Black Friday is just a few days away, and for many shoppers in the United States it’s even an more exciting day than Thanksgiving. This year features no shortage of deals on videogames and videogame systems; the struggling economy has resulted in retailers going all-out to get people into their stores (or onto their websites), as evidenced by a number of stores opening on Thursday as opposed to waiting for midnight or early Friday morning.

Below you’ll find the highlights of this year’s videogame sales from many of the nation’s top outlets like Best Buy, GameStop, and Walmart — even the Xbox Live Marketplace is having a big sale. Amazon is currently in the middle of a Black Friday week special, but its deals set to launch on Friday are currently unknown. Steam, meanwhile, currently has an autumn sale going on.

If your plans for Thursday include being online on the PlayStation Network, you may want to start coming up with a backup plan now. Sony will be taking the service down for roughly 14 hours tomorrow.

Sony says this is merely for routine maintenance, though if that were the case, it’d be nice if it were scheduled to take place at night — PSN will be offline from 8am until 10pm Pacific (11am to 1am Eastern) on November 17.

A quick look at the highlights among the games coming out in Japan this coming week, courtesy the review pages of Famitsu magazine:

- The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (10/10/10/10, 40 points): The 16th game in Famitsu’s 25-year-long history to get a perfect score is also the third Zelda game (after Ocarina of Time and The Wind Waker) to manage the feat, also a record. The praise flowed out in the text as well. “The game world, offering a variety of tricks and content without being too large, is enough to make you lose your sense of time,” one editor said. “The battles, featuring enemies that require you to think of a different approach for each one, are also fun. From the puzzles to the fighting, you can feel your knowledge expanding as you go through the adventure, and you can use it in innovative ways whenever you approach something new, which feels fantastic.”

This week’s episode of The Simpsons (the series’ 492nd overall) featured an obvious take on the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo, better known to most as E3. Following up on previous Surprise Dad Days like Cemetery Paintball and Go-Karts on Real Roads, Homer Simpson decided to take his kids to E4: the Expensive Electronic Entertainment Expo.

There were references all over the place, starting out with statues of the Master Chief, a Big Daddy, and a football (and chicken leg)-wielding John Madden. From there we get to see Furious Fliers, a version of Angry Birds that goes horribly wrong when an angry bird is sent into an under-construction children’s hospital (complete with direct-from-Angry-Birds sound effects).

Not even a week after the official Steam forums were taken offline following their defacement, Sony has been forced to do the same with the official website and forums for the Resistance franchise.

MyResistance.net and the accompanying free-to-play Global Resistance game are currently inaccessible. According to Kotaku, Sony took them offline following reports of the site distributing malware, presumably at the behest of hackers.

It may not have been able to top Call of Duty: Black Ops when it comes to being the most popular game played on Xbox Live, but Battlefield 3 was — at least for a month — able to take the top spot on the NPD sales charts for October.

Battlefield 3 came in at “just under” 2 million units across all platforms in the United States. That’s not a terrible figure for a game released at a time where it had only five days to track in the month, but compared with today’s news of rival Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 selling 6.5 million units in the U.S. and U.K. in a day, it doesn’t sound quite so good. (Here’s a preview of next month’s NPDs: Call of Duty is number one.) It’s important to note the numbers for Battlefield (or any other game) don’t account for digital sales, of which there were likely many thanks to online-only deals and the perks being offered through Origin.

PlayStation Vita may not have gone digital-only — it’s not the right time, Sony says — but that won’t help should you want to play your PlayStation Portable’s UMD games on the system. With no UMD slot, those games might as well be Coleco cartridges.

Sony does see a business opportunity here and, as previously reported, will allow UMD game owners to purchase a digital version on Vita. Sony has now offered details on this functionality along with prices for how much those in Japan will be paying to do so.

Welcome to 1UP Presents #3 — it’s behind schedule, the last issue, and the most expensive. Restrain yourselves. But it’s actually kind of awesome.

A couple months ago, 1UP editor-in-chief Jeremy Parish and I decided that we’d close out our print magazine experiment with the third issue. He started it as a pet project about six months ago, and it never really made much money or practical sense, but it was a fun thing to do on the side, so Jeremy spent many off-work hours organizing the first two issues, and handed me the third.

