Thousands of Hip Hop Mix Tapes, Why Not | Hacker News Reader

Thousands of Hip Hop Mix Tapes, Why Not

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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.

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?...

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...

> 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.

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...

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

The next iPhone release is going to come with Gucci Mane's "iTrap" album pre-installed, if you buy the Apple limited edition "Fam" version.

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.

The worst part was that DatPiff has finally started putting quality control mechanism in the past two or three years or so to get separate legitimate content from artists (wheat) from the chaff and artists continued putting out their content for free.

Apple's, among other streaming services, has impacted this music negatively, and whether you are a fan of rap music or not, it does set a precedent that affects all styles, genres, and tastes of music.

I do not think all is lost - like some Underground electronic music communities, some artists will actively avoid Big Corporations....this has gone back to the days of Prince and before. There are many indie labels that still release their music on Vinyl, even.

> Apple's, among other streaming services, has impacted this music negatively, and whether you are a fan of rap music or not, it does set a precedent that affects all styles, genres, and tastes of music.

I don't share this interpretation: look at Drake, Wiz, Kid Cudi, 50 Cent, A$ap Rocky, The Weeknd, Chance, Young Thug + the rest of the 1017 label, Lil Wayne. These are people who found success on amazing mixtapes, and now those streaming services allow the artists to get paid for content they expected to release for free or for publicity's sake.

I'd throw in Kendrick but he didn't really blow up until Section 80, which was an early itunes exclusive(?) rather than a mixtape.

Besides, I don't see DatPiff going away any time soon. Coloring Book will be on there in under two weeks.

You gear content towards Apple vs selling out the trunk and the content will change. Arguably for the worse. People will get paid but it definitely will not be the same.

If you use 50 as an example, he absolutely would not exist with his early mixtapes. You cannot release those on an official platform without running the risk of getting sued into oblivion. No label is going to back something like that. I also am not a fan of the curation process with a lot of these streaming services and definitely do not have any faith that you will be able to discover some unknown talented rapper in the way that you could with someone you've been buying shit from and you know they only carried good stuff.

> If you use 50 as an example, he absolutely would not exist with his early mixtapes. You cannot release those on an official platform without running the risk of getting sued into oblivion. No label is going to back something like that. I also am not a fan of the curation process with a lot of these streaming services and definitely do not have any faith that you will be able to discover some unknown talented rapper in the way that you could with someone you've been buying shit from and you know they only carried good stuff.

I agree with all of these; my gut response indicates that because of this the "underground" mixtape sources (e.g. torrents) are not going to disappear.

> [but it's pretty crazy that arguably one of the most popular forms of music in the world is distributed for free]

I agree and I love it.

I think it partly has to with the fact that many rappers started out in the actual ghetto by selling mixtapes (many from my local area such as Meek, Cassidy, Beanie Sigel, etc...).

Releasing mixtapes shows that thay're still related to the streets and haven't gone completely commercial yet (sold out), which is important depending on the type of vibe that they're aiming for. For example, it's very important for someone like Meek Mill to maintain an image of being "real", where as it's not as big of a deal for someone like Drake who's more along the lines of a pop star.

Submitting to the demands of a record label goes against everything that conventional hip hop stands for in my opinion, so I'm glad that these guys keep releasing their mixtapes for free.

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 - listen to Track 5. Z-Ro holds it DOWN!

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.

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

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....

Houston was mainstream when Still Tippin blew up and Flip was doing his thing but that didn't really last and wasn't outside of a few artists.

DJ Ayres and JD are my dudes. I don't know if I still have that CD but great mix. I see it linked here: http://www.djayres.com/2013/03/14/throwback-thursday-houston...

You're right. They did have some major radio releases, but never to the level that Miami or Atlanta did.

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.

i hate drake

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

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.

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.

I'll have to check out the early Houston music, but I've heard a lot about DJ Paul, Juicy J and others from Memphis being a huge influence. Having listened to quite a bit of that early stuff I can definitely hear the sound in modern music. I wouldn't doubt that it came from Houston though, or a mix of a lot of Southern places including Houston, Memphis, Atlanta, New Orleans, and Miami. Here's an example of some Memphis music:

https://www.youtube.com/user/UndagroundThreat/videos?flow=gr...

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

I'd imagine this is going to be more modernish stuff when things were starting to get distributed online, like slightly-post Napster days. There are definitely cassette mixtapes available via torrent but there just aren't that many due to the initial nature of the medium and distribution.

I'm listening to this blast from my past: https://archive.org/download/Kool_DJ_Red_Alert_-_Radio_Mix_9...

Even has Scott La Rock up front...

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

Yes, I was a bit disappointed by the selection. Very modern hip hop and kind of a grab bag of pop hop.

Yeah I was listening to hip hop mix tapes in the mid-1980s...I was hoping to see real old school.

Jason Scott here.

Most of the comments don't need me, but I did want to address this. I've been ingesting tapes daily by the hundreds for the past week, and it's natural that the collection skews towards the new, since I can get those at arm's reach, singly, with little (relative) effort. I've still got a way to go with the 17,000 tapes I have information on (again, pretty much all post-2000) and then I will either find older sources, or will be contacted by people with caches of older sources.

So, I'd say, "give it time", and remind the people who are not happy that Internet Archive is a library/archive and can only move as fast as it can. But it does move.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

There are quite a few browser plugins out there that offer this, and I seem to recall a browser that had that functionality built in as well

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.

> 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?

Related to your IPFS comment, social media is also skewed towards sharing links to content which is hosted elsewhere. "Sharing a video" is really sharing a URL to a Web page containing a video, which may not be there tomorrow.

The restrictions on social media services, like Twitter's short message length, and the restrictions on media services which make it non-trivial to save copies, like YouTube hijacking the right-click menu to remove "save as", reinforce each other.

Hopefully something like IPFS can disrupt this situation, so that content starts getting shared again, rather than just URLs whose destination is controlled by a single organisation.

Some links from the article:

The actual collection of mix tapes - 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...

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!

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...

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.

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.

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.

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

Speaking of trippy album art...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pen_%26_Pixel

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?

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

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

I don't believe that's the case. The Internet Archive works in a legal gray area but manages by clearly being not for profit and by readily honoring removal requests, including retroactively honoring robots.txt instructions.

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

Many of these mixtapes are in a legal grey area, technically copyright infringement but tolerated by the rights holders because of the promotional value. My feeling is that either archive.org are not aware of this content, or they are but will simply comply with any take down requests they receive.

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

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...

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?

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.

http://www.themixingbowl.org

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

-- mad mad props.

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

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?

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.

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...

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.

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.

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