Noire Notes XXII
Mixtape Memories
February 14th, 2009
It’s February 14th, 2009 and I’m about to attend my first ‘Birthentine’s’ event. The weather is still cold so I put on a brown jacket, a light blue dress shirt, some navy jeans and a fresh pair of air force ones.
Before I head to the party, I check out 2DopeBoyz to find some new music to listen to. Under the “Top Posts” section, I see “Drake – So Far Gone (Mixtape)” with over 100 comments on it already. The reviews are mixed but there’s something about the artwork that speaks to me: a boy in pursuit of love and money. I decide to listen for myself, hit the zShare link and move the songs to my iPod.
As I make my way to the event, I press play, the sparse notes of the first song fitting perfectly with the brisk winter atmosphere. As he begins his verse, I already feel connected. His lyrics speaking to my immediate situation and future ambition. This only deepens with the third track and a chorus that could have been taken straight from late-night conversations with one of my closest friends at the time (“I just wanna be successful”).
“Let’s Call It Off” plays next and it sounds like a leftover from one of the Music From The O.C. mixes. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard somebody rap over this kind of music before. Sure, Kanye and André 3000 had their moments but this felt completely different. In fact, this whole mixtape felt completely different. No DJ tags, no scratch-and-repeats, no rapping over the hottest beats, this ‘mixtape’ seemed more like a free album. A musical proof-of-concept for the digital age.
I pause the tape after “November 18th”, before I actually have to ‘attend’ the party. A couple of hours pass by and I’m unable to get the music out of my head, especially after a heart-to-heart with a girl that had once been the object of my affection. During our talk, we realized that we both might have liked each other at the same time but now she’s with someone else and I’m stuck with a new series of regrets. Some people call it the ‘friend zone’ but I simply see it as the consequences of my insecurities and indecision.
It’s almost midnight and I take a cab back home. In the backseat, I’m amazed at the back-and-forth between Drake and Lil Wayne on “Ignant S***” and how well the former holds his own against the latter. “Best I Ever Had” plays as the journey comes to an end and it’s one of the few times in my life when I instantly recognize a future hit. The smoothness of the sample, the crispiness of the drums, the catchiness of the hook, it all coalesces into an earworm that sounds infinitely better than whatever is currently playing on the radio.
I still play the tape before I’m about to go to bed when “Bria’s Interlude” unlocks a core memory within me: the nights I used to stay up late watching MTV, jealous of the people who looked effortlessly cool on-screen, wanting to be a part of their world. I wonder who Bria is and find a picture of her online, instantly understanding why her name was chosen as a song title.
Listening to “The Calm” awakens a deep-rooted anxiety that I long kept buried inside. My high school graduation is a few months away and I have no confidence in the decisions that will shape the rest of my life. I let the piano of the tape’s outro soothe me and finish it with a sense of awe and wonder, praying that the hopes of a new musical generation aren’t torn asunder.
March 2009
Almost a month after So Far Gone’s release, XXL publishes their 2009 Freshmen Cover which starts making rounds across the Internet. I first question why Drake isn’t on there but decide to give these other guys a chance.
I was already familiar with Kid Cudi and Wale, however I never really took the time to listen to their music. A Kid Named Cudi reminded me of So Far Gone but was more true to the mixtape format, crooning over a variety of soul and hip-hop beats. Songs like “Down & Out” and “The Prayer” speaking to dormant feelings of loneliness and self-doubt.
Meanwhile, Wale’s The Mixtape About Nothing loses me with its overarching Seinfeld concept but keeps my curiosity with its go-go production and sample-led songs like “The Vacation From Ourselves”.
Asher Roth, B.O.B. and Mickey Factz are next up on my list. No one can doubt their wit and lyrical ability but I struggle to connect with their music emotionally. I skip Curren$y, Cory Gunz and Ace Hood for the same reason which just leaves me with Blu and Charles Hamilton.
For the next few months, Charles Hamilton’s music becomes my latest obsession. I dig through his Hamiltonization Process and find each instalment better than the last with It’s Charles Hamilton, The L Word and Intervention being my personal favorites. If there’s a spectrum between Lupe and Kanye then Charles Hamilton sits squarely in the middle with his intricate, free-associative rhyme schemes laid over soulful, lo-fi beats. Outside of Drake and Kid Cudi, he’s the artist that I relate to the most.
Saving the best for last, Blu & Exile’s Below The Heavens is the West Coast’s answer to Illmatic. Everything about Blu (his relaxed delivery, lyrical dexterity, down-to-earth persona etc.), make him a rapper that seems destined for great things. After hearing the way he flips Nas’ “The World Is Yours”, I think to myself that this is what it must have felt like to have been a teenager in the mid-90s, to be on the cusp of another musical golden age, eagerly anticipating the new sounds and voices appearing over the horizon.
