Mixtapes: Like Albums, But Not Really 

Mixtapes are so interesting because the quality is completely dependent on how much the artist cares about the mixtape. Some artist's mixtapes could almost be standalone albums, where as for some it's just a way to dump out a bunch of tracks

This is like the animation version of Nathan Zed but he actually has a decent upload schedule

The Weeknd's Trilogy Mixtapes are by far my favorite. Lil Wayne is a mixtape God.

LiveLoveAsap is the perfect example of a mixtape to me. It is very unpolished and shows exactly who Rocky is as a person which is what makes it great.

My favorites come from Logic, Mac Miller, The Weeknd, and Joey Bada$$. They were at its peak in the early 2010s, so glad to grow up with these artists.

Yo smallbites these videos are so good and the animation just adds so much more fun into the video especially when the topic is always music, I love it, keep up the good work

my top 3 mixtapes are exmilitary by death grips, gluee by bladee, and faces by mac miller. i love how mixtapes enable the artist to do whatever they want with no label drama, it’s like the most raw and legitimate view of an artist.

Exmilitary is hands down my #1 mixtape. It's almost like an entirely different creature compared to later Death Grips stuff.

one thing that i've always found interesting about mixtapes is how artists sound can change when going from a non-commercial mixtape to an album release, due to suddenly needing sample clearance. it doesn't always happen, in fact it usually doesn't, but it happened to chance, it could happen to you too! watch out!

Uzi vs The World is not only my fav mixtape but my ALL TIME fav project on any genre Took me through some grey times and still makes me happy every time I come back to it

Mac miller mixtapes are honestly the best mixtapes I’ve ever heard, and personally I think they are one there best.

I never really realize when something is a mixtape. Other than exmilitary, If I listen to a mixtape I don’t realize until somebody tells me

Crazy this got recommended just two days after i dropped my first (heavily uncleared) mixtape. It feels like the universe just gave me a kiss

Overly Dedicated is a mixtape, but nobody is going to change my mind that it is a full fledge album

The old Denzel Curry Raider Klan mixtapes are something else. They're really good and just have such a charm to them.

Pop 2 by Charli XCX is my favourite mixtape. Hyperpop Perfection.

Love that you clarified how artists can approach mixtapes since they can or are experimental, especially because people can be the most judgemental about them and forget how personal mixtapes can be towards the artist. Many artists I listen to today I discovered through tapes and it makes it that much more special to the listener I think. Ngl, I got a great intro to your channel with this vid! Plz continue, as a fellow music nerd these videos are awesome

My favorite mixtapes of all times are OBVIOUSLY The Weeknd’s trilogy like fam, all three of them are so so good and still hold up today and will forever , echoes of silence is my personal favorite

Personally the peak of Mixtapes is Mac Miller’s Faces. I adore everything about it. Wayne’s Dedication 2 is a very close second tho.

As someone in the mixtape phase of their career, this video is very interesting and informative

i know this video and channel are more rap/hiphop focused, but pop 2 by charli xcx is one of the greatest mixtapes ive ever listened to. its extremely futuristic and sounds like a pop album from 2050

I always saw mixtapes from certain artists as the "Bonus Projects". Royce da 5'9" has put out various mixtapes in between albums and they feel like awesome extra releases between full albums.

My personal top 5 mixtapes of all time in no particular order: Acid Rap - Chance The Rapper Friday Night Lights - J. Cole Enemy of the State - Lupe Fiasco There is No Competition 2 - Fabolous More About Nothing - Wale Side note: This was way harder than I thought it would be. Reflecting on my 5 faves, I had to go with the ones that was the background music to my life for certain stretches of time. These were the 5 that came to mind.

Can't believe you didn't mention The Life of Pierre 4, it is the number one rated mixtape in the world after all

Best Bites (The Mixtape) 0:00 funny 0:56 cursed Xbox og 1:08 British bitez 1:43 on the sea of mixtapes 3:13 Taylors mixtape 3:34 let's get Pacific! 5:37 Mac miller spins the artist randomizer 6:54 chance the rapper and lil Uzi in school 7:16 package for bites 7:34 HOT HOT HOT 9:01 the joke is it didnt 9:23 come on,came an! 10:32 drake is in the air!

wheres the new vids man? been checking for uploads everyday because i'm addicted to your editting style and energy, you make it fun to watch videos about music!!!!!