Peyton Hillis was a surprise choice for the cover of Madden NFL 12, yet that’s who the fans voted for over the likes of Aaron Rodgers, the controversial Michael Vick, Chris Johnson, and Seattle’s 12th man. Each year it seems like the so-called Madden Curse negatively affects that year’s cover star time and again in a variety of ways. Peyton Hillis appears to be no exception.

Hillis, who is a running back for the Cleveland Browns, has missed the team’s past two games and had not practiced since last week. During practice today, he reportedly re-injured his hamstring, prompting him to slam both the ball and his helmet to the ground.

Final Fantasy VII is one of the most oft-requested remakes whether you’re talking about Final Fantasy or games in general, but be careful what you wish for: should it ever happen, the game may not end up being just like fans remember it.

Square Enix’s Yoshinori Kitase, who is currently serving as a producer on the upcoming Final Fantasy XIII-2 and was the director of Final Fantasy VII, recently spoke about how he would personally like to approach a remake of VII, should it ever happen. He’s not keen on leaving things just as they are, a stance that could upset diehard fans.

BioShock’s writer and Creative Director, Ken Levine, and his team are now working on BioShock Infinite, a departure from the dark, dystopian corridors of Rapture into the bright skies of Columbia, a floating city named after the female personification of the United States of America. I recently had the chance to sit down with Ken to talk about the philosophies that underpinned the original BioShock and how, if at all, these are being applied to BioShock Infinite.

PlayStation.Blog: What’s more important to you: surprising the player or making existing fans feel familiar?

Ken: When you look at BioShock Infinite, you can’t deny that it’s a BioShock game. However, and this might seem counter-intuitive, Rapture was a surprise to the player; you wanted to see what was around each corner because it was so strange. If we were to take you back to Rapture then that surprise element would no longer be there. Weirdly, we had to change BioShock in order to make it BioShock, or at least to retain that core principle of the unexpected.

I think the important point for us is that BioShock Infinite has the same roots as the original, and in part those roots are me, Nate, Shaun, Steve and all of the guys in my team who worked on it. In terms of the game itself, we’re talking about the depth and detail of the game world, the kinds of weapons you’re going to have, the freedom of the combat and the character growth system that we’re going to be showing later.

I’m not saying we can never go back to Rapture, but it would need to be in a way that was fresh and new.

PlayStation.Blog: What is your favourite moment in the original BioShock?

Ken:The two moments of BioShock that will always be special to me as writer and creative director are the opening descent to Rapture and the encounter with Andrew Ryan. We really put ourselves out there on the latter because it was a boss battle where you don’t actually fight the boss, but that was fundamental to the story, the fact that you had no choice in how it played out. We are thrilled that it worked so well because it was such a risky moment.

I don’t think people give gamers enough credit and assume that they only want explosive, visceral experiences. We also want to be mentally stimulated. The fact that the scene resonated so much proves that we are more diverse in their tastes than some think.

When faced with a choice between protecting and destroying in games, point in case being the dilemma of whether to rescue or harvest the Little Sisters in BioShock, do you think we are innately drawn to one or the other?

Well we don’t have any kind of metric to track that particular example but we do have anecdotal evidence. I do a podcast called Irrational Interviews and I was talking with Guillermo Del Toro on there. He said that he harvested in front of his two daughters and they got really mad at him. My sense is that people generally rescue and I think that decision is an emotional one rather than a logical one.

I believe players have an inclination to what we might call ‘disruptive’ actions, such as jumping around when another character is talking, but I don’t get worried about people doing weird things; games are about the player doing what they want and they are generally there to try and experience every interaction available. It’s their game.

PlayStation.Blog: And yet protection seems to be a running theme in BioShock games. Is this a conscious design decision?

Ken: I see what you mean in that you have Big Daddies and Little Sisters and there’s some kind of protective relationship going on there. With BioShock Infinite it’s important to point out that you’re not escorting Elizabeth all the time – she is capable of taking care of herself and she is more like a partner in your mission. But she is looking to your experience in combat. She has never fought but Booker has a rough past and a lot of combat experience.

The basic notion of protecting is one of the noblest things we can do for each other and those relationships can be beautiful in game form. Just look at that moment when you first take Yorda’s hand in Ico. In BioShock games we like to explore how those relationships can have both a dark and a light side. When a Big Daddy protects a Little Sister, he is also exploiting her by making her gather ADAM. In BioShock Infinite, when Booker finds Elizabeth she is locked in this tower with Songbird, who is her only companion but also her jailor.

Those are the challenging relationships that we are drawn to.