June 2009
It’s the day after the NBA Finals and I’m happy that Kobe finally won his first championship without Shaq. A testament to hard work and dedication.
Following my daily routine of checking out 2DopeBoyz, I see another mixtape gaining a lot of buzz on the blog. It’s called The Warm Up, made by a rapper named J. Cole, who is rumored to be the first rap signee of Jay-Z’s new record label Roc Nation.
Similar to So Far Gone, The Warm Up has already racked up over 100 comments but the reviews are much more positive and less split.
From jump, I’m impressed by the elite level of lyricism: the exquisite flow Cole exhibits during the second verse of “Welcome” or the aggressive way he attacks Talib Kweli’s “Get By”.
The song that really gets my attention though is “Can I Live”. Specifically, how Cole seamlessly shifts the meaning of Jay-Z’s classic track from the hedonistic to the materialistic to the existential, closing with an image of a grieving mother’s phone “talking to her shoes”. It’s a feat of storytelling that I haven’t witnessed since Jay-Z’s “Meet The Parents”, no wonder Young Hov decided to take Young Simba under his wing.
Summer 2009
High school is over and I’m frequently told that this is the time to do as the Bible says and ‘let go’ of childish things.
Feeling like Benjamin Braddock from The Graduate, my days are spent killing time at a work placement while my nights are spent grasping at the last straws of my childhood: reading comic books, playing video games and scouring the Internet for new music.
Similar to the reign of contenders that arose after Superman’s death, there is a new crop of rappers vying for the West Coast’s top spot after The Game, briefly, suggested that he would be stepping away from the limelight after the release of his third album (LAX).
Collectively, these rappers are called ‘The New West’, bringing something different to the table than their predecessors. More Hieroglyphics than Westside Connection, this new generation of artists focus on the mundane realities of their day-to-day lives rather than the omnipresent gang violence that is, too often, sensationalised. Pac Div, Fashawn, TiRon, Dom Kennedy, these are some of the musicians in my regular rotation, completely unaware of a nasally rapper patiently waiting in Compton, California.
November 2010
I’m in the throes of another college semester and J. Cole drops Friday Night Lights, just as I have to prepare for a round of mock exams.
The cold climate keeps me stuck indoors, with the mixtape endlessly on repeat. Like The Warm Up, the quality that stands out to me the most about Friday Night Lights is the seemingly bottomless depth of Cole’s hunger: the passion of someone stuck on the sidelines, constantly being told that it isn’t their time to shine.
After Drake’s commercially successful but artistically safe debut album (Thank Me Later), Cole emerges as my new favorite rapper with songs like “Too Deep For The Intro”, “See World” and “Farewell”. On “Looking For Trouble”, he positions himself as the new rap messiah and, with mixtapes as good as this one, I think he might be right.
March 2011
Spring Break is around the corner and Big K.R.I.T. releases Return Of 4Eva, creating a personal connection for me between the season and his music that still exists to this day.
While I felt that his previous work (K.R.I.T. Wuz Here) showed potential, the leap he makes between that project and Return Of 4Eva is astronomical. It’s like OutKast jumping straight from Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik to Aquemini.
With the sheer variety of songs like “The Vent”, “Lions & Lambs” and “Get Right”, K.R.I.T. proves himself to be the amalgamation of the very best artists in the South. He’s got the flow of Pimp C, the sonic diversity of OutKast and the ‘old soul’ temperament of Scarface. If Return Of 4Eva was commercially released as an album, there is no doubt that everybody would be calling it a classic.
October 20th, 2012
Anticipation is at an all-time high, the moment that the hip-hop underground has been waiting for is two days away.
Over the past few years, Kendrick Lamar has been on a hero’s journey to sit on top of hip-hop’s throne.
It started with a name change then it moved to getting that new name some recognition: a significant industry co-sign, a feature on the biggest hip-hop album of the year, a breakthrough project (or two). Each step is like watching a new chapter of hip-hop mythology unfold, with the most important one (so far) being crowned the leader of his region. Jon Snow might have been King Of The North but Kendrick Lamar is the real Prince That Was Promised.
There are so many before him that have tried and failed. The New West fell off before they even started, several XXL Freshmen vanished from public consciousness, J. Cole and Big K.R.I.T both fell victim to mainstream pressures while Drake played it safe and focused on becoming hip-hop’s new pop star. Kendrick is the last real chance for The Blog Era to deliver on the promise it showed half a decade ago.
