Welcome to Mixdown, an ongoing series where Pitchfork staffers and contributors talk about mixtapes and mixes that may not be covered in our reviews section but are worth discussing. This week we're jumping into new releases from Hudson Mohawke and Baauer, a new regional All Star tape from Three 6 Mafia's DJ Paul, and Chris Read's memorable Midnight Marauders tribute mix.
Corban Goble:A Tribe Called Quest was one of the first groups I was fluent in; I memorized every inch of what they'd recorded when I was in high school. Midnight Marauders is my favorite album of theirs and something I feel like holds up pretty well. This mix, which is kind of like one of those "What they sampled" tapes fused with MM itself, kicks ass. Do you guys have Tribe #memories?
Carrie Battan: Absolutely. Midnight Marauders is one of those albums that I can go a year or two without hearing and then listen to it and feel taken aback by how deeply it’s embedded into my psyche. We’re all too young to have gotten into it when it came out, but it still felt very important and formative when I was a teenager (and especially during my freshman year of college). I sincerely hope that this is an album that will continue being important to high schoolers and college kids forever. Listening to this mix makes you realize that no one has ever been able to recreate the sheer easefulness of the album.
Jordan Sargent: This really ups the ante for all further mixes that just string together samples from an album or an artist. This feels very organic in a way that I think honors the way these songs—and most sample based rap beats, really—were probably formed. Aside from being a lot of fun to hear, the mix just seems rightly in the spirit of an art form that has more or less fallen by the wayside. Also, the way the samples flow into the songs here makes me think of other tracks that pull from the same sample sources—there’s a real "tapestry of music" thing going on. Should I hit a bong now?
CB: Yes, hit the bong and then make like me and start looking at pictures that demonstrate how well Q-Tip has aged.
Da Mafia 6ix: 6ix Commandments
CB: What do you think Da Mafia 6ix thinks of the "Worst Behaviour" video?
JS: They probably stopped watching during the skit like everyone else. Also, DJ Paul has a successful BBQ sauce business. So he’s probably feeling alright all around. The rest of Da Mafia 6ix I can’t speak for.
CG: If you’re a Three 6 person who loves that sound but is curious to find some new spins on it that don’t totally overhaul the tried-and-true format, this mixtape is made from your very imagination. The best of all is probably the posse cut "Body Parts", which takes just about takes everyone that had a cup of coffee with the group in the early days and throws them on an absolute slammer. It’s nine minutes long, but you’ll probably experience it for longer as you’re spinning back the parts from Juicy J, Gangsta Boo, and the whole family.
CB: I might rather just go listen to SpaceGhostPurrp’s album from last year, to be honest. Or Juicy J’s album. Those newer iterations of the Three 6 trademarks are just more appealing to me at this point than a super dense, heavy new B-Team posse mixtape.
JS: Yeah, Juicy’s album surprisingly stayed pretty close to the vintage Three 6 sound, but there’s definitely a more contemporary bent to it. He also raps almost exclusively about doing drugs, so if you want to listen to a competent tape of Memphis head-cracking raps this mixtape is more your speed. The chorus of "Yean High" goes "Smoke coming up out my mouth/ Smoke coming up out my gun," which is pretty brilliant and makes me wonder how no one in the Three 6 universe ever stumbled on that construction prior to 2013.
CB: And if you want to go super lightweight with the Three 6 vibe, you can listen to Hudson Mohawke’s new EP of edits, which includes a rework of Three 6's "Who Run It". I really like these Hudson Mohawke edits—especially for reminding me how good Chris Brown’s "Kiss Kiss" is—but they toe the line of humdrum SoundCloud remixes.
CG: Yeah, "Kiss Kiss" stood out to me initially as well because of how he repackages it, kind of rebuilding the spine of it. I was thinking about whether I thought Hudson Mohawke had "made the leap," the arbitrary notion of him graduating from the SoundCloud ranks to more prestigious work on albums. He’s at least on most people's shortlist of producers and I’d argue he’s earned that.
JS: I really like TNGHT’s recordings, but I’m not sold on the idea of HudMo being much beyond whatever he produces there. That said, these edits are pretty fun—I dig the cement-mix churn he’s going for with the "Kiss Kiss" rework and "Midas Touch" shows some real pop instincts that I wish would show through more in the rest of his production. The beats he’s done for Drake, Pusha T and G.O.O.D. Music felt too much to me like HudMo making a random YouTube user-style “[x rapper]-type beat” whereas the edits here feel a lot more distinctive. And I want to hear him do R&B! "Midas Touch" is great. But maybe I’m being selfish.
CB: Delusional Selfish Jordan Sargent Got Bandz
Baauer's USB Stick
CB: Wait, so is Baauer someone who has graduated beyond the SoundCloud ranks? This little collection of songs that he released by throwing a USB stick in the audience… no one embodies the cheaply infectious trap-slap the way he does. I find myself sort of swaying back and forth in my chair when I listen to this stuff, completely against my own volition. Also when I was listening to these songs—particularly the first one, “1Snap” I just kept waiting for Big Sean to start rapping.
CG: Ha, I’ll never be able to unhear Phantom Big Sean on these now. Whoa. I think Baauer sat back after that first blast of exposure, and maybe that was smart? There’s something missing or some space to be filled on these songs, whether by a vocalist or some other element. Baauer’s carving out one of the weirdest careers. When I started from the top with "1Snap" I knew within three seconds how I felt about it.
JS: "RASPBERRY", which cuts up the vocals from Crime Mob’s "Rock Yo Hips" over this little bubble-pop beat with unending pulverizing bass, is legitimately awesome. I’ve listened to it like five times in a row now. The rest of this is awful. Which, I mean, he put these songs on USB drives and gave them away for free, so whatever. But I’m going to listen to "Guap" now. Swerve.
CB: I really hope that this new Lil B song means that the 05 Fuck Em mixtape is coming any day and we can do a pre-Thanksgiving edition with it. Also, it’s been a very long time since Lil B showed a big sack of weed (and a can of Olde English?) in a video.
JS: Maybe this is a question for a few weeks from now, but I wonder which teenager was the first in American history to completely befuddle a Thanksgiving dinner by saying "I am thankful for the Based God." This had to have happened, in what, 2010? 2011?
CB: You'd think there would be a popular Lil B Thanksgiving meme now. Let’s look for evidence and report back next week.