Mixtape Weekly

starrynight · 03-18-2011, 09:48 AM

The last video when I posted was G.O.A.T. , Apple and Going Crazy feat. D12. Says content is blocked, maybe it is only blocked in some countries then.

djchameleon · 03-18-2011, 10:51 AM

yeah it's blocked for me as well. They took it down for copyright reasons. I will try to find another one.

djchameleon · 03-26-2011, 11:52 PM

The mixtapes I want to discuss this week are Pusha T's Fear of God, Red Cafe's Above the Cloudz and the XXL 2011 Freshmen Mixtape.

Pusha T Fear of God

I love this mixtape as a whole but my favorite tracks on here are Feeling Myself, Raid, Touch It and Alone in Vegas(outro).

Raid features 50 cent and Pharrell. I was a bit shocked to hear that 50 cent still has some shred of talent it has been so long since he has shown it really on his own damn albums.

Red Cafe Above the Cloudz

When I stumbled across this gem, I had no idea who Red Cafe and I'm going to assume that most of you don't either so I will give a little bio from Wikipedia on him.

Quote:

Red Café is from Brooklyn, NY rapper of Afro-Guyanese descent. He has been called " Dead Red" all his life, a nickname inherited from his father. He often refers to himself simply as "R" on songs he appears on by saying "It's R." Red Cafe began his career in a group called Da Franchise (or as often referred to Franchise) with Bed-Stuy artist Gravy and Flatbush rapper Q Da Kid appeared on many Whoo Kid and Kay Slay mixtapes under Franchise. Due to disagreements between the three, they split up and went separate ways.

In early 2006, Red Cafe was to release his first major-label debut I Got a Story to Tell, on Capitol Records in conjunction with Mack 10's Hoo Bangin' imprint, set to include singles "Bling Blao" featuring Fabolous and "Diddy Bop". Also believed to be on that album were his songs that received radio play "Jeep ****", which features Fabolous & Paul Wall and the remix of "Diddy Bop" which features Fabolous, Kardinal Offishall, Coco Chanel and Curren$y. However this never eventuated. Red Cafe has also contributed to the Coach Carter soundtrack.

He has also ghostwritten for many popular rappers over the years. As an underground rapper, his work is not internationally recognized, though he has been rapping on the circuit since the late 1990s. Red Café signed with several major labels over the years, including Arista in 2003, Capitol Records, and RCA, but circumstances dictated that albums were not released. Red commented "I just kept running into jams where the people who believed in me they lost their positions, or just the tables turned while I was at the company and you know things change and I wasn’t able to get the support that I needed".

Red Café released a mixtape with DJ Envy, The Co-Op, on October 9, 2007 with distribution by Koch Records. Remy Ma was featured on the album, while Cafe's new song "Paper Touchin Remix" features Fat Joe. Red Café signed to Akon's Konvict Muzik label in 2007, with his major-label debut album, The Shakedown, announced as due in 2008. In 2009, Red Café signed to Bad Boy Records, with The Shakedown still unreleased.

Highlights of this mixtape would have to be: Faded feat. Rick Ross, Mariott and Put it in the Air.

I wouldn't have minded if he called Mariott, "World So Cold" instead but there are many songs with that title already I think.

All throughout this mixtape, there are audio clips from movies and before the clips are introduced he uses the signature HBO sound and I love that.

If I rated albums, I would definitely have to give this a 5/5.

djchameleon · 03-27-2011, 06:14 AM

2011 XXL Freshman Class

This year’s frosh class includes Big K.R.I.T., CyHi Da Prynce, Diggy Simmons, Fred the Godson, Kendrick Lamar, Lil B, Lil Twist, Mac Miller, Meek Mill, YG and Yelawolf.

I will list each artist and then their best track off of the mixtape but if there is a better song they did that wasn't on the mixtape. I will post that instead.

Big K.R.I.T.

CyHi Da Prynce

Diggy Simmons

They didn't include a track with Diggy by himself so I went and pulled up this song off of his Airbourne mixtape.

