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Hulk smashed this one out way back in 2003, a rap take on "Good King Wenceslas" with this refrain: "It's Christmas time and we're broke again." Unemployment plays into this lack of holiday joy, which makes it even more pertinent again this year. Parental advisory plays into this one, too. From the album MTA2 -- Baptized in Dirty Water.

Big Smo rolled this joint for his 2007 album The True South, a hip-hop holiday shopping list with a brief guest shot from his own home-made chipmunks singing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen." Gotta love somebody who only wants his "six gold teeth" for Christmas, right? Parental advisory called for on this one.

Some more fresh hip-hop holiday music, this time from tha Doggfather and his pals, for 2008. Following a Snoopified intro, J-Black kicks off with "Xmas On Soul," a smooth groove with a Snoop rap over the bridge. "This Christmas" by Tha Dogg Pound with Chris Starr is more of a rap over backing singers, though it picks up the riff from the Donny Hathaway classic. "A Gift That Keeps On Giving" is love, says Damani with Chris Starr again, although the story line to this tune is rather darker than that sentiment. "Twas the Night Before Xmas" is also by Damani with Snoop Dogg, though I'm not sure if this is the same performance that was out a decade ago under Snoop's name. Soopafly's "I Miss Those Days" puts a little nostalgia over the gangsta groove, and Bad Lucc raps about "My Little Mama Trippin' On Xmas." Snoop wraps things up with an outro followed by "The Pimp's Christmas Song." Other artists on hand include Half Dead and the Twinz, Lil Gee, Kurupt, The Hustle Boyz and Uncle Chucc. Every song is tagged "explicit" on iTunes, although I think there's also a clean version.

Lots of hip-hop attitude in this pastiche of carols and single-entendres, all told, pretty good fun without getting into Parental Advisory territory, though there's never any doubt what she's actually singing about. The dance diva and singer-songwriter put this out for 2008.

Another compilation of DJ skills offering holiday mash-ups for 2008. The Ramones get sound-checked with "Christmas Bop" by Smash-Up Derby and "Blitzkrieg Santa" by Divide & Kreate, both playing off "Blitzkrieg Bop", the latter superimposing the Jackson 5's "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town." "You Should Be a Freaky Christmas Baby" by ATOM combines what sounds like Chuck Berry's version of "Merry Christmas Baby" along with "You Should Be Dancing" by the Bee Gees, and there's a bunch of other things ladled in there as well. Mojochronic, of "Yuletide Zeppelin" fame, is back here with "Whoville (Won't Get Yuled Again)," combining the Who with the scourge of Whoville himself, the Grinch, and also smashing "Baba O'Reilly" and "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" together with a James Brown Christmas song, the "Theme From Shaft," "Back Door Santa," "Freddy's Dead," the Beach Boys and more on "Xmasploitation (Santa's Badass Revenge)." Props for the grab of "Santa's Got a Brand New Bag" from the Bobs on that one, the bit spoken by "Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist." Go Home Productions offers "High Tides and Blocked Peace Pipes," combining "The Tide is High" by Blondie, "Wonderful Christmastime" and "Pipes of Peace" by Sir Paul. djBc turns "The Night Before Christmas" into a fast-paced rap over an electropop bed. My favorite from this might be "A Message To You Santa Claus," mashing the Specials with Augie Rios' "Donde Esta Santa Claus." There's so much going on here, and the nice thing is that it's a free download.

Jones was on the Christmas tip earlier with his own hip-hop holiday joint, and now he's back in 2008 for another go-round with his gang as well as actor/comic Mike Epps. Folks (like me) who were expecting a tie-in with the movie of the same title will be disappointed, as the story line for the album is thuggery on the holidays in general, with no references to Billy Bob Thornton's drunken criminal Santa. Leaving that aside, there's a lot of rapping and singing of standard carols as well as plenty of original material featuring Epps in his own version of a bad Santa, or just a general gangsta on the holidays. It's not bad, but if you've heard a lot of hip-hop, there are no surprises here.

The very first cut, "Dipset Xmas Time," cracked me up when I realized they'd lifted the chorus from Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime," changing it to "Living fast and ballin' at Christmastime." Jones is part of the Dipset, so all those folks are involved in this at some point, but it's not all Christmas, as his hit "We Fly High" is remixed for this album. My recommendation is run with the title song, as nothing else here really comes up to its level.

This is a hip-hop DJ collective essentially giving us its version of a mix CD. Unlike those of us out there who simply fire up iTunes or Musicmatch and let 'er rip, mix and burn, these guys commit the whole dancefloor experience to disc, complete with mash-together segues, scratching and some original raps. An incomplete rundown of the records used on this collection includes "Up On The Housetop" by the Jackson 5, "Soulful Christmas" by James Brown, "Winter Wonderland Reggae" by Byron Lee, and still more by the likes of Rufus Thomas, Rotary Connection, Run DMC, Kurtis Blow, Mack Rice and even Paul McCartney, Shonen Knife and The Waitresses, not to mention some things that fly by too quickly to note. For those of you who need the whole experience to get through the holiday nights, this is actually not bad at all. Those of you who want individual tunes to make your own mixes, well, you'll have to go back to the sources, same as these guys did.

This is the 2005 version of something we featured a couple of seasons ago, a hip-hop collective doing the whole DJ schtick on a collection of holiday tunes. Essentially it's a mix disc with the end of one song mashed into the beginning of another, using all sorts of found sounds from canned jingles to old radio bumpers recorded by British pop stars like the Police, Duran Duran, Paul Weller and Culture Club. Because of the transitions, you won't be able to extract tunes from it for your own collections, but if you want people to think you hired a DJ for your Christmas party, this is the way to go. Mostly hip-hop and R'nB stuff from the likes of Biz Markie, De La Soul, Kool Moe Dee, Run DMC, Biggie Smalls, Eazy E, Mary J. Blige, Destiny's Child, Donny Hathaway and more, but there's also reggae from Jacob Miller and Lee "Scratch" Perry, rock from The Ventures and Elton John, jazz from Billy Taylor's Orchestra, and inexplicably, three Lou Rawls cuts (but they're pretty good, so go figure.) Website seems to be history, however.

They're baa-aak for 2006. J-Squared and Hudson promise this is the very last time they will throw down with one of their hip-hop holiday mix discs. They mash up all kinds of stuff from the Anita Kerr Singers to Free Design, Mr. Lif to Free Design, Force MDs to Princess Superstar, Clarence Carter to James Brown and more. Check out the full song roster for all three discs at their website. UPDATE: Website seems to have gone away.

A single I found on iTunes in 2005, all this duo wants for Christmas is to "get drunk." Beats and rhymes are set over "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy," for you "Nutcracker" fans out there. I'm told what I have is the "clean version," so there must be a not-so-clean version knocking around out there somewhere.

Your basic Christmas hip-hop number, a 2004 single from iTunes, but it sounds like something from 20 years earlier, patching together a number of bits of carols including "Carol of the Bells," which provides the musical motif. I don't know anything about these guys, but this is pretty good. It's tough to know for sure -- there's Young Lo, or Young L.O., Da Real Young Lo, Young Dro, and more, so anybody who wants to add to this is welcome to try.

From 1979, one of the earliest rap records -- it actually came out before the artist's breakthrough "The Breaks" -- and definitely the first rap Christmas tune, unless you count "A Visit From St. Nicholas," aka "The Night Before Christmas." Kurtis cops the lick from Chic's "Good Times" and starts testifying, and never lets up. Important from a historic point of view, but useful for holiday booty-shaking, too. If you feel like you have a rap in you, the flip side of the original 12-inch single is an instrumental version, though that version seems to have been lost with the sands of time, unless you're willing to search out the original vinyl.

This plea for the needy is on A Very Special Christmas 2 from 1992, and it's not bad; an old soul groove (can't identify it, but it sounds familiar) under the rap, with a great chorus: "Give up the dough, give up the dough for Christmas, yo!" Plenty of quotes and rhymes to move it along. This one doesn't turn up as often in other places as did "Christmas in Hollis," so you'll most likely get it off this Special Olympics album.

This Christmas tune by the historically significant Run DMC kicks off promisingly by sampling Clarence Carter's "Back Door Santa," then we're into a funny tune about finding Santa's wallet on the street in this Queens neighborhood. Great groove, ironic for the fact that this cut from A Very Special Christmas precedes Bon Jovi's plain vanilla cover of the Carter song on the same compilation. This tune has since turned up in a number of places other than the Special Olympics album, and a live version is on the live Special Christmas album as well. Or you can just download it by itself by clicking the album cover and visiting Amazon.

Here's a long-out-of-print budget compilation of holiday rap from the early days, put together in 1987. I haven't been able to grab one of these for myself, but given the number of folks who have tipped me to this, I figure it's worth a mention. Run DMC's "Christmas in Hollis" kicks this off, and there's also "Let the Jingle Bells Rock" by Sweet Tee, "Dana Dane Is Coming to Town" by Dana Dane, "Ghetto Santa" by Spyder D, "Christmas in the City" by King Sun-D Moet, "Chillin' With Santa" by Derek B., "He's Santa Claus" by Disco 4, "That's What I Want for Christmas" by Showboys and "A Surf M.C. New Year" by Surf MC's. Sometimes there's a used copy on Amazon. UPDATE: Einar Hedman from Linköping, Sweden corrected the release date above, which means there might be a vinyl version of this out there somewhere too.

Great rap single from 1991 with a message that definitely clashes with the season. Millie is the daughter of the singer's social worker, suffering sexual abuse at her father's hands. Dad has a side gig as a Macy's Santa; you can see where this is going. Powerful stuff from this seminal hip-hop act, but you might not want to hoist eggnog toasts while it's playing. No downloads, but the Amazon link takes you to some possible used copies.

This 1993 effort is available in two versions, a "clean one" and a "dirty one" (called Christmas at Luke's Sex Shop), in keeping with Luke's history as the originator of 2 Live Crew's As Nasty as You Wanna Be. The song lineups are completely different on the two; the "clean one" is pretty much 90s-style rhythm and blues with a little bit of talking in front and in the middle of the songs. Artists helping Luke out include H-Town, U-Mynd and Chris Brinson and the Gospel Music Ministry Choir. As risque as the clean one gets is "Knockin' Boots for Christmas." The tunes are mostly original, although "We Bring You Joy" swings into "The Christmas Song" and "H-Town's Coming to Town" steals liberally from the Santa Claus version of the song. I don't have a copy of the dirty version handy as of this writing (UPDATE: It's available for downloading, click above), although I recall one of the songs on it is titled "Ho-Ho-Ho's" or something similar that alludes to the street name for prostitute.

Some old-school hip-hop on this EP from 1991, with "Chris Kringle is a Black Man," heavy on the synth bass, talking about one of the vocalist's Compton neighbors; "Ebony's a Scrooge," rapping over the riff from Johnny Taylor's "Disco Lady"; a deconstruction of Donny Hathaway's "This Christmas"; lots of ghetto talk in the disjointed title song; and "Brighter Days," a languid mid-tempo jam that alternates singing and rapping about hope for the future. If you can still find this, it'll probably be in clearance racks. Language advisory.

This hip-hop compilation from 1996 features more party-oriented music than a lot of rap holiday collections. There's more singing on this CD, the beats are consistent and the arrangements are tight. "Alone" by Joni featuring 24K is a medium ballad about being just that on Christmas Eve. The 69 Boyz talk about "What You Want For Christmas," which may still include a 12-disc changer but almost certainly doesn't include "nine Sega tapes." A remix of the song appears later on the disc. "Where Dey At YO!" is Knock singing about "the real men" who "don't sell drugs" and "stay home with me sometime." Big Dave and Tina reconstruct the standard "White Xmas" in their own hip-hop arrangement, and the album closes with a brief remix of it. "Da Jam" is a fast rap by UndaAged -- too fast for me to get much of the lyrics, unfortunately. "Xmas Blues" by BigTyme (no, not Dick Cheney) is a talker over a blues background. This is pretty good overall, even non hip-hop fans should be able to enjoy this.

This rap act is best known for having had a Disney-owned record company cancel its first album for the label minutes before its scheduled release because of pressure from the usual suspects. But they survived unscathed, and this 1997 single is the proof. "Santa is a Fat Bitch" pretty much lives up to its title, with the vocalist's complaints about never getting anything for Christmas leading to threats to kill Father Christmas. Say guys, do the words "naughty and nice" mean anything to you? The band gets its just desserts in "Red Christmas," in which the singers try Santa's trip down the chimney for themselves, only to run into the real St. Nick, who ices them; this is followed by several Christmas carol parodies. These would be a lot funnier if the Posse had a little more sense of irony; the Parental Advisory sticker, meanwhile, speaks for itself.