At the beginning of the past two years, I've posted lists of my most anticipated Baltimore hip hop releases for the coming year. Inevitably, those lists were full of the best known local MCs, some of them signed to major labels, and inevitably most of those albums (in the case of last year's list, 9 out of 10) never dropped. So while I'm looking forward to independent national releases by Darkroom Productions and 410 Pharoahs in the next few months, and I'd be hyped as hell about a D.O.G. album on Universal or a Los album on Bad Boy or a Heavy Gold album on Epic being released this year, I ain't holding my breath. Instead, this list is my 20 most anticipated Baltimore MCs who I've never heard a solo project by. I might've heard them as a member of a group, or doing guest appearances, or seen them live or heard a single, or songs on their MySpace page. Some of them might already be pretty well known within the scene, or even have a solo album that I just didn't know about. But these are the people I want to hear more from in 2008, whether or not they have anything scheduled to drop:

1. Verb
2. Symantyx
3. Sonny Brown
4. Diablo
5. Sean-Toure'
6. EJ
7. Greenspan
8. Shakean Da Analyst
9. Tonio
10. XO
11. Ammo
12. Gata Shiest
13. E-Nahledge
14. Young R.O.D.
15. ONLY
16. Tony Manson
17. Street Heat
18. Dave "Da Barber"
19. Reina Williams
20. Maniak Dre

Labels: Diablo, Dirty Hartz, E-Nahledge, Kartel, lists, M.O.L., Sonny Brown, XO