PlayStation.Blog: If you’re faced with a potential fork in your design choices, where either narrative or gameplay benefits depending on your decision, which one usually wins out?

Ken: You have to reach a decision that benefits both. We had a dilemma early in the development of BioShock Infinite with the character of Elizabeth. We needed to ensure that her powers made sense to both narrative and gameplay. We knew we had this character that was going to be extremely powerful, but we didn’t know exactly what those powers were going to be. It was a tough job making sure that what she does from moment to moment in the context of the gameplay suited her role in the overall story. We generally don’t choose; we tweak from both sides to get unity, and if you don’t get that unity, then we tend to jettison things.

PlayStation.Blog: How exactly are the PlayStation Move controls going to work?

Ken: We’ve got the Move controls working now back at the studio, certainly more so than we had when we announced it at E3, and really we’re just waiting for the opportunity to show that with a new piece of content. It’s working well but we still have a lot of polishing to do. Of all the motion controllers in the world, the Move is the one best suited to a first-person shooter, and a lot of PlayStation games have done a great job incorporating it. I will say that we’re discovering some great opportunities with the Skyline gameplay, but rather than show it to people with an old demo, I’d prefer to show it with a new piece of content.

PlayStation.Blog: BioShock famously took inspiration from Ayn Rand’s Atlus Shrugged. Does BioShock Infinite have a particular philosophical or literary influence?

Ken: I read a lot about history and I got interested in the late 19th century by the book Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, which is set around the 1893 World Fair. For me, that time is the most transformative in history because you had all these technologies coming into play, like radio, movies, electricity, cars – mass production in general. Alongside that, you had social transformations with suffrage, labour movements, the beginning of the civil rights movement – all these amazing uprisings bringing a sense that the colony is starting to buckle and break free.

Just look at what was happening in science, with Heisenberg, Einstein and Max Planck; they were discovering that the Universe is so much more complex than anyone thought, and we’re still figuring out the implications of their findings to this day.

In the original BioShock we tapped in to Crick & Watson and their discovery of genetics. In BioShock Infinite we’re looking more at the world of physics and we bring that in through Elizabeth, who is able to manipulate her universe. We’re always looking at the technological, scientific, social and cultural changes that are happening in any historical period we touch, and we try to integrate those into our stories.

Originally, we conceived the game as a struggle between a technological movement and a Luddite movement, and it didn’t work out because, in reality, those Luddite movements never took hold in a powerful way, so we didn’t have such a rich well of inspiration.

What we have arrived at is a conflict between the Founders, an ultra-nationalist group that is the dominant power in Columbia, and the Vox-Populi, an international workers’ movement that is fighting against the Founders, kicking all of the rich people out of their part of town.

The real conflict of that time – and, you could argue, what is happening today – is this left and right schism of extreme nationalism on one side, and an anti-capitalist, internationalist movement on the other. With our games we’re never looking to advocate a political position and we try to ask questions more than we try to answer them. We show the extreme ends of the spectrum.

The Splicers in BioShock were insane, almost feral, but the enemies we have seen in BioShock Infinite seem more lucid. How does this affect the game?

You’re going to see a range of enemies in terms of where they’re at mentally. It’s not like BioShock where you’re showing up after an event and picking up the pieces; Elizabeth and Booker are in the middle of it all. The Vox-Populi is a small group when you show up at the beginning of the game, and your actions change that and accelerate their growth. You’re going to see changing AI based on your actions. Then you’ve also got SongBird and Handyman – examples of bigger, stronger enemies.

PlayStation.Blog: How does it make you feel when you hear that some players completed BioShock almost exclusively using the Electro Bolt and the shotgun?

Ken: One of the first things we did when we started on BioShock Infinite was to draw a graph with y and z axes, and to say that one of those axes was the number of enemies in an encounter and the other was the range of those enemies. In the original BioShock, the entire game lived in one corner of that graph – few enemies, all at close range — so the Electro Bolt and shotgun were perfect. BioShock Infinite is going to have much greater ranges and, potentially, far more enemies, so we’re greatly increasing the spectrum of encounters that are possible, and that requires the player use a broader set of tools.

That being said, it may be a given player will try to find a way to close down those distances and stick with Electro Bolt and shotgun, but I don’t think that’s going to be anywhere near as effective a strategy this time around. They were too devastating in BioShock, we admit that, but we’re not going to solve it by simply nerfing those weapons; we’re doing it by changing the types of encounter you’re going to face.

