The modern rap mixtape was established in 2005. Though mixtapes have existed since rap’s earliest days, DJ Drama and Young Jeezy’s Trap or Die reimagined what a mixtape could be. "That was the mixtape [Trap or Die] that inspired the whole wave of it, because it was so much bigger than a mixtape…From there a lot of artists put in their mindset that this was the way and everybody wanted to compete with that," said DJ Scream, the host of Hoodrich Radio and one of Atlanta’s most established rap DJs. In the ten years since Trap or Die, the rise of digital media has allowed artists to gain more control over their music, which shifted the climate of mixtapes and their DJs, who used to be at the center of the business.
Mixtapes within rap started as party mix cassettes, then moved into DJ blend tapes of the '90s, and by the early 2000s mixtapes were no longer tapes but bootleg CDs, where one would find the latest music from the likes of the Diplomats and G-Unit. But the next shift was sparked by the 2007 raid of DJ Drama and his Aphilliate Music Group for thousands of mixtapes, as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) cracked down on the selling of bootleg versions of major label artists’ music. The lane for another mixtape path opened.
Datpiff.com, which began a decade ago and now stands as one of the biggest mixtapes websites, owes a bit of thanks to that particular legal dispute. "Really what [the DJ Drama lawsuit] did was open up the floodgates for us, because we’re doing things legitimately by the books…We are not profiting off the mixtapes directly, we’re profiting off the ad space, premium subscriptions," said Kyle Reilly, who is the Head of Music at Datpiff. Though the site’s significant popularity rose a couple years later through releases fromWiz Khalifa, Meek Mill, and Mac Miller—all who were from Pennsylvania, where the site started—that moment in 2007 was the sign that maybe online instead of physical media could be the future.
The post-digital world pushed certain DJs to embrace this new landscape. Established names like DJ Drama, DJ Scream, and DJ Skee remained DJing, but that is only a single part of the many ventures. Drama and Scream host satellite and terrestrial radio shows, and Skee, the Los Angeles based media head, left that behind to focus on his own multimedia platform Skee.TV. Scream, in addition to his radio show, also heads up a production group that includes hit makers DJ Spinz ("Commas") and Dun Deal ("Stoner"). These DJs' early success afforded them the ability to find reach beyond turntables.
Even with the number of job titles DJs juggled, mixtapes for rappers continued to build upon the elaborate Trap or Die model. DJ Skee mentioned that a DJ's work used to include "serving as a creative force and really putting the project together, everything from the A&R to the marketing perspective, almost as mini-label if the DJ is putting in the work and not just putting their name on it." That "mini-label" set-up could breed and inspire great music (see: Drama’s signature Dedication series with Lil Wayne), but such weight on the projects made them increasingly susceptible to the same weight that hampers major label releases. As Kyle Reilly of Datpiff joked, when speaking to him over the phone, often it’s artists who delay or cancel projects, which is entirely out of the hands of his site and the project’s DJs.
That recent shift in power is only helped with the prominence of YouTube and SoundCloud, where an artist like Chief Keef can receive millions of listens on a song before releasing a DJ-approved mixtape, because it’s through YouTube and even Instagram that his music really lives. Drake, one of the world’s biggest rappers, was going to release his latest project, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, as a free mixtape until Cash Money stepped in and pushed the project to iTunes instead of releasing the project for free to Datpiff. Even the most anticipated mixtape of 2015, Barter 6, wound up on iTunes and Spotify as an official Young Thug release through 300 Entertainment/Atlantic rather than a Livemixtapes download.
The mixtape’s form never remained static during these past decades. But right now it appears that DJs are looking on the outside of what was their primary way of increasing their reputation not even a decade ago. The shift away from physical tapes pushed already successful DJs into fully digital media brands and pushed others back to the physical spaces of clubs and radio for income. A simple glimpse at Datpiff or Livemixtapes shows little decline in the DJ and rapper partnership—rappers will always need a person on stage for shows, but what once was the path towards rap success thanks to technology is just one of many for artists and DJs alike.