Hardcore has the rare privilege of being one of the few genres with too much good music and further more is the only one with so much of it that condensing choices into 15 tracks was actually impossible and some serious exceptions had to be made, I highly encourage listening to everything here and more.

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a few things:

- what essential means to me is different from what it means to you, so don't waste energy thinking about why I might have picked less popular tracks over some others

- tracks are not necessarily chosen by tag; artists mis-tag their tracks all of the time

- each playlist is capped at 15 tracks, not looking for additions or replacements unless the case for the track is very strong

- I created environments that intentionally show the best and the most diverse musical qualities of each genre

- I tried to pick the most diverse cast of artists for each genre that I could, but because several genres are dominated by two or even one person in some cases, repeat artists were inevitable