Players that go to the newly-opened Pier Park will find that a new level of the classic Turkey Chase event has been released complete with brand new rewards. For those unfamiliar with this PlayStation Home tradition, the premise is simple: In celebration of the impending Turkey Day, players that approach the gathering of turkeys in Pier Park will enter into a game wherein you chase a bunch of wily turkeys around the space (word to the wise: these turkeys are quite cunning so you’d better bring appropriate footwear). If you can manage to catch them all, you will unlock Thanksgiving-themed rewards that are sure to make you an object of envy amongst your peers. Sound borderline insane? Of course it does – which is exactly why we are doing it!

Those of you that visit the new PlayStation Home Mall this week will find some killer deals in our Fall Blowout sale, which has the price being reduced on a ton of classic items. Check out this video for a look at some of the deals my buddy Magnus will be cutting this week as part of our Fall Blowout sale. Be sure to take advantage of this special offer; come next Thursday these items will disappear from our shelves forever!

Speaking of deals that can’t be missed, we’ve bundled up select items and placed them exclusively on the PlayStation Store at a massively discounted price. Go to the PlayStation Store this week to pick up the Alpha Protocol Gear Pack and the Best of nDreams Pack!

Also available this week in the PlayStation Home Mall: New items from Mass Media, a LittleBigPlanet Sackboy companion, brand new do’s for the dudes and dudettes in the new Shears store, new clothing and furniture items from Granzella, a Fearless Records boombox (packed with some of the best tracks from this leading rock label), and more!

The PlayStation Home Community Theater is hosting a massive event this week. Join us this Thursday when PSTALENT.COM returns with a special episode of The Spotlight. This season finale highlights some of the top PlayStation Home developers and includes a special appearance by Narde15 of Gamer Indepth. As a bonus, those of you that come out to view this episode will receive a very special gift courtesy of PSTALENT.COM and the PlayStation Home Community Management team!

See you in Home!

The first overall pick by the Florida Marlins in the 2000 MLB Draft, Gonzalez has really come in his own, both on the field and at the plate. A little history on him…in 2010 while playing for the San Diego Padres, he was named team MVP for the third consecutive year and fourth time overall. Then after the blockbuster trade that sent him to the Boston Red Sox last offseason, he enjoyed one of his best professional seasons to date, which included his 1,000 career hit, fourth consecutive All-Star selection, third Gold Glove, first Silver Slugger Award, and a top five finish in batting average (.338) and RBI (117) in all of baseball—not too bad!

I also want to stress that MLB 12 The Show will be coming to PlayStation Vita and will utilize all of the core gameplay features found in the PS3 version. So, players will be able to take the same big league baseball experience on the road with them, anytime, anywhere. We’ll have more info to share soon, but trust me when I tell you that MLB 12 will have a ton of new features (PS3 & Vita) that we’ll be detailing over the course of the campaign so keep an eye on the PlayStation.Blog, TheShowNation, and our MLB The Show Facebook page for more info as we get closer to launch.

Welcome to The Show!

During this summer’s Gamescom, we invited Chris Millar to join us on the PlayStation.Blog and introduce Fun Bits Interactive and their first creation for PlayStation Vita, Escape Plan. Aside from the gorgeous black-and-white, film noir art style that pops right off the massive OLED screen, Escape Plan is truly unique game, thanks to its two memorable characters, LAARGE and LIL.

It’s time to check on their progress. Escape Plan Producer Matt Morton hopped in front of our cameras at Sony Santa Monica Studios recently, and was happy to give us this update on the art-direction, PS Vita multi-touch controls, and to show us why Escape Plan is such a harsh, but addictive puzzler.

Designed from the ground up, the lounge will be located on the upper level of the EB Games’ downtown location at 267 Yonge Street in Toronto, Ontario. The goal of the PlayStation Lounge is to provide you with a one-stop shop for all your PlayStation needs.

In celebration of this journey, we’d like to invite all of our Canadian fans to attend the PlayStation Lounge Grand Opening event, details below:

Event Details
Sunday, November 13, 2011.
2-5 PM
267 Yonge Street, Toronto
Luke Schenn signing 2-3:30 PM / Naughty Dog signing 3:30-5 PM

Special guests will include Luke Schenn from the Toronto Maple Leafs and Robert Cogburn, Game Designer from Naughty Dog, the creators of the Uncharted franchise. The first 100 fans to line up will receive autographed hockey pucks from Schenn and autographed Nathan Drake scarves from Cogburn.