I remember dropping mixtapes on Datpiff when i was just starting out thinking i was gonna drop the next 1999 lol. Glad to have gotten better since then but those were interesting times.

Logic's mixtapes are amazing. The whole Young Sinatra trilogy (im not including 4 because that's an album) is just fire and im glad the samples are getting cleared so they can be put on streaming

Logic: Logic‘s MixTape days were different asf. Joey: Joey‘s 1999 is one of the best ever. Frank/Abel (Weeknd): They made Beautiful art. Lil Wayne: The King Of MixTapes

I think the best thing about your videos is you giving the ultimate knowledge of what you know to those people who have been inspired and want to be artists. These types of videos help out a lotta people, and are entertaining too, even though i know most of the info related to this topic

All of Logic's Young Sinatra Mixtapes are CLASSICS

You don't know What's in store But you know What you re here for Close your eyes Lay yourself besides me Ooo Hold tighttt We don't need no protection Come along We don't need attention

i just found this channel and im already hooked your animation style and editing is so cool man great video, my fav mixtape atm would be Nostalgia Ultra

Really well explained video! Faces still gotta be my favorite mixtape, keep up the great work my guy!

Dawg you are killing it with these new vids. This pivot has been perfect

you probably here this a lot but your editing style is immaculate. i cant wait to get my new laptop in the mail so i can start making videos again, this shit inspires me.

love the content, makes it like 20 times better with the animations and all that, funny and well made

I got to experience the platinum age of mixtapes during my middle school and high school years 2012-2019 it started on datpiff, sharebeast, spinrilla, and bandcamp then around 2013-14 SoundCloud absolutely exploded and made mixtapes extremely available and gave artists easy exposure in the public and it wasn’t just hip hop, Indie, pop and R&B got to experience this rise/resurgence aswell. Just look at every major artist right now and you can trace their initial rise to soundcloud and bandcamp projects

The best mixtape I have ever made is Omen III, it's about my relationship with music and how it helps me in the darkness but I need the darkness to stay to inspire the music

I've recently found ur channel and i've binged all your videos lol Keep it up i love ur stuff!

I'll never forget when my school promoted this one kid's mixtape. He was literally just selling copies of If You're Reading This It's Too Late since the school banned selling those.

Appreciate the Flume mention. Definitely one of my favorite edm projects of all time

Mixtapes aren't my forte by any means but my favorite that I've listened to is the Gimix mixtape by the Avalanches. Falling squarely in the "uncleared" category, they played it at shows leading up to the release of Since I Left You, with it now almost serving as an alternate version of it with different mixes of the songs that would end up on the final album, albeit in a different order and missing a few (notably Frontier Psychiatrist) which is strange given that the final album is completely continuous. And as if the original mastering of the final album weren't in enough of legal limbo, Gimix outright samples things like Sgt. Pepper, Billie Jean, and a recording of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse theme, things that almost certainly wouldn't have been cleared. It's a little tricky to find nowadays but if you can definitely give it a listen!

0:12 yessir you’re the best. I recommended Logic you did! Epic video as always and is very nice you listen to the comments

telefone by noname, so beautiful and powerful i adore it. also birds and the BEE9 by Sampa the Great gets a shout, that one gives me chills every time

10 Day is a really good first mixtape, it's pretty rough but it still manages to get a message across. the story behind it is also really interesting.

Favorite mixtape of all time is LUV VS THE WORLD BY LIL UZI VERT cus it helped my get through the toughest parts of my life my best friend showed it to me in 2016 that was my worst year mentally I was considering suicide but he put me onto the tape and it made me look at the bright side of life and have fun

Glad to see you shift away from the short form content. good vid

Didn’t even know flumes mixtape was a mixtape, it’s my favourite piece of work from him

I made a mixtape for my college thesis and it’s definitely a great way to find out what you sound like as an artist and where you could go next

rlly loving these uploads

Love your new videos man

love how you used humming the baseline in this video

yesss i love tapes, very raw, very demo-esque but better. and yeah ive made 2 tapes too, known as The Cosmic Hitchhiker & The Franky Tape, very inspired by Bowie

Surprised you didn’t mention The Neighbourhood. They were the first rock band to release a mixtape on Datpiff called #000000 & #ffffff hosted by dj drama and don canon it is widely well-known as being the first mixtape to be ever released by a rock band, at least on Datpiff

Live from the dentist office and Floss from Injury reserve will probably always be my favorite