Although good kid, m.A.A.d city would, inevitably, leak on the Internet, I do my best to avoid listening to it as I know that this is an opportunity that rarely happens in a hip-hop generation. It’s listening to Nas before he dropped Illmatic. It’s following Rakim’s lead when him and Eric B are about to release Paid In Full. It’s being in the room with DJ Kool Herc just as he’s ushering in a new genre of music with two turntables and a microphone.
Kendrick rewards his fans for their faith with “The Heart Part 3” and it’s the first time that I relate to his music rather than be in admiration of it: the fear of failure, the desire to succeed, the ambition to be mentioned amongst the greats. When he says “even when my album leak, fans still buy it for proof”, it’s like he’s captured the whole ethos of The Blog Era in one sentence: the unspoken belief that online communities can create a powerful, real-life unity. It’s a quote that I would eventually use in my college dissertation as I become a firm believer in Kendrick and his mission.
A couple of days later and I head to the record store to buy my copy of good kid, m.A.A.d city. Upon hearing it, it immediately sounds different than Kendrick’s previous projects. There is a lot more polish and shine to it. The loose concepts of Overly Dedicated and Section.80 are much tighter here and more cinematic. The skits, the non-linear storytelling, the references to other artists like Ice Cube and Jeezy, make the album an audio-visual experience that I can perfectly picture in my mind’s eye.
By the time I reach the end of the title song (“m.A.A.d city”) and learn the second meaning of the album’s acronym, a euphoric feeling washes over me as I discover the beauty of a fulfilled prophecy.
Summer 2013
Another year passes by and I’m looking for a job in a market still reeling from the effects of The Great Recession.
In between submitting applications and wondering if I’m better off focusing my efforts on getting a graduate degree, it feels as if the first generation of Blog Era rappers have graduated to the next level: Drake is officially one of hip-hop’s biggest selling artists, J. Cole’s second album (Born Sinner) outsells Kanye West’s Yeezus and Kendrick takes a victory lap for the record books with his legendary “Control” verse.
Enter Joey Bada$$’ 1999 and Chance The Rapper’s Acid Rap. Although, they were released roughly a year apart from each other, they signal a youthful energy that, for the first time, makes me feel my age and gradually on the way out of the target marketing demographic.
All these developments inspire me to no longer be a passive observer and take a more active part in the culture. However, similar to Tony Soprano, it feels like I’m arriving when the best is over: blogs aren’t posting as regularly as they used to, streaming is one or two years away from dominating the mainstream and new sub-genres like ‘mumble rap’ are on the rise. Nonetheless, to quote the guy that kicked off my journey down this path, I decide that “better late than never but never late is better”.
February 14th, 2015
It’s February 14th, 2025 and I’m about to attend my sixth ‘Birthentine’s’ event, although I can’t shake the feeling that this one will be my last: the venue keeps getting bigger, the faces in the crowd are increasingly unfamiliar while the celebrant and I barely hang out together.
Just in time to soundtrack these proceedings, Drake releases his ‘mixtape’ as an album, further confirming how close we are to the end of The Blog Era. What was once an entry point to an artist’s discography, is now leverage for a streaming company. What was once a quiet surprise, is now loudly leaked by industry insiders. What was once a symbol of creativity and free expression, is now a vehicle for exclusivity and corporate interests.
One of the things they never tell you about adulthood is how impossible it is to recreate cherished experiences. You can have exactly the same conditions but it will never feel the same because you’ve changed: as a person, as a listener, as a version of yourself who wishes that things were simpler. It’s the painful paradox of nostalgia, to yearn for something you can no longer have.
What good is being a ‘legend’ if you rarely stand up for your beliefs? What good is ‘10 bands’ when people that look like you are being murdered in the streets? What good is ‘knowing yourself’ when it’s revealed that there is nothing of substance underneath? These are my initial criticisms of If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late. Even though the mixtape would grow on me several years later, it was the first time I realized that I could no longer relate to Drake. The lyrics I once found profound, suddenly became vapid. The style I once found unique, suddenly became commonplace.
The only song that immediately speaks to me is “Wednesday Night Interlude”: the beautiful, bouncy rhythm of the beat, the breathless way that PARTYNEXTDOOR speeds through the chorus, the blunt repetition of the word “lonely”.
Loneliness, an inescapable feature of the human condition. You can be in one of the hottest nightclubs and still feel lonely. You can be dancing to your favorite song and still feel lonely. You can see someone you like and still feel lonely, wading your way through a sea of people, still in pursuit of love and money. The foundation of another mixtape memory.
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holy... this is AMAZING. i loved this!
you should really listen to john michel's and anthony james' egotrip. i think you would really like it.
John, this is incredible.