So come out and join us for the grand opening of the lounge, have your picture taken with Ratchet from the award-winning Insomniac franchise, and pick up some autographed swag too!

Please RSVP to the PlayStation Lounge Grand Opening by visiting our Facebook event page.

A Sky Lift-class RDV delivering a vehicle.

Shrouded in advanced optical stealth and guided by automated networked navigation systems, the J42 “Sky Lift” RDV (Rapid Deployment Vehicle) drone is able to deliver even the heaviest armor, with pinpoint accuracy, anywhere on the battlefield. The proliferation of this invaluable tech has changed the face of ground warfare in the EVE universe, giving front-line commanders the ability to strike enemy positions with little warning or reinforce vulnerable points at a moment’s notice.

Originally designed for industrial transportation by Outer Ring Excavations (ORE), the Sky Lift was repurposed for combat missions with a few key alterations. Firstly, the engines underwent a massive upgrade, from aftermarket conventional jet turbines to the latest F/4 Ionized Plasma Forges. The extra thrust they provide compensates for the increased weight of the fuselage, which is augmented with 25mm radar absorbing armor plates. Without crew, the cockpit area has been redesigned with Tech 2 drone hardware, a multi-spectrum geospatial avionics system, and a state-of-the-art Phantom-65 stealth field controller.

One key feature that was completely unchanged, however, is the “Magnetar” lift system. This retractable electromagnetic crane is powered by the Sky Lift’s main reactor but also has an integrated backup capacitor for especially heavy loads. It generates a magnetic field so powerful that most of the vehicle’s EM shielding is in place to protect against the side effects of the lift system, rather than enemy electronic attacks.

Medieval Moves is a new playful action-adventure game designed specifically for PlayStation Move. Help Prince Edmund protect his kingdom against the evil sorcerer Morgrimm and his army of skeletons. Use your PS Move motion controller to sword fight, shoot arrows, and fling throwing stars in your epic battles. And for you 3D fans out there, this game offers full stereoscopic 3D support, so make sure you have your 3D glasses close at hand.

After you’ve grown weary from battle, test out your athletic skills with Sports Champions a classic fan-favorite Move title that will have you competing with your friends in the ultimate sports showdown. Crush, spike and smoke the competition in six challenging events including Disc Golf, Gladiator Duel, Beach Volleyball, Archery, Table Tennis and Bocce.

The holiday fun doesn’t stop there. We’re also excited to announce the availability of the PlayStation 3 Everybody Dance bundle, the perfect party-starter for this season’s festivities. Now available exclusively at Target at an amazing price of only $299.99, the PlayStation 3 Everybody Dance bundle includes everything that you need to entertain your friends and family including a copy of the ultimate Move party game Everybody Dance, a 320GB PlayStation 3, a PS Move motion controller, a PS Eye camera and a DualShock 3 wireless controller.

What new PlayStation Move games are you looking forward to this holiday? Let us know in the comments below!

The boy who lived enters New Releases this week with the final chapter of his saga in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2. The epic film series comes to an exciting conclusion with the ultimate showdown between the young wizard and the evil Lord Voldemort. Choose from SD or beautiful 1080p HD, as well as eye-popping action in Available in 3D.

Catch up on the entire series and the previous seven films in the Harry Potter Collection in Collections & Sales, featuring all the past adventures and some movies and great low prices. Hurry! The sale ends on November 21.

Get your laughs with The Change-Up this week in Movies. Ryan Reynolds (Green Lantern) and Jason Bateman (Horrible Bosses) star as two men who couldn’t have more different lives. After a fateful wish one night, the two switch places and must live life in each other’s shoes. Leslie Mann (Allen Gregory), Olivia Wilde (Cowboys & Aliens) and Alan Arkin (Get Smart) round out the cast.

Bout 1 of our Theatrical Throwdown is over and your votes made the difference. Rent the champion Scream 4 this weekend for just $0.99 in either SD of 1080p HD starting at 2pm Pacific Friday through Sunday at 11 pm. Find all our $0.99 deals in Rent Now and vote for your choice in Bout 2 starting Sunday afternoon.

Four of HBO’s premium mini-series are now available to own in either SD or 1080p HD in TV Shows, the only place you can purchase great HBO content on your PS3 device. The award winning series Band of Brothers, The Pacific, Generation Kill and John Adams are available digitally for the first time!

