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.

This is the 2005 version of something we featured a couple of seasons ago (below) , 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.) Update: Vol. 3 is out for 2006.

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 rap tune 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.

This plea for the needy is on A Very Special Christmas 2, 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 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, 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