no trivia

What I think I was trying to highlight with the “new-ish rappers’ best work is on mixtapes” point is that it’s nearly impossible to release an album via conventional means, especially on a major label, that isn’t hedged or severely compromised. This though, is changing. Curren$y is the best example. Also: Flockaveli which of course, was originally supposed to be a mixtape.

There’s also the whole thing that more and more, mixtapes are as planned-out and conceptualized as albums (see: the growing popularity of the term “street album”). DJ Burn One is the king of this. Yelawolf’s Trunk Muzik 0-60 is a good example in the sense that it took the best tracks from the Trunk Muzik street album, and added some more songs that were also good and uncompromised but happened to have say, Gucci Mane on them, or a beat from Jim Jonsin. That’s very much using the resources of the majors and not having the majors use you.

Another fascinating example is Jackie Chain’s Who The Mane street album, which was available through Universal’s website, but sponsored by dudes like DJ Burn One and The Ballers Eve guys, and produced entirely by The Block Beattaz. It has “Mack A Bitch” on it for chrissakes, so you know, this isn’t some fake-ass facsimile of a mixtape.

This is total theory right here, but I also feel like perhaps there was some interesting A & R-ing going on with Who The Mane, in which it worked a little bit like a commissioned piece of art. Notice that other than the Robert Miles and Richie Spice samples, every identifiable artist sampled (50 Cent, Lil Wayne, Tatu) is part of Universal Music Group. Dunno, but maybe there was some “go wild with our catalog” type thing happening between UMG and Block Beattaz. That too would be a healthy relationship between artist and label. So, in one way, the majors are taking baby steps to not have all this stuff turn to complete shit.

Nevertheless, the switch from “classic album” to “classic release of any kind,” is most certainly happening, but I’m not sure if it will ever entirely take over. A whole rant about the album in general and the whole idea of “classics” and any sort of “canon” floating away would be boring but that’s a big part of this. No one’s all that worried about making classic albums or lasting art like that anymore. Or rather, it’s just no longer a feasible goal. Could be my age showing here a bit, but I think this is a problem. Of course, the internet’s freedom and sprawl is great and utopian in other more obvious ways, but it’s not tangible and well, if we’re talking “classics,” tangibility is important, which also means physical copies of stuff is important.

This is a debate in all corners of the internet: Where is our history (via digitized text, photos, video, music, etc.) if it’s all on hard drives? I’m a big fan of the internet and hate the curmudgeons, but there’s some validity here and well, if you really start to think about it, it can put you in existential crisis mode. So for rap too, dare I say that physical, tangible things like CDs and mixtapes remain important. Mostly because if this stuff isn’t kept somewhere, the idea of the canon and a “classic” will get even more dogmatic. Imagine a rap historian 50 years from and all he’s got access to are the CDs available in a Best Buy. Scary!

See, in the 90s, when rap blew-up and exploded across the country, all these dudes from pockets of wherever put out music and it influenced other dudes from pockets of wherever putting out music. And all that music, there’s evidence of somewhere or another: Used CD stores, the shoe box in your parents’ attic, Goodwills, Amazon.Com listings even. The story of 2000s rap (at least until 2008 or so) is all this 90s regional rap stuff crashing into the mainstream. If it wasn’t you know, tangibly there for us to find, rap would make a lot less sense to us right now.

To answer your question more directly, we’re in a transition point where albums still matter, but give it another generation and they won’t, and though it’ll probably work itself out in one way or another, it’s still a scary prospect.