
Thousands of Hip Hop Mix Tapes, Why Not - ingve
http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4979
======
shortformblog
In fifty years, Jason Scott should be fêted for this archival work he's been
leading. He may not have come up with the idea of the Internet Archive, but by
putting in so much work to archive and protect this history—be it mixtapes,
old DOS viruses, or playable arcade games—he's making it something that the
general public has a reason to care about. This archive has significantly more
relevance than it did even five years ago, and that's awesome, because it will
eventually represent the internet's past to its future.

It wasn't that long ago that mixtapes like this were thrown on sites like
MegaUpload, in a way that didn't do much to take them outside of the moment.
(It didn't help that they shut down MegaUpload, either.) By uploading the
mixtapes here in a way that catalogs them and makes them easier to find, it
makes it so that they're given the same level of respect as, say, something
that shows up in a record store.

In another era, this would be a thankless job that wouldn't get the respect it
deserves. It's getting that respect, because people are actually using the
tools and archives he and other Internet Archive employees are helping to
build.

------
aarmenante
Mixtapes are kind of the open-source version of rap music. Sort of free to
download, remix, and distribute. Sort of... Almost every rapper who is popular
right now (meaning, being played on the radio, touring...) has released their
music for FREE, months, if not years, before being available for sale on
iTunes, or CD. Sure, the iTunes version was mastered by someone who wasn't
stoned, but it's pretty crazy that arguably one of the most popular forms of
music in the world is distributed for free, on niche websites like datpiff,
before it's available for purchase.

Record companies made a push to crack down on mixtape releases in the mid
2000's, even going as far as trying to pin DJ Drama (gansta grilllllllzzzzz)
with a RICO charge, for illegal distribution of music owned by the rappers
record companies.

[http://mobile.nytimes.com/2007/01/18/arts/music/18dram.html?...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2007/01/18/arts/music/18dram.html?referer=)

A lot of these guys, didn't even want to fuck with the big labels, because
they didn't get anything from them. The money they would receive from a record
deal, could be just as easily made by selling merch, and going on tour, all
without having to pay back a record advance.

Unfortunately, Apple has figured this out. Rappers are now signing deals for
their mixtapes to be iTunes exclusives for a few weeks, and Apple with all
their force, is cracking down on sites like datpiff for releasing the tapes
they have exclusive rights too.

Young Thugs brilliant Slime Season trilogy was released on datpiff up until
the third installation. Apple got an exclusive.

Just hope this amazing ecosystem doesn't disappear...

~~~
stuxnet79
> Apple with all their force, is cracking down on sites like datpiff for
> releasing the tapes they have exclusive rights too.

You might be on to something. I was trying to download Chance The Rapper's new
mixtape from Datpiff, and saw a message that it has been taken down due to
copyright quibbles and what not. Went to HotNewHipHop and same thing ... I
have to say this is the first time I've seen a message of that kind in either
website.

~~~
aarmenante
Yep. Apple got the rights. You can get it in two weeks for free, but have to
buy it to hear it today. The worst part is it's working... I caved and bought
it.

It's fire by the way...

~~~
whatok
Wow, Apple securing exclusives on mixtapes is some of the corniest shit I've
heard of. Get money and all but damn.

~~~
6stringmerc
Yeah speaking of corny you should read the back-story on how Jay-Z worked a
deal with Samsung(?) and some marketing team folks to block out enough
downloads/streams/whatever with Rihanna's new album so it would be,
essentually, guaranteed to go Gold its first week. Is it really a Gold
certification if your label bought it for you?

The Chance thing, other than getting money, might be an approach to see if
they can wiggle into Grammy contention. That's a rumor though. Will have to
see if it works.

------
Mizza
As a hip hop head, this is the best news I've seen on HN in a while. Some of
my favorite old mix tapes are on here, stuff I'd lost years ago! Great job,
Jason!

PS, this is my favorite Houston mix ever:
[https://archive.org/details/DJ_Michael_5000_Watts_Overdose](https://archive.org/details/DJ_Michael_5000_Watts_Overdose)
\- listen to Track 5. Z-Ro holds it DOWN!

~~~
whatok
Wow, never would have expected to see Z-Ro mentioned on HN. I really think
he's one of the greatest ever and wish he was more successful but (and not to
sound like a hipster or elitist) his music would absolutely not be the same if
it was widely played. Never been there but love Houston if only for its rap.

~~~
aarmenante
Or have someone post a Watts tape... Houston has had it's own self-sustaining
rap system that never really crossed over into the mainstream. DJ Screw,
Watts, Swishahouse, Chopped-and-Screwed tapes... All crazy influential on the
rap scene, but most people have never heard of this shit.

