There’s an article from this past Sunday’s Raleigh News & Observer about the status of mixtapes in hip hop right now. Uncle Crizzle, the Triangle’s most hated journalist (you should hear the stories about death threats he’s received) reached out to Mister Flowers (aka Eric Tullis, journalist for The Independent) and yours truly to get our thoughts on mixtapes in the culture, the direction mixtapes are taking hip hop, and for us to help him write his article.
If you picked up a copy of this Sunday’s Raleigh News & Observer (don’t say a word, I know plenty folk who haven’t bought a newspaper in ages either) you may have caught the article. If not here’s a snippet:
“Flooding the market
While rappers are beginning to get excited, submitting mixtape material online whenever they want (Rick Ross said it was “better than sex” in a MTV News interview), they are flooding the market. And if you ask Durham radio DJ and hip-hop gadfly Nanci O there is only one person to blame for this: Lil Wayne.
“There was a point in time, like, a year or two, when Wayne was dropping a mixtape with everybody, like, all the time,” says Nanci O. “And he was appearing on everybody’s mixtape. I think the other rappers are seeing that, and they’re trying to reinvent the wheel. I mean, they’re not trying to reinvent the wheel. They’re just trying to copy what he’s doing.”
Back in the day, mixtapes were “party tapes,” when Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa and other DJ legends would record their sets on actual audiocassettes.”
It’s interesting to note that you never ever see rock and roll artists putting out free mixtapes.
Read the full article here.