This Is My Rifle: Land of a Thousand Mixtapes

This article is pretty much a verbatim re-telling of a conversation I had last week with my brother and fellow artist, Shane Eli. If you’re unaware of what Shane does, please click here and get familiar.

A few months ago I decided to finally get on the Lil Wayne bandwagon and see what all the hype’s about. Personally, my taste in Hip Hop tends to lean more towards the Nas, Mos Def and Black Thought side of the spectrum but I will be the first one to say that it’s ridiculous to be biased against an artist without actually giving their music an honest listen.

So I searched the torrent sites and found a complete collection of every song Wayne’s ever made. From features to his own songs, there were over 3000 tracks in this collection. So many that the torrents themselves were broken down into several different parts. With so much music to download, I cut out his earlier work and downloaded everything from the beginning of his “Best Rapper Alive” campaign up until his “No Ceilings” mixtape, which was still over 1000 songs.

I spent the next week catching up on all things Lil Wayne. There were many instant replay moments but also many “listen for 30 seconds and skip to the next song” moments as well. Once I made it all the way through, I came to the conclusion that Wayne just might be the best rapper alive but he isn’t perceived in the same light as Jay-Z or Kanye West for one reason; his misses seem to overshadow his hits.

There are 2 schools of thought when it comes to music, quality and quantity. Artists like Jay and Kanye have managed to successfully find themselves on the quality side of music. They release albums every 1-2 years and their guest appearances are few and far between. It’s through this method that they’ve solidified their brands as being directly associated with iconic material. Not every album they’ve released is a classic, but every time they come back out they do it at the right time and once again fill a void. They allow themselves the time to create a cohesive album and work at their own pace. It’s because of this that even their least appreciated albums are still a step above the rest.

Wayne, up until his prison sentence, employed the quantity ideology. Rather than take his time and spend a year working on one complete body of work, he spreads himself out. From guest appearances to mixtapes to one-off songs, Lil Wayne pushed himself into the mainstream by literally being in the ears of every human being with an internet connection. If you didn’t like one song, he had another one lined up and ready to go right away. He became the most visible artist in pop culture strictly because he made himself impossible to miss.

I admire Wayne for many reasons. First off, his work ethic is unmatched. If 2pac was alive today I’m sure that he would feel winded working next to Wayne. Secondly, Lil Wayne is in my opinion the definition of artistic freedom. Throughout the 1000 plus songs I listened to, I never actually heard him fall into any pocket. He weaves in and out of the percussion seamlessly, never definitively on or off the beat. The intoxicated demon character he’s created for himself is genius and works perfectly with his style. Love him or hate him, Wayne is the reason that everybody does the word association rhymes now (I’m feelin a little hungry, hippo).

And so after seeing the success that Wayne had, a vast majority of up and coming artists took the quantity over quality route. But they forgot one thing; they are not and never will be Lil Wayne.

What we have now is an onslaught of terrible music. The internet is overflowing with rappers releasing songs that are unfinished, uninspired and just all around awful. And because of the pace that Lil Wayne set, Hip Hop artists are expected to keep up which has now turned the culture into a massive trash compactor, chewing up and spitting out artists so rapidly that we forget their names as soon we’re done flipping through their mixtape. Even the most praised of the “blog rappers” are dangerously close to falling into obscurity if they don’t deliver music on a weekly basis.

The problem that this has caused is that we no longer have artists in Hip Hop who are capable of any real longevity. A solid album generally takes a minimum of 6 months to write and another 6 months to put together. In today’s world, an artist is long forgotten if they take more than a few months to complete this entire process and put an album out. Plus, they need a mixtape or an EP before the album and a ton of freestyles or “bonus cuts” in between the leaks to keep people interested. So the direct result of this system is just a shitload of disposable music and artists that aren’t able to maintain any relevance if they strive to create a decent body of work.

As an artist myself, I hate this system. In the past I’ve been forced to release music knowing that neither myself or the music was ready. Both of my previous projects with I.D.e.A ("God’s Favorites" and WEB’s "Great I.D.e.A") were rushed and nowhere near completion at the time of release. I don’t mean to shit on my own music, both projects had some great moments, but at the time we were trying to keep up with an unreasonable pace. I wrote what was supposed to be 2 complete bodies of work in no more than a month and I wasn’t giving myself time to explore my creative space. The result of that being that the range of topics and concepts was very narrow. It wasn’t until "Marvelous World Of Color" that Rodney and I decided to work on our own time and only release the album when we felt it was ready, which took approximately 9 months.

It’s no secret that the music industry needs a major overhaul. But I think we also have to re-think the way that we appreciate music. We have to give artists time to create and deliver albums that will define moments in time, not split seconds on the internet. We’ve all had the “Hip Hop just ain’t what it used to be” conversation and a big part of that derives from the fast food approach we’ve taken to music. With the exception of a few artists, there really aren’t any emcees that are going to stand the test of time and it’s not because of a lack of talent, it’s because of a lack of range. I’ve personally decided that I don’t care what pace everybody is moving at; I’m devoting myself to creating a legacy and real longevity. If I’m not considered relevant because I only release music that I feel is to the best of my abilities then so be it.

At least then I can say I’m proud of my art and I believe in what I’m doing.

(Jason James is an artist, freelance columnist and writer for RefinedHype.com. You can listen/download his most recent album, "Marvelous World Of Color", here and you can contact him here and here.)