Fred the Godson

Kendrick Lamar

Lil B

Lil Twist

Mac Miller

Meek Mill

YG

Yelawolf

djchameleon · 03-27-2011, 06:20 AM

From this mixtape, I found a few artists that I may follow to see how they do but my favorites are Yelawolf. I have his debut LP and it's pretty great.

I like Diggy Simmons based off of his tracks that I have heard in the past.

Cyhi Da Prince is top notch in my books and I will be look more into any solo tracks that he has available.

YG, Kendrik Lamar and Fred The Godson are ones that I'm going to keep my eye on.

Everyone else I thought was pretty meh and so so.

djchameleon · 04-10-2011, 07:04 AM

This week's latest offering of mixtapes will be All Madden 15.5, Meek Mills Maybach Milly and Wale No Days Off

All Madden 15.5

I like the way this mixtape starts off with a nice track from Em.

50 Ways as in 50 ways to leave your lover.

This mixtape is pretty solid except for a weak track here and there but lame guys like Tony Yayo. Actually, I think he is the only one with a weak track. Everyone else is pretty much on point.

Eminem – 50 Ways (DJ Fonzy World Premiere) (Classic!!)
2.Lil Wayne Feat. Rick Ross – If I Die Today (Prod. By Polow Da Don) (DJ Fonzy World Premiere)
3.Pusha T Feat. Rick Ross, AB-Liva – I Still Wanna (G.O.O.D MUSIC AND THE BO$$)
4.Red Cafe Feat. Lloyd Banks, Fabolous – The Realest (Shakedownnnnnnnnnnnnn)
5.E-40 Feat. Bun B, Slim Thug – That Candy Paint (I Got U Bay Area)
6.Travis Porter Feat. Gucci Mane, Yo Gotti – Make It Rain (Remix) (Prod. By Fki)
7.Lil Twist – At The Moment (Prod. By Lex Luger)
8.Meek Mill – Professional Money Getta (Maybach Music)
9.Ya Boy Feat. Gucci Mane, Gudda Gudda – Cocaina Final (DJ Fonzy Hood Pick)
10.Wiz Khalifa Feat. Young Jeezy, Chevy Woods – Homicide
11.Young Jeezy Feat. Lil Wayne – Ballin (Prod. By Lex Luger) (DJ Fonzy World Premiere)
12.Tony Yayo Feat. 50 Cent, Shawty Lo, Roscoe Dash – Haterz (NYC To ATL) (World Premiere)
13.French Montana Feat. Princess – Skeeted On Em (Prod. By Bangladesh) (Fire!!!)
14.Tolly Feat. Juicy J, Chevy Woods, Mac Miller – Bands
15.Cyhi Da Prynce – All A Dream (2011 Freshmen Team) (Chi-Town I See U)
16.Dr. Dre Feat. Swizz Beatz – Chillin (Prod. By Swizz Beatz) (Detox Comin Soon)
17.Rick Ross Feat. Wale, Wiz Khalifa – Retrosuperfuture (Prod. By J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League)
18.Chamillionaire Feat. Short Dawg – Passenger Seat (DJ Fonzy Xclusive)
19.Pusha T Feat. Kanye West – Touch It (We Vibin Now)
20.Red Cafe Feat. French Montana – Black Roses (EA SPORTS IT’S N DA GAME)
21.Ray Cash Feat. Karyzie Bone

This is the track listing just in case you are curious to see all the artists that are on it.

Meek Mills Maybach Milly

I want to keep an eye on these up and comers so I thought I would give his mixtape a listen and he didn't disappoint. There is something about his delivery that I love. The stand out tracks on this tape that I love was when he was freestyling over some of my favorite current beats.

Kill 'Em and Black and Yellow. There are two really good songs, one he features Rick Ross and Wale and on the other one it features Freeway.

The first one is named Pandemonium and the second is called Get Ready.

Based off of those two vids I guess he's the feature on the two tracks but the way it's listed on the mixtape he makes it seems like they are the features lol.

I have always liked Freeway though.

Wale No Days Off

I feel like this was the best mixtape I listened to this week.

All of the tracks were just freestyles though but I love the beats once again that he was freestyling over and I just like Wale overall as a whole. Not all there seems to have be a few new songs but yeah all of the tracks I liked were freestyles.

I'd give this five stars out of five if I rated these mixtapes which I think I might start doing.

Next week I will be going back to the classics and reviewing some must have mixtapes.

djchameleon · 04-27-2011, 08:16 AM

This week I'm going to be covering a few classics.

Chamillionaire Mixtape Messiah

This album was the one to start his series. The Mixtape Messiah series went all the way up to 7. Most of what you hear in this mixtape though is him going at Mike Jones' throat. They were beefing pretty hard when this mixtape was released.

There is this hilarious interlude where he mixes Roots into the way that Mike Jones always calls out his own name.

He also had a beef with Lil Flip which you can hear in this song.

If people would listen to his mixtape series they would see that he is much more than just a ringtone rapper like most people think he is.

Lil Wayne Dedication 2

DJ Drama really hooked Wayne up on this one and it was one of the best albums of '06 even though it was a mixtape.

Some of my favorite tracks off of this album are SportsCenter, Georgia Bush and Welcome to the Concrete Jungle.

You can hate Wayne all that you want to but this is a must listen to.

I feel like this next tape SHOULD be a classic because 9th wonder and Wale is pretty magical.

Wale/9th Wonder Back to the Feature

Well as you can tell this mixtape has features of every track.

I'm going to post a track listing so you can get a sense of how great this mixtape is then I'll post my favorite songs from it.

# 1.Wordplay f. Currensy & Tre (prod 9th Wonder)
# 2.Cyphr f. Young Chris, Freeway & Beanie Sigel (prod 9th Wonder)
# 3.Chillin (Catch vs 9th) f. Lady Gaga
# 4.Tito Santana f. Joe Budden (prod 9th Wonder)
# 5.5 Minutes f. Skyzoo (prod 9th Wonder)
# 6.Life's A Bitch f. Talib Kweli & Joell Ortiz (prod 9th Wonder)
# 7.Night Life f. Young Chris & Tre (prod Mikey Mike)
# 8.Sweatin Out Weaves f. UCB
# 9.Hot Shyt f. Peedi Peedi, Black Thought, Tu Phace & Young Chris (prod Ritz)
# 10.Wonder Why f. Big Sean, Ken Starr & Mike Posner (prod 9th Wonder)
# 11.Pot Of Gold f. Daniel Merriweather (prod Mark Ronson)
# 12.Sharp f. Torae & Kingpin Slim (prod 9th Wonder)
# 13.Warwick Avenue f. Duffy (prod Mikey Mike)
# 14.The Sun f. Memphis Bleek (prod 9th Wonder)
# 15.Rather Be With You (Vagina Is For Lovers) f. J Cole & Currensy (prod 9th Wonder)
# 16.Goodbye f. Jean Grae (prod 9th Wonder)
# 17.Say It Again f. Royce Da 5'9 (prod 9th Wonder)
# 18.Talkin Shyt f. Bub B & Dre (prod Cool & Dre)
# 19.Nothing To Worry About f. Peter, Bjorn & John
# 20.Rhyme N Reason f. Tre (prod Warren G)
# 21.Um Ricka f. K'Naan (prod Mark Ronson)
# 22.New Soul f. Yael Naim (prod BKS)

I love how this song starts, he says it's for true hip hop lovers and if you aren't just turn on your radio like he's basically saying go listen to that mainstream crap that's being played on it.

I do like some mainstream though even though I know they aren't up to par with most underground artists.

djchameleon · 05-13-2011, 04:19 AM

This week I'm going to cover The First Flight and Airborne by Diggy Simmons Pilot Talk by Curren$y and Return of Eva by Big K.R.I.T.

The First Flight

I feel like I'm on Diggy's street team because I keep telling everyone I know to listen to these mixtapes but they are THAT good imo. He has room for improvement but he definitely has the formula down for a successful mainstream album.

If you don't know the formula, I will briefly discuss it right now. All you have to do is write a couple of songs for the females, have a couple of club bangers and with the rest of the tracks you can be a little introspective.

When I first listened to this mixtape I was thinking that he needed a theme or a back story or maybe some songs about a story to improve his skills but then I figured out what his theme was.

He likes to use the plane metaphor to represent his rise to stardom on his own. He spends a majority of the mixtape saying that he could just leech off of the connections that his famous dad and uncle have but he wants to pave his own way and prove to the world that he can make it on his own without their help just on pure skill.

I promise you will get tired of him talking about how he can make it on his own but it is a bit uplifting in the sense that if you take what he's saying and apply it to your life it will make you feel better about whatever current adversaries/challenges you are facing.

This is a pretty solid mixtape overall so a majority of the tracks stand out. I will just post a few.

Airborne

Fast forward a few months later and he releases Airbourne. You can already tell he has improved someone and of course he has a bit more bass to his voice like his balls dropped a bit. I'm pretty sure on his next mixtape he will continue with the whole flight metaphors and go with Jet Setter or something on a worldwide scale.

I love the first minute on this track especially the line

As I take this journey i recognize my potential for success is just as great as my potential for failure.
Fully aware of my current strengths and future weaknesses, experienced by those who came before me.
The greats of my past have walked this way, left blueprints and they've lost themselves relapsed in recovery.
I realize I am not the only young explorer however i am in no race the journey is all of ours, but i can not lie i desire the victory of achievement to be mine, humbled however fearless i am exposed to the criticism of onlookers, but my faith and direction come from above.
I am airborne

This is the direction that I'd like to see him heading in. He has a bit of a story on this story and I would like him to get more into doing that but on an album scale. His mentors are Pharrell and Lupe Fiasco so I'm pretty sure he'll head in that direction sooner than later.

I'm not sure why but there is something about this beat that I just love and it happens to be on one of his tracks for the ladies. He does have a few more of them on this mixtape. He also has Chris Brown featured on this track.

Pilot Talk

I have seen him mentioned a few places and even seen this album available to download but I always overlooked it. I decided to give him a chance after reading the thread on him. For awhile I actually thought this was a mixtape of his but it's a studio release.

Some background info for him from his wiki page.

Quote:

In 2002, Curren$y signed to Master P's No Limit Records and was a member of the 504 Boyz. The Song "Get Back" by 504 Boyz made it to the Malibu's Most Wanted soundtrack. Curren$y appeared on 5 songs in Master P's Good Side, Bad Side album, released in 2004. Later on in 2004, Curren$y signed with Cash Money Records and Lil Wayne's Young Money Entertainment, where he remained until late 2007. While still at Young Money, Curren$y created Fly Society with skateboarder Terry Kennedy, first as a clothing company, then expanding to release music. He released the song, "Where da Cash At" as the lead single for his Young Money debut, Music To Fly To, in 2006 but due to several push backs and lack of promotion, Curren$y decided to leave the label and venture off to do business on his own. For several months throughout 2008, Curren$y released a series of mixtapes. Though he now had the co-sign of one of the top hip hop magazines, Curren$y was still overlooked by major labels. He appeared in the video for DJ Khaled's single, "We Takin' Over". In early times Curren$y wrote some of Kanye West's Music

The way he flows I thought he was from Virginia area because he has this Pusha T type flow. He's actually from New Orleans, Louisiana.

I found this gem of a track while listening to the album and that gave me the motivation to push through and listen to the rest of it. I wasn't really feeling him on the first two tracks.

This beat is so chill and smooth. I love it and just like the first comment on that video says, it makes me want to smoke and I don't even smoke.

Return of 4 Eva

He has put out mixtapes since about 05 but this is the first mixtape that is entirely self-produced.

As much as I like him as a rapper I equally like him as a producer and think he did an excellent job with this one.

K.R.I.T. is an acronym, meaning King Remembered In Time.

An A&R once told me “you can determine the worth of a song within 15 seconds of it playing”
With complete n utter lack of the fact that it takes takes all 3 minutes and 40seconds of a song
to comprehend what I’m sayin’
It aint a single if it don’t fly
It aint a hit if it don’t ride
Now he couldn’t tell me the components of a smash but the ringtones were their alltime high
And a rappers only as big as his chain, the flashier the better

Life ain't nothing but an EQ of highs and lows

I got no time to waste, i got more bills to pay, i got more mouths to feed, now, now, now,
i got no time to play, i got no need to stay, when aint no money around, round,
whats a king without a crown? what's a car without some sound?

djchameleon · 06-19-2011, 10:53 AM

This week I'm going to talk about Nicki Minaj's The Unknown Woman, Lupe Fiasco's Extra Lasers, T.I.'s Crime Pays and J Cole's The Album Before The Album

The Unknown Woman

Majority of this mixtape is tracks from Pink Friday but there are about four of five new tracks they added to it.

The standout tracks are the ones were she attempts to diss Lil Kim. She starts out on her a little bit on the remix of Til the World Ends and continues with the track called Tragedy. She delivers more subliminal type disses that she's known to do. I usually don't mind subliminals but when you are in a heated beef like this you might as well go harder than that because if she gets asked she can just say she was talking about someone else instead of Lil Kim.

This track was pretty decent as well.

Extra Lasers

Since I'm a pretty big Lupe Fiasco fan, I suggest you download this and listen to the whole thing but I will select a few tracks that I had on repeat after hearing this for the first time. I can't wait til Food and Liquor 2 comes out. I hear he's currently working on it.

The quality/sound picks up after the first 10 seconds or so.

Crime Pays

I really like this mixtape because it's almost the opposite of Nicki Minaj's in the sense that it has a few tracks from his last album but majority of the tracks is either new material or remixes over other songs.

These tracks broke my replay button

I like the sanford and son sample of their theme song on this but I had no idea until today that these two songs came from B.O.B.'s mixtape which I should probably get and review a tiny bit next week.

The Album Before The Album

This mixtape felt very official like it wasn't supposed to be a mixtape and more of album release material. I like the overall feel of the album and it's pretty smooth but tbh I didn't feel like any of the tracks really stood out but I will give you two songs from it.

djchameleon · 07-14-2011, 01:15 AM

This week I'm going to talk about Jean Grae's Cookies or Comas, Chiddy Bang's Peanut Butter and Swelly and Young Jeezy's The Real Is Back.

Cookies or Comas

This mixtape was really put together well and I enjoyed it immensely. My favorite stand out tracks are Uh Oh, Live Up, Assassins and Killing Em. Uh Oh was actually on Talib Kweli's Gutter Rainbows. If you haven't heard that album yet, I highly recommend that you do check it out. Overall I would have to give it a 5/5.

Peanut Butter and Swelly

When I stumbled across this, I just knew that I was going to be in for a treat and I wasn't disappointed. Granted the first two tracks were a bit of a weak opening to it but everything after Heatwave is just full of win. I'll just pick two of my favorites instead of posting youtube videos of the whole mixtape lol. Another 5/5 with Chiddy Bang.

I need to find out the sample that is used for heatwave. I know it and it's on the tip of my tongue but I just can't think of it.

I could see this one being overplayed on the radio, Train just tends to do that.

Yeah, I remember when he said this during his run for the freestyle record for the guinness book of records.

I really loved this track because it has some dubstep elements to it.
well I found out why it has dubstep elements, It's the track they sampled, Flux Pavilion's - I can't stop.

The Real Is Back

Listening to this mixtape, just reminded me that I don't necessarily like Young Jeezy all that much outside of a few singles here and there.
I don't think I have even listened to a regular full album of his. If you are a fan of Young Jeezy, then you may like this but other than that I'd give it a 2/5

I don't know why but I kept listening to this one track.
I don't want to call it the stand out track but maybe it's a bit more accessible than the other tracks on the mixtape.

the main reason I like this track is probably the beat and also Fabolous but that's about it.

03-18-2011, 09:48 AM	#11 (permalink)
starrynight Music Addict Join Date: Mar 2011 Posts: 937	The last video when I posted was G.O.A.T. , Apple and Going Crazy feat. D12. Says content is blocked, maybe it is only blocked in some countries then.