Cover Photo by Bruno Guerrero on Unsplash
It is no surprise that I like and listen to rap music.
I spent many of days in barbershops listening to spirited debates on the topic.
I logged countless hours in my dad's cars as he circulated a seemingly endless array of songs.
My summers were filled with Future, Wiz Khalifa, Gucci Mane, and Drake before landing major deals. Kanye West when had only just Graduated. Plies, Lil Brother, Scarface, Ab-Soul, Childish Gambino, Schoolboy Q, Curren$y, Wu Tang Clan, Jadakiss, The Game, Rick Ross, Jeezy, Bun B, Wale, Royce Da 5’9”, Cam’ron, Nas, and a host of other artists I can't even try to remember.
Do you know how good Kush and Orange Juice is by Wiz Khalifa?
Do you know how hard Childish Gambino spits on Royalty?
Though I hated his last album, do you know hype everyone was for AcidRap?
How Gucci Mane had not one, but two, songs of the summer in “Lemonade” and “Wasted”?
That Little Brother made an amazing album called the Minstrel Show?
Now, I know not every one of those is a mixtape: two of the five projects above are studio albums. However, they find similarity in the fact you will never hear them on the radio: there is little commercial aspect to them.
At its core, rap music can be great.
Say what you will about the messaging, and I'll show you the equivalent in a country song: with just a little twang the scantly clad girl, a beer, and a hot summer day suddenly sounds worlds away from the likened images in rap music. I am not saying this image, or rap, is not without issue, but I am saying don't cast the first stone.
Even willing to make this claim, I still believe modern rap music is just not good: it's not good art.
Yes, Scary Hours Had Me Petrified, but, if you look at the core of my feelings on that post, Drake is not a good musician. If I were to categorize him, and many modern rap artists, their art is not their music. Their art is their presentation, the performance, the brand, everything but the actual song. I still think art can be fond there, yet
It is all too commercial.
Yes, I am going to take this route, but bear with me.
Most rap music is not about the music itself: the art is not the desired product. The music is about the money, the brand, the business, the tours, the streams, and I do not think it is the musicians fault.
According to the United Musicians & Allied Workers, artists on Spotify only make 0.003 cent per stream. In that same post, as of 2024, artists need to have their music streamed over 1600 times or Spotify will not pay them for any streams received.
No, this is not a Spotify slander account, though I do support Apple Music, but it is hitting at why I miss mixtapes.
Say you are an artist, you have your song written, and need someone to write the music for you. Giving royalties to a top producer who has created hits in the past to help you record one song from scratch, with two or more instruments. That song will cost you roughly $1400.
If you were to invest $1400, assuming you had to come up with the money yourself, your desire for a return on your investment would be exponentially high: you are going to want to record a song people will like and want to stream, so your investment is not lost.
You will be focused on the commercial success of the song, not the purity of the art.
What's worse, if you did make a hit song, the likelihood you will deviate from what made you successful is quite slim. The reality, however, is that there is no way to predict a songs song's commercial success.
Even famed record executive and producer Rick Rubin recognizes the issue with focusing on commerical succes. Having worked with LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys, Run-DMC, Mick Jagger, Tom Petty, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jay-Z, Lady Gaga, Kanye West, Ed Sheeran, Travis Scottt and more, he knows
In order for a work to connect commercially, stars must align, and none of them relate to how good the project is. It might be the timing, the distribution mechanism, the mood of the culture, or a connection to current events (The Creative Act 220).
This is why there are so many terrible songs out there. Why, when we find a good rap song, it is played over and over and over and over again. Why an artist like Drake can be everywhere at one time. People latch onto what is seemingly good because most of what is out there is so terribly bad: it's all relative.
Everyone is trying to make the same iteration of the next hit, guessing what will be the next hit. The music is souless, it lacks heart: it's not art.
But, let's say the stars do align for you. I am sorry to tell ya, but your persona, the identity you have created with that sepecific sound, will become the weight under which you suffocate. If you ever were, you are no longer an artist as you cannot freely create what you want in fear of your following rejecting it, and calling for your old, classic material.
You're doomed.
You cannot innovate.
You cannot be an artist.
You can only be, as Drake so proudly announces on his DJ Khaled song, a POPSTAR.
This is why I love the bedroom genre of music.
With the advent of portable systems, AI, and relatively inexpensive software, we have seen many artists create their own music from their bedroom: bedroom pop. Couple this with the rise of LOFI, there is a space for people to make lower budget, more authentic, songs with more texture, and ultimately their own. But, once again, they cannot expect to make much or do much unless it sells.
So artists have to think about the commercial aspects of music. If they fail to, they will not be musicians much longer.
This is why I miss mixtape culture.
