The Bar Exam 4, y'all. The "There Is No Competition" Edition. No features, nobody scratchin' on it. This the "I just been itchin'" Edition
An elegy for Datpiff.com
This morning, I woke to news that has had a not-insignificant quadrant of the Internet in mourning.
Black dress, black suits, black shades, black boots
Black truck, black coupe, guns blow, black flutes
Black card, black jewels, black party bag
Black Friday, throw it in a body bagBlack Barbie, that's what I call my black broad
African plug, that's what I call a black card
Get ya sharps, get ya flats, that's the black keys
Gettin' slick'll get ya holes in ya black teesBlack limos, black town cars, black hearses
Black register books signed in black cursive
Black tears, white tissues outta black purses
That's procedure when I'm sendin' back verses
On March 4, 2010, Fabolous dropped There Is No Competition 2. I remember where I was when this happened. I was in Atlanta, interning with The Carter Center. I was also in the process of meeting a lifelong friend, a relationship that began with us gChatting Lil Wayne lyrics to each other from our desks. There’s a business trip to Senegal and meeting a US President somewhere in the mix. I’m revising a novella that will become my first professional speculative fiction sale. And, during it all, Fabolous unveiled one of my favorite mixtapes of all time.
I say “one of” because my all-time top pick is We Got It 4 Cheap, Vol. 2.
Vicious with the verse I’m as genius as Rae
You niggas seeing nothing on the Zenith like Ray
Black hand white keys ya'll seen this I’m Ray
Got more white in the hood than the KKK
The grand wizard of that almighty blizzard
My numbers come scissored, I be where they breeding lizards
Hosted by Clinton Sparks with some original production from Pharrell, this late 2005 release is a hallmark of a halcyon time. The Clipse are between albums and, with Philly rappers Ab-Liva and Sandman, they’d formed the Re-Up Gang. Cocaine rap’s Poet Laureate is a king among equals.
I'm Magic with the pen; I'm Jordan in the booth. I'm Melo with the flow; Lebron; I'm the truth
I caught this some time in 2006 during my freshman year of college. Clinton Sparks, one of my favorite DJs who lit Connecticut’s Hot 93.7 on fire with his weekend club blends, my childhood soundtrack, surprised me when I saw his name on the cover. Him shouting “GET FAMILIAR,” was a clarion call. My memory of that time is a little hazy (for reasons), but I think that tape was my official toe-dip into the waters of mixtape rap. By the time I’d touched what I thought was the ocean floor, we were in the midst of Lil Wayne’s magisterial and un-repeat-able run as the Greatest Rapper Alive.
Wayne owned that whole entire era. A terrorist, rappers knew that as soon as he hopped on one of their beats, it was no longer theirs. It had been baptized. Born anew as a Lil Wayne song.
We’d gotten a preview with the first installments of his series The Drought in 2003 and 2004. But his run from 2005-2008 is unparalleled. Rumors abounded at the time of some sort of Faustian bargain. There was no way someone could be this good, this much, for this long.
What your Pappy told you bout fucking 'round with them soldiers?
I told you I'm coming back—I got that Tommy Mottola
That's blood all over your Rover, blood all over your chauffeur
Blood all over your loafers—
If I get any closer, there's blood all over my toaster, blood all over my holster
I'm in them S. Dots: That's blood all over my Hovas—fuck!1
On 2007’s 2-disc The Drought 3, the very first track—the literal INTRO—sees Wayne plant his flag on five different beats.2 On "Swizzy":
Just bought a Fleetwood
And I'ma put some D's on that bitch
Looking like I got a diamond disease on my wrist
And in 2006, in the midst of it all, he and Juelz Santana gave us the lyrically narcotic fever dream, Blow. WHAT?!
Fall of 2007, I’m in Paris and I stumble on Joe Budden’s Mood Muzik mixtape series. He was the first in the Slaughterhouse quartet whose members I would later find in their respective rap fiefdoms. In an instant, I’d found more lyricists to collect, to add to my personal canon. Crooked I from Long Beach, Joell Ortiz in Brooklyn, Royce da 5’9” from Detroit, and Joe Budden in Jersey.3 They’d go on to create what would become my favorite rap supergroup not named Re-Up Gang since Wu-Tang.4
From Joe Budden’s “Dumb Out”:
No names should be mentioned but mine
Unless you talking Big Pun in his prime
Maybe '96 Jay, before Dame was throwing money around
Or 2Pac without Humpty around
Or 50 before Em, Nas talking like a gun in his song
Cam'ron during Children Of The Corn
Beans before the cops came through and tried to grill 'im
I'm talking '95, Big L before they killed 'em
But my favorite pre-Slaughterhouse member mixtape has to go to Bar Exam 2, hosted by DJ Green Lantern, which Royce dropped in 2008 as I neared the end of my college years.
You might have dealt with the tools
But you ain't swam with them sharks
Nickel Mike Phelps in the pool
Later on that same tape:
She behave, I put her beside nice neighbors
Let her ride to the top of that high rise
In that Darth Vader
I call it that
Cause the second you steppin' at the weapon
It's gonna light up like it's lightsaber
I was in law school when Slaughterhouse dropped their second mixtape, House Rules.
It's cool though, back to business
Stacking these riches means caskets in ditches
With my Trues on living sacrilegious
Why am I talking mixtapes and littering this newsletter with bars from rap songs? Because if initial reports on Twitter are to be believed, then Datpiff.com, the coltan mine where I found so many of the tapes that powered my own creativity, has been pronounced dead.
When it comes to rap, I love mixtapes more than I love albums. The reasons are legion.