Bloodsucking films that won’t suck your pocketbook dry take over our Deal of the Week with Vampires. Films like Daybreakers and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, plus the BBC series Being Human, are available at super low prices for this week only!

Need more zombies in your life? The Walking Dead Theme is now available with chilling creatures in the game section of the PlayStation Store.

Here’s a look at what’s new this week…

Just In TV
US Store: Band of Brothers, The Pacific, Generation Kill, John Adams, Green Lantern: The Animated Series: Season 1, WWE The Ladder Match 2, Vietnam in HD: Season 1, Prophets of Science Fiction: Season 1, One Piece: Season 1, Chrono Crusade, and more!
Canada Store: Band of Brothers, The Pacific, Generation Kill, John Adams, Mythbusters: Season 11, Primeval: Season 5, One Piece: Season 1, and more!

New Release Movies
US Store: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, The Change-Up, Arena, Atlas Shrugged Part 1, Age of the Dragons, 13, One Eyed Jacks, and many more.
Canada Store: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, The Change-Up, One Eyed Jacks, A Better Tomorrow, The River Why, and many more.

Top US Movie Purchases

1. Crazy, Stupid, Love.
2. Cars 2
3. Captain America: The First Avenger
4. The Change-Up (Unrated)
5. Horrible Bosses
6. Bad Teacher (Unrated)
7. Green Lantern
8. Water for Elephants
9. Fast Five (Extended Edition)
10. Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Top US TV Shows Purchases

1. The Walking Dead | Season 2 - Cherokee Rose
2. The Walking Dead | Season 2 - Save The Last One
3. Sons of Anarchy | Season 4 - Hands
4. Sons of Anarchy | Season 4 - Kiss
5. The Walking Dead | Season 2 - Bloodletting
6. The Walking Dead | Season 2 - What Lies Ahead
7. American Horror Story | Season 1 - Halloween, Pt. 2
8. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia | Season 7 - The ANTI-Social Network
9. South Park: Uncensored | Season 15 - 1%
10. Family Guy | Season 10 - Screams of Silence: The Story of Brenda

Introducing: My Channels:

We just updated the Music Unlimited service application on PS3 with some great features that many of you have been asking for. The new “My Channels” function gives you added control over how you listen to and access music. “My Channels” lets you build custom radio stations around your favorite artists. Simply type in the name of the artist and we’ll populate a station with songs from that artist and related artists. This is available to both Basic and Premium subscribers and is yet another portal to discovering great music on the service.

Featured New Releases on Music Unlimited

Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds
Sibling rivalry is nothing new. The Kinks started it, the Black Crowes continued it and perhaps Oasis has perfected it. The commonality has generally been mediocre solo projects between inevitable reunions. Such was the case with Liam Gallagher’s lackluster Beady Eye project, but his brother Noel bucks the trend with a beautiful and varied release that takes the Oasis template and seamlessly integrates strings, a choir and other subtleties. The record is quite possibly the only glimpse we will get of Noel as a solo artist, and with his excellent band of Flying Birds, it’s one to savor.

If you like: Oasis, The Verve, Coldplay
Recommended Track: “If I Had a Gun”

Romeo Santos – Formula Vol. 1
As the former front man of a multi-platinum group, Romeo Santos is no stranger to making history. His group, Avenutra, pushed bachata music into the mainstream & debuted in the top 10 on their final album together. It’s only appropriate that the first single from his solo debut would skyrocket to #1 on the Latin charts. Santos continues to keep his eyes set on a crossover by asking Usher and Lil’ Wayne to join on the tracks, “Promise” and “All Aboard.”

If you like: Aventura, Prince Royce, Usher
Recommended Track: “Soberbio”

Tech N9ne Collabos – Welcome to Strangeland
In the fourth installment of his “Collabos” series, Tech N9ne focuses on joining forces with artists on Strange Music, the label he started in 1998. A veteran with 12 other studio albums under his belt, he brings on artists like Jay Rock, Kutt Calhoun, Young Blood and more for this explosive partnership. This is a great way to discover some up and coming artists who have the blessing of one of the most prolific rappers in the game.

If you like: Tech N9ne, Big Scoob, Dr. Pharoah
Recommended Track: “Kocky”

Can’t get enough after watching the Country Music Awards? Crank up the Music Unlimited service’s Top 10 Country & Folk songs!