When Wiz Khalifa re-released "The Thrill" and my students were infatuated by such a mashup, I was thrust back to my late middle schools the days with Datpiff and Frostwire, seraching for genere bending samples that defied common logic. The closet thing I have found to something like Wiz's sampling of Empire of the Sun has to be Central Cee's "Let Go": Cee uses Passenger's "Let Her Go" as the inspiration for a, yes, graphic, yet painful retelling of how he misses his ex. I have listend to this song many of times in the last week and have been struck by how, even though he uses vulgar language and the imagery can be quite jarring, at its core, the experince he is re presenting, is one that takes the feelings we all experince during a breakup and hightens them 10 fold: "Let Go" is an acceptable way to make a song like this unlike "Marvin's Room".
But before you hype beasts jump down my throat, I am sure Datpiff is still populating things for the underground. I am also aware that many were putting out mixtapes in hopes of signing a larger deal.
Yet, you have to still consider, Datpiff existed before the advent of streaming music like we do now.
In my experience, the sounds I heard on the few mixtapes I found were so far removed from those same artists who eventually released a studio album. The mixtape was raw, unfiltered, pristine, and untouched by the mainstream. It was the artist being true to themselves.
Listen to Kush and Orange Juice or Cabin Fever by Wiz Khalifa, and then listen to Rolling Papers or O.N.I.F.C.: aside from the proliferation of weed, that is not the same artist. Heck, take Acid Raps by Chance the Rapper and then listen to Coloring Book or The Big Day: I take that back, do not listen to The Big Day.
But it does make sense why this shift happens when artists step into the studio: mixtapes are meant to generate chatter, albums are to generate revenue.
In 2011, weed, or acid for that fact, had not reached the heights they have in the larger society now. The mainstream would not buy an album like the Kush and OJ mixtape because it was not what was accepted as normal at the time: it was taboo.
That is what art usually is though: taboo.
Art that is a true re presentation of a life inaccessible or unimaginable to some, will be taboo.
Heck, I still think Kush and Orange Juice is taboo: straight up, drugs are bad folks.
I am not advocating for weed, or acid, at all. My lifestyle is far too healthy to find myself using for putting anything other than whole, organic, foods in my body: still waiting on a Whole Foods sponsorship. When I put a bag of Takis in my body like I did after the Laufey concert, and I am unable to walk, sit, or stand comfortably the next morning after using the bathroom, I damn sure am not going to do any drugs.
As my mother told me, and South Park reiterated, drugs are bad.
I don't care what popular culture says about weed, or any other drug.
Insert whaatever drug you are thinking, and Stephen A is right:
But back to the point, the sound Wiz had become famous for was inaccessible when he stepped in the studio with Atlantic and Rostrum Records.
What I do not understand, however, is how the chatter that allows the artist to receive the recognition to make an album suddenly does not equate to profit.
Consider Childish Gambino who still has such a cult following despite a relatively dead music career as he has tried to kill the persona.
Even though he can be found on vinyl in stores like Urban Outfitters, he still has multiple mixtapes: both sets of music not made for radio. Not a deceleration he has never been on the radio, I just cannot name one of his many songs that I have heard on the radio. Maybe 3005, Redbone, or Feels Like Summer?
I am sure you have heard Freaks and Geeks, but have you heard Unnecessary? What about Toxic with Danny Brown: the wildest sample I have ever heard.
Gambino is so for the culture, his song RIP with Bun B, a hip-hop and Houston nlegend, samples French producer Kavinsky: a sure nod to Kanye West's synth pop rap collab on "Stronger".
He was not trying to sell anything.
Though it is widely accepted now, you could not talk about anime in 2012 without fear of retribution: RIP gives major anime vibes.
Just listen to this song and tell me you hear a rap song, tell me you hear this on the radio.
At this point, I am rambling.
I am standing on a soapbox as the old head, decrying the state of current pop culture.
Even amidst what has become an over commercialized market, there is still hope as there do remain some artists.
If you follow my Spotify, Apple Music, or Instagram, you are privy to an artist I am listening to and will explore in a later music post. He is what happens when you blend the mixtape sounds of Childish Gambino and the brashness of Kanye West.
My Catholic friends are going to hate me for this, but until I do drop that post, if you are someone who listens to modern rap, Kush and Orange Juice by Wiz Khalifa and Royalty by Childish Gambino are worth a listen. Do a simple search of your "favorite artist" and "mixtape" on MixtapeMonkey to see what you have missed.
I am not saying the messaging on and of these are that of Bishop SJ, Caleb Gordon, or Hulvey, yet the art is truly present: a re presentation of a life inaccessible or unimaginable to some. If you do not like or listen to modern rap, do not listen: you won't like it.
I will end with a quote from Rick Rubin that will be the launching point for a follow-up:
If we can tune in to the idea
of making things and sharing them
without being attached to the outcome,
the work is more likely
to arrive in its truest form.
HI! I am not sure if you are here from an email, my Instagram, Medium, LinkedIn, or something else entirely, but I am appreciative of the fact you made it to the end! If you found something worthwhile, don't be stingy, share the wealth! If you are not getting emailed each time I publish a new post, be sure to click the Mailing List Button: I do not post everything to other outlets.
Not quite a mixtape, but did you listen to Surf?