While albums can, themselves, be lyrical showcases and legitimating markers of an artist’s success, mixtapes have particular purchase in rap culture. Back in the day, before they were CDs, they were actual cassette tapes. And they would be passed from person to person, re-recorded on people’s machines, and, thus, they would flood the block, so to speak. They were not just a way of generating buzz for an up-and-coming artist,5 they were ways of infusing taurine into the hood’s musical bloodstream. Sure, people celebrated albums, but they salivated over mixtapes. The way we hunted those CDs…
There are other places where you can find a more organized and factually-pregnant retelling of the history of mixtapes and an explanation of their centrality in rap music,6 but right now, all I have are memories. Blatant and flagrant exultations of copyright infringement, mixtapes filled car trunks and sometimes became a more prized commodity than new sneakers. They could be the young rapper's ticket to prominence, but--and this was my primary experience of them--they could also be an established rapper's return to their roots. Not necessarily a geographical retracing but more a genealogical homecoming for their craft. A place where they could rap without the constraints of management or label executives. A way to tide fans over between sometimes extended album releases. An album, with its imperative towards radio singles and club bangers, could be a cage for a punchline artist like Cassidy or a rapper capable of what Papoose did on Alphabetical Slaughter. You wouldn’t win a Grammy off a mixtape, but you could win the adulation of your peers. And sometimes mixtapes were the closest we came to seeing those collaborations we thirsted for. The way we clamored for a Lil Wayne-Juelz Santana “I Can’t Feel My Face” collaboration! Even after we’d gorged ourselves on the veritable 26-course feast that was the Blow mixtape.
But the dope flow was slow in my area
The coke flow was woah in my area
And woah meant dough in my area
You know I sold that woah like woah in my area, woah
Rappers were rappin’-rapping, and I couldn’t feel my face.
As a business model, their prudence is debatable, but the way they anticipated streaming is frightening. Also, telling. Microeconomics was my second-lowest grade in college, but maybe that was because study of the mixtape economy was absent from our studies. Eventually, the law caught up with artists and the DJs that made names and made platforms for them.7 The FBI raid on DJ Drama's headquarters was a watershed moment in the culture. But the ethos remains. On places like G-Unit radio and when rappers come in and freestyle for Sway or the LA Leakers or Funk Flex.
But there was something of a wish fulfilled with mixtapes. Sometimes you would hear a song and wonder how another of your favorite rappers would sound on it. And, boom, Joell Ortiz Covers the Classics.8
The bigger the Internet has gotten, the more places you can find these gems, but there’s something to be said about the centrality of Datpiff.com. It had a gravitational force and once you passed through that portal, you found yourself in a downright Wonderland. You could see what beats your favorite rapper had just beat up, or you could discover your new favorite rapper, even whatever collective they’d been or were a part of. How else might I have discovered Crooked I’s “Circle of Bosses?” DatPiff going down doesn’t mean the death of the mixtape. To be honest, the streaming model taking over and co-opting so many elements of what made mixtapes available and popular might have more to do with it. SoundCloud is no longer where I go to find rapper’s freestyles. It’s where I go for lo-fi/trap and drill music. It’s where I can find things like a trap remix of “Kakarot vs Broly” from Dragon Ball Super. The profusion of YouTube links in this post speaks to the platform’s ability to save what otherwise might have been lost. But I miss the DatPiff database already. Even though, it’s been almost a decade since I last visited, it still feels like I’m there. The way so many Fast & Furious movies feel like they’re still set in the summer of 2001.
A part of me wishes I knew how to write about music. About notations and poetry and riffs and downbeats. About 808s and bridges. But I’m learning how to write about what I love. And, in doing so, I’m learning how to keep a thing alive.
On that score, I might have some help. Apparently, over the course of writing this, news has emerged that reports of DatPiff’s death might be exaggerated. To celebrate, I think I’ll revisit the late Mac Miller’s K.I.D.S. tape.
Currently reading: The Kindly Ones - Jonathan Littell
Currently listening: Kool Aid & Frozen Pizza - Mac Miller
At the risk of ruining a joke by explaining it, Lil Wayne is an alleged member of the Bloods.
"This Is Why I'm Hot" by Mims
"Jesus Walks" by Kanye West
"Shook Ones (Part II)" by Mobb Deep
"Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang" by Dr. Dre featuring Snoop Dogg
"Tell Me When To Go" by E-40 featuring Keak Da Sneak
Crooked I’s Psalm 82:V6 mixtape blew my mind to pieces. Authorities are still attempting all the missing pieces of my gray matter.
I’ve was heartbroken when it became clear that their hiatus had mutated into a somewhat acrimonious breakup.
See J. Cole’s Friday Night Lights (2010), and Meek Mill’s Dreamchasers series (2011, 2012, 2013)
Like Netflix’s Hip-Hop Evolution docuseries.
There’s a Mount Rushmore somewhere with DJ Kayslay’s, DJ Drama’s, DJ Whoo Kid’s, and DJ Green Lantern’s faces on it.
There is a dark side to this. In 2008, there wasn’t a single rapper on the planet who didn’t freestyle over “A Milli.” (To varying degrees of success, of course.) What did Royce tell us? “Triggers get used more than Wayne A Milli beat”.
Mixtapes bring lots of memories. I was still a child when communism fell in Romania and I remember my dad being so excited about being able to listen to international music again on radio. He would let the cassettes record during the day when he was at work and then pick the songs he wanted to keep and recording over the rest until he got his perfect mixtape. I learned a lot about good music through him.
I didn’t know mixtapes still exist and are such a huge part of the rapping scene. But it makes total sense. I’ll go listen to that Kakaroto mix on SoundCloud. And check out some of your rap recommendations.
Word! We would so be friends! Lol. Thank you for the symbol of truth. It’s a blast reading it. It inspired my writing, that will see the light day at the end of the year in comic form. I’m old head that has a passion for lyrical bars. Take great care brother!!