Does anyone have this tape?

[http://www.djayres.com/houstonfordummies.htm](http://www.djayres.com/houstonfordummies.htm)

Aryes (DJ from the RUB DJ's in NYC) put out this "cliff notes" of Houston Rap.
Got me into the scene.

edit: [http://www.datpiff.com/DJ-Ayers-Houston-for-dummies-
mixtape....](http://www.datpiff.com/DJ-Ayers-Houston-for-dummies-
mixtape.478.html)

~~~
6stringmerc
Eh, I don't think you can say Houston's influence didn't cross into the
mainstream. Mike Jones and Paul Wall definitely broke through and hit the top
of the charts for a while. Drake just had a sample of Pimp C on his latest
Views. The incorporation of the Lean'd out style is really present in
contemporary big hits, and I think - maybe I'm off on it - that a lot of that
can be traced back to the Houston scene, or the influence of it in some ways.
Just thinking H-Town does get its props pretty often.

~~~
whatok
i hate drake

edit: I can point to Houston influence in so much music but yeah definitely
dont get its due props.

~~~
6stringmerc
He's not my style in the least but in referencing mainstream he's about as big
as you can get without mentioning another Canadian who frequently tops the
charts, just gotta point that out. I do think Houston's rep though is kind of
frozen in the past, in that I agree there's not a lot of newcomers (from what
I can tell) going to the top via Houston. Latest big name from Texas I can see
is Post Malone and he reps 214.

~~~
whatok
Oh, definitely agree, I just can't stand him at all and have to express it at
all times. Drake thinking he could rap on June 27 is borderline blasphemous
and if Pimp C didn't want to do Big Pimpin' with Jay-Z, there's zero chance he
would be associated with Drake.

I haven't really kept up with rap in a few years so I'll take your word for it
but yeah I haven't heard of anyone really either.

------
madethemcry
I'm impressed by the effort he put into this.

But I can't find anything older then 2002. I mean the most interesting times
where anything before, especially the 80s & 90s. Did I miss something or this
this just a huge load of more or less modern mix tapes leaving out all the old
gold nuggets from the good times ?

I understand that these tapes are scraped from torrents which might be the
reason that most analogue cassettes are missing or maybe the very old tapes
are burried in the rest of the upload queue?

I'm currently looking at this ordered version:
[https://archive.org/details/hiphopmixtapes?&sort=date](https://archive.org/details/hiphopmixtapes?&sort=date)

~~~
yanowitz
I'm listening to this blast from my past:
[https://archive.org/download/Kool_DJ_Red_Alert_-
_Radio_Mix_9...](https://archive.org/download/Kool_DJ_Red_Alert_-
_Radio_Mix_98.7_KISS_FM_Circa_1987/Kool%20DJ%20Red%20Alert%20-%20Radio%20Mix%2098.7%20KISS%20FM.mp3)

Even has Scott La Rock up front...

~~~
percept
How did you find that? I was going to echo the GP, about 2002 being the
earliest visible through the date sort (so far).

------
zenocon
[http://datpiff.com](http://datpiff.com) is another good source for mixtapes,
but it's cool that he took the time to clean these up, catalog them and throw
them up on the archive.

------
nickysielicki
It's posts like this that make me think something that resembles IPFS _just
has to_ work out, in spite of all the big problems that are yet to be solved.

Because I see this, and I think, "Wow, that's cool. I want to listen to some
of these." And it just makes so much sense that my computer should be able to
compute a hash of that archive and seed it for others, at least as long as
it's on my machine.

It makes me think about how recently, we've collectively embraced an
abstraction of what it means to share content online, because of the way that
social media works. There's the actual transfer of bits, and then the newly-
formed social-media advertisement that says, "I endorse this content."

Isn't it a little fucked up that most (all?) of our social networks don't
allow for you to share content to other people without implicitly making a
statement about it?

Is anyone aware of someone attempting to create social browser history? I
already share it with Google. It might be fun to share it with friends, too.

eg: See that a coworker and I both have visited that stackoverflow post a
dozen times, or see that my highschool teacher also read that article, or see
that my friend listened to the new Radiohead album.

The problem with Facebook, and even with Twitter, is that every single post
becomes a statement. I think this is why snapchat is filling a niche -- maybe
it's actually not interesting because of impermanence, but maybe it's about
the expected notability of each post. On Twitter or Facebook, your posts end
up in the feed of someone else, so there's a pressure to not shitpost.

Snapchat doesn't _really_ have that. You can post dumb shit to your story all
night, and people just will get tired of looking at it and go to someone else.
No harm done.

I wonder if social browser history could work for the same reason.
Unfortunately, I think it'd be a hard sell. People see their browser history
as private, in spite of the fact that their browser is full of third-party
tracking cookies. You'd never get people to download an addon.

~~~
keiferski
I understand your point, but the phenomenon you're describing is essentially
just curation. Social media has simply shifted curation from established
sources (newspapers, critics, etc.) to everyone.

I would question whether the solution is _less_ curation.

~~~
nickysielicki
I don't think I was clear enough on how I imagine this working. I wouldn't
have it work where you can look at the browser history of any of your friends,
or as a feed.

Instead, I would use any of my social-news aggregators normally, but if I end
up on a page that a friend has also ended up on, It would be fun to be able to
see that, and maybe I could leave tiny comments scattered around the web,
visible only to my peers who come across it, and we can annotate together.

That makes me think about Genius. I remember seeing them work on this a bit,
but it was a couple years ago IIRC.

~~~
j-hernandez
[https://hypothes.is/](https://hypothes.is/) \- Maybe relevant to your
interests. Very active project. Although IIRC it is scoped to people who use
the service and not to your social graph. I follow the project on github and
its very active. The volume of problems that they have to solve to make
something like this work for users in potentially any environment is pretty
astounding.

------
jchendy
Some links from the article:

The actual collection of mix tapes -
[https://archive.org/details/hiphopmixtapes](https://archive.org/details/hiphopmixtapes)

A lengthy discussion of what a mix tape is - [http://noisey.vice.com/blog/the-
real-difference-between-a-mi...](http://noisey.vice.com/blog/the-real-
difference-between-a-mixtape-and-an-album)

------
ilovefood
Dude this is the dankest stuff I saw on HN for a while. Here an upvote, and
thanks for the share. And thanks Jason for this awesome work. I'm heading
right away to listen to some O'school Tupac & Biggie mixtapes. Aw yeah!

------
6stringmerc
This is definitely culturally relevant and very cool to see it being treated
as such. That whole motif of Mixtape cover art is a trip and a half to me,
seeing these cliches over and over and over.

As for the Mixtapes themselves, I'm still kind of reluctant to jump all-in on
the Copyright free-for-all that Rap likes to work with (e.g. Tarantino's _Kill
Bill_ siren) and occasionally gets called out on. I think retaining some kind
of performance rights and compensation standards - think 2Pac's version of
"Changes" \- is just fine for the useful progress of the arts (as Copyright
intends).

Besides, I'd be pretty pissed off if a shitty rapper used a track of mine and
started blowing up without cutting me a piece of the action - that biting shit
won't fly with me, even if it makes me sound like Don Henley. Now, if
approached by somebody I respect and admire, say, Chance, I'd have to think
about signing for free or not. One situation apparently went down kind of like
that with Chance and Apollo Brown, in that using a beat for free was not
approved by the respective camps[1]. Hip-hop showing respect and doing good
business is nice to see.

[1] [http://uproxx.com/smokingsection/chance-the-rapper-apollo-
br...](http://uproxx.com/smokingsection/chance-the-rapper-apollo-brown-
coloring-book/)

~~~
whatok
Honestly, I used to love mixtapes because of the "look the other way"
sentiment towards copyright at least in regards to using other rappers' beats.
When a track was hot, you would hear everyone on it and you would hear people
completely outshine the original artist many times over. Really was nothing
like that.

~~~
6stringmerc
Yeah that type of thing I'm very cool with, in that it's part of the community
and a shared expectation of sorts. I think it's a great way to build up cred
in the scene. I really don't have any beef with that.

What gets me though is the lifting from other genres where the traditions and
expectations are different. I'm not saying 'tributes' and using other people's
material isn't huge in, say, rock or blues. Covers and doing 'Standards' are
rites of passage.

It's just that I can kind of see why Don Henley got ticked off at Frank Ocean
though, because jumping on a really well known track and twisting it in a new
direction kind of blurs the expectations. Don & co. are super protective of
their legal rights, this isn't news really; I do think Frank Ocean is very
talented and his music is quality, so it's not like I'm arguing against his
art - just a specific technique or approach in the scene.

~~~
whatok
Yeah, typically mixtapes are kinda lawless re: copyright, serve purely as
promo, and then might breakeven at the end of the day. A lot of the time
people looked the other way because there wasn't a label to sue, the artist
sure as hell didn't have any money, and most mixtapes never got big enough to
garner that kind of attention. The Frank Ocean example got large enough and
not sure exactly how things were setup back then but Sony is the parent of his
label so...

Definitely of the mind that if you are releasing shit commercially that you
either clear things or run the risk of getting sued though. This is bringing
up all sorts of memories of promo singles with samples that got completely
remade because the label didn't want to pay clearance. Even worse, having to
interpolate tracks and not nailing the original.

~~~
6stringmerc
Thanks for sharing your perspective and I'm in agreement for sure, re: the
commercial clearance. It just makes sense, both artistic and financial wise.

I'll never forget the contrast of watching Vanilla Ice try and explain how the
beat in "Ice Ice Baby" was different from "Under Pressure"[1] and then seeing
the two behind the scenes Manager/Label guys sitting in chairs on camera
saying, "Oh, we knew if it became a hit we were going to have to pay." Still
cracks me up.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-1_9-z9rbY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-1_9-z9rbY)

------
ipsin
More than once, archive.org has hosted something I though was not possible
under the current copyright regime.

MAME ROMs, old time radio shows, and, well, this.

So for someone who's not paying attention, does anyone have an explanation of
how they're allowed to do this?

For example, do they have special dispensation from the Librarian of Congress?

~~~
toomuchtodo
The Internet Archive receives an exemption from the DMCA and other copyright
law for the majority of the works it hosts.

~~~
homarp
And the Archive is actively working to show the Copyright Office what needs to
be preserved and therefore why they need to be exempted from DMCA e.g.
[http://archive.org/about/dmca.php](http://archive.org/about/dmca.php)

------
relaytheurgency
This is great. I don't have anything insightful to say, but this makes me so
happy.

------
hackaflocka
A lot of stuff on DatPiff has been removed because of copyright claims.

Rick Ross's last mixtape: "Black Dollar" is a classic, and was debuted on
DatPiff. Now when I look for it on there, I get this:
[http://www.datpiff.com/Rick-Ross-Black-Dollar-
mixtape.732049...](http://www.datpiff.com/Rick-Ross-Black-Dollar-
mixtape.732049.html)

Jeremy Banks is a copyright lawyer with IFPI (International Federation of the
Phonographic Industry).

I see that OP uploaded Rick Ross - Black Dollar to this collection. What'll
happen if Jeremy Banks demands it be taken down?

------
miek
I wish the same existed for BBC music broadcasts. Their DJs are excellent. I
had tons of their broadcasts on an external HD but my business partner thought
it was his speaker and threw it away.

~~~
whatok
[http://www.themixingbowl.org](http://www.themixingbowl.org)

------
ksou32
This was my main way of finding new music when I was younger.

The problem is DJ Whatever will often just steal a bunch of popular tracks and
turn them into a tape without any input from the artist.

Once you filter that out you'll find some gems. Bishop Lamont put out so many
I feel he's already released his best work

------
artur_makly
\-- mad mad props.

------
esaym
Pretty cool. Wish Pandora or something would get on the boat with this. (at
least pandora can censor out swear words)

~~~
don_loemax
Same with Spotify, although I have heard from a publicist yesterday that
Spotify plans to announce at IMS next week that they will begin supporting
mixes/mixtapes very soon, but I am betting they will require "papered" mixes
(as in all songs and samples cleared by ip owners, which is very rare in the
mixtape world and could be argued is against the entire philosophy of the free
mixtape...). Mixcloud and podcast services seem to be the main venue for
mixtapes in the dance scene. Anyone know of any alternatives for hosting mixes
for streaming?

~~~
6stringmerc
Yes, go take a look at Dubset and their Mixbank approach - it's advertised as
a way for DJs / remix producers / mixtape creators to get their versions
approved and out into the wild and both parties (original and derivative
version) are compensated according to some deals hammered out. It looks like
progress is coming in this arena - SoundCloud probably has a lot of those
deals in place now (they're claiming the days of pulling DJ mixes are over, I
think) so that avenue might be, well, back.

~~~
llamataboot
Soundcloud currently denies, but there are huge rumors that they are about to
crack down a lot of DJ mixes again.

[https://www.yahoo.com/tech/following-licensing-deals-
soundcl...](https://www.yahoo.com/tech/following-licensing-deals-soundcloud-
may-173858278.html)

I have switched to Mixcloud for all my mixes, but not ideal because their
streaming can be flaky and you can't scroll back in time.

~~~
6stringmerc
Interesting, I saw some mention of that via Billboard I think. Agreed that
MixCloud has its hiccups and drawbacks but at least trying to be in the space
'n nice 'n tidy 'n legal. Plus me like free.

