Stop Saying “Mixtape”, Mixtapes Are Dead Posted by Nathan S. on 09/30/13 | Filed under Opinion

I've written about this before, but hip-hop's still far from figuring out what the fuck it's going to do with the now seriously outdated legacy of the "mixtape", and since the topic keeps popping up on Twitter, in conversations with artists and fans, etc., I thought I'd dig back in. 

Or to put it more bluntly, mixtapes are (mostly) dead, and the sooner we stop using the word, the better of hip-hop will be. Before I explain, let's take a quick trip back in time....

For most of hip-hop's history a mixtape was (no shit) an actual tape that was actually mixed by a DJ and was recorded with low budget sound quality over already pre-existing beats. When the CD came out and you could burn 100s at once instead of manually making one tape at a time, the mixtape game became a full fledged business, a black market industry running parallel to the completely album-driven official hip-hop industry.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly when that changed, but Drake's 2009 "So Far Gone" album is as good of a landmark as any. When Drake blew up off "So Far Gone", and the "mixtape" was later re-released as an "album", Drizzy established making a purely original "mixtape" as a legitimate career path for artists. With improvements in technology artists could produce relatively high quality audio for a fraction of the cost as before, and with labels only signing artists with proven fan bases, free mixtapes that sounded "as good as an album" were the best, and maybe really the only, way to build that fan base.   

Since then, the shift away from the "mixtape" as a loose collection of raps over already famous beats and towards completely original music has only grown. (That's why Lil Wayne's "Dedication 5", which was closer to the classic definition of a mixtape, almost felt like a throwback.) But while the music industry, the music itself and the way we get the music has changed drastically, when we talk about hip-hop, we're still largely stuck in the early 2000s definitions of a "mixtape" and an "album". We're long overdue for an update. 

Here's are the definitions I think most people currently have in their head:

Mixtape: Can listen for free, download it for free, non-original, low quality.
Album: Can't listen to it for free, have to purchase it, original, high quality. 

And that's why artists get mad if you call their mixtape an "album", I totally get it. For them it feels like you're lumping this original, high quality work into the same category as MC Still Lives With His Mom who did a "Grind Hard Vol. 19" mixtape over Drake instrumentals. I get it*, but that's really only because they're clinging to the outdated definitions.

If we're being honest, here's what the definitions really mean in 2013:

Mixtape: Can listen for free, download for free, probably largely original but maybe not, probably higher quality but maybe not.
Album: Might be able to listen for free, have to purchase (although, come on, you don't have to), original, probaly higher quality but maybe not.

As blurry as those lines are becoming, they're only going to get blurrier. Justin Timberlake is offering "20/20" for official stream, and with Spotify/Grooveshark etc., more and more"albums" can now be streamed for free. Jay Z gave away "MCHG" through Samsung for free. Torrents, you know, exist.

If we're distinquishing "mixtapes" and "albums" on the basis of originality and quality, those differences just don't really make sense anymore. "Acid Rap" and "Run the Jewels" are as quality and original as any "albums" this year, but they're "mixtapes" because...they were free? I can name 100 "mixtapes" that were more original and higher quality than French Montana's "Excuse My French", but it gets to be called an "album" because...it had a bar code on itl?

So we really have two choices. One, we can create new words for every possible iteration. Mixtapes that are as original/quality as albums can be called "mixalbums", albums that are as low quality/unoriginal as mixtapes can be called "albumtapes", unless it's an "albumtape" you're listening to for free, in which case we might want to distinquish it by calling it a "freealbumtape", unless it's a for-purchase version of a "mixalbum" that's also available for free, in which case we can call it a "deluxemixalbumtape," etc. I call that the BCS solution. Instead of admitting the system is fundamentally broken, just keep making small changes until the system no longer makes logical sense.

Or.... 

We just call everything an album. Problem solved. There are great albums, there are terrible albums. There are albums for sale, there are albums for free. There are original albums, there are derivitive albums. Album means "a collection of music". Period.

There seems to be a belief out there (at least by my man Yoh) that high quality "mixtapes" are lessening the quality of "albums". I'm not sure I agree, or even if it's a bad thing, but really it doesn't matter. That's only a problem so much as you continue to hold onto these outdated definitions. Great "mixtapes" aren't making "albums" worse, they're just...well...there are great albums in the world and not-so-great albums.

Dissapointed because Big K.R.I.T.'s "Live From the Undeground" album wasn't as good as his "mixtapes"? Big K.R.I.T.'s now made a lot of amazing albums, "Live From the Underground" is just his least amazing album (in some people's opinions). See, doesn't that feel better? In 2013, does it make sense to expect more from an "album" than a mixtape, particularly when often an artist has substantially less creative control over an "album" than a "mixtape"? Has to worry about clearing samples? Rhetorical question, it doesn't.

Struggling to come up with a "Best Of" list at the end of the year? Do you include "Acid Rap" in the "Best Albums" section? You enjoyed it as much as any "album", it's as original (if not more original) than many "albums", so why not put it right next to "Born Sinner", "Nothing Was the Same", etc.? Problem solved, they're all albums, now we can just focus on which album was musically the best. 

And really that's the point. In the modern age worrying about labeling something a "mixtape" or an "album" is a largely an artifical divide, a semantic debate that only distracts from the one thing fans truly care about - the music. Is this collection of music better than this collection of music? That's the only question really worth asking, and thanks to the crumbling wall between "mixtapes" and "albums", it's a question we can focus on more purely now than ever...as long as we stop worrying about the definitions.

So as far as I'm concerned, the mixtape is dead. Long live the album.

*For the record, the flip side is when a rapper calls RefinedHype a "blog". Motherfucker, it's a "site", not a "blog". So yes, I'm being a little hypocritical when I get mad about those definitions, but I really do try not to sweat it. Should I really give a shit what you call RefinedHype as long as you visit it and enjoy the content? No. Same goes for mixtape/albums.

UPDATE: Chance the Rapper agrees with me: "The whole point of Acid Rap was just to ask people a question: does the music business side of this dictate what type of project this is? If it’s all original music and it’s got this much emotion around it and it connects this way with this many people, is it a mixtape? What’s an album these days, anyways? ‘Cause I didn’t sell it, does that mean it’s not an official release? So I might not ever drop a for-sale project. Maybe I’ll just make my money touring."