - Views Of A Lifetime 
• redveil - sankofa
• Breis - Stranger On Earth

Thanks for listening. Below are the Social accounts for all parties inv...

Welcome to Charlie's Weekly Music Roundup to hold you down where I talk about my spins in the past week with a little more detail than I do typically! As per usual, all works talked about are below. Enjoy!

• Jordyn Simone - REMEMBER WHEN
• TrueMendous & Tony Bones The Producer - No Round of Applause
• Gabriel Jacoby - gutta child
• Vic Santoro - 1000 Burpees
• Von Pea & The Other Guys - Putcha Weight On It
• DoomCannon - Somewhe...

Hello DITD listeners! Every year, I offer Ben the opportunity to take the month off in the same way I take time off my show and after all these years, he finally took it!

So there'll be no new DITD episodes for the remainder of the year, however I'll try to provide you with something else to hold you down.

Thanks to Ben and you the listener, have a great holiday season and we will be back in January '26!

Blessings,

Charlie.

Tha...

From their inventive D.A.I.S.Y. Age run to their new (& probably last) opus dropped last week, the career of De La Soul is unlike any other in Hip-Hop history. With label issues being the only thing that held them back, they always put out Art Official Intelligence when the time was right.

TIMESTAMPS:
Weekly Music Roundup - (1:39)
Charlie:

• Mysie - SALTY
• edbl - nylon
• Deshawn Visionz - Skies On Fire Tonight
• Dexter i...

Whilst Prodigy made a genuine attempt to put out solo bodies of work outside of Mobb Deep business, Havoc took until 2007 to drop his first solo record and it wasn't until his third album that he actually put effort into it all.

TIMESTAMPS:
Weekly Music Roundup - (1:35)
Ben:

• Danny Brown - Stardust

Charlie:

• Ukweli & Xenia Mannasseh - MAYBE II
• REASON - Everything In My Soul_BLUE
• BLK ODYSSY - MOOD CONTROL
• Kaic...

The solo discography of Prodigy is all over the place to put it lightly. A great debut, a surprisingly good sophomore and then a stretch of albums that go from love songs to dark, philosophical work with a healthy dose of illuminati talk throughout.

TIMESTAMPS:
Weekly Music Roundup - (1:20)
Charlie:

• Tara Lilly - Quiet Nights (Early Takes)
• Treasure Bloom - Garden of Hedon
• Alemeda - But What The Hell Do I Know
• rum.gold ...

At 21 years old, two rappers from Queens dropped one of the greatest albums in music history. But some forget that "The Infamous" wasn't Mobb Deep's beginning (Literally! It was their sophomore album!) and it certainly wasn't their end. So past the "capital C" Classic, what is Mobb Deep in totality?

TIMESTAMPS:
Weekly Music Roundup - (1:22)
Ben:

• Big L - Harlem's Finest

Charlie:

• Saba - C0FFEE!
• Makaya McCraven ...

We finish our UKBHM series for the month of October with an artist of recent memory to see how Hip-Hop and the sheer amount of genre-bleeding in the early 2010s was displayed in spectacular fashion from Tinie Tempah, who went from Underground Grime MC to the most famous UK rapper in the space of a year and kept that title until Stormzy dropped "Vossi Bop".

TIMESTAMPS:
Weekly Music Roundup - (1:05)
Ben:

• Dave - The B...

Credit to the Nation - led by West Midlands native MC Fusion - was a clear-cut child of Public Enemy but compared to another PE child in Hijack, CTTN was probably more blunt in leftist messaging (akin to Sistah Souljah) along with Brummie & Patios accents to add texture to the unique nature of Fusion and his crew.

TIMESTAMPS:
Weekly Music Roundup - (0:53)
Ben:

• Tame Impala - Deadbeat

Charlie:

• Chronixx - E...

Yorkshire outfit Unique 3 made waves in the dawn of the 90s with a new subgenre "Bleep Techno", the first homegrown EDM subgenre in the UK. Their subsequent debut album blended not just their pioneering sound but also blended Hip-Hop to create a sound that was... Well... Unique for the time.

TIMESTAMPS:
Weekly Music Roundup - (1:02)
Ben -

• Mobb Deep - Infinite

Charlie -

• Jordyn Simone - NO DEMO LEFT UNHEARD VO...

Happy October and happy UK Black History Month! Our first of four retrospectives this month is dedicated to two sisters that fused Hip-Hop with the burgeoning UK House/Acid House movement of the late 80s/early 90s whilst also paying homage to their Caribbean roots through the music and most notably their memorable name.

TIMESTAMPS
Weekly Music Roundup - (0:52)
Charlie:

• She Who Won't Be Named - From She With
• nineteen...

Hello DITD listeners! Charlie here. Just wanted to drop you my latest interview with upcoming Alt-R&B artist Kairos The Writer off the back of his recent EP release "AND STILL I LOVE". Enjoy!

Intro Music - "Baxter" By Brock Berrigan
Interlude - "Remedy" By Dezaulait
ChillHop Music

Other Podcasts Under The 5EPN:
"What's Good?" W/ Charlie Taylor
In Search of Sauce
Black Women Watch...
5EPN Radio
The Be...

The Brooklyn-based Hip-Hop group Stetsasonic were one of the premier innovators of the 80s. At any given moment you could hear live instrumentation, sampling and beat-boxing. You could also hear elements of Jazz, R&B, Reggae & Rock. Considering their era, the creative foundations they laid is undeniable.

Weekly Music Roundup - (0:42)
Charlie:

• Kairos The Writer - AND I STILL LOVE
• FloFilz - Hagaki
• Ol' Burger Beats...

The 00s was a unique moment in Hip-Hop history and American culture at large. A lot of the hallmarks of 00s Hip-Hop could be seen through Harlem's own DIPSET, led by Cam'Ron, Jim Jones, Juelz Santana & Freekey Zekey.

TIMESTAMPS:
Weekly Music Roundup - (1:02)
Ben:

• Cardi B - Am I The Drama
• Destroy Lonely - </3

Charlie:

• Meduulla & Ethan Hill - Tabula Rasa
• The Last Artful, Dodgr - databreachO01: Mr. I D...

On this edition of Contemporary Cool: Charlie gets to the bottom of why he's not that into Freddie Gibbs by spinning his debut album and Ben invites torture by having us talk about supergroup Slaughterhouse's poorly aged sophomore effort.

TIMESTAMPS:
Weekly Music Roundup - (0:54)
Ben:

• Ice Cube - Man Up
• Jermaine Dupri - Magic City

Charlie:

• Yoni Mayraz - Dogs Bark Babies Cry
• Steven Bamidele - THE CRASH!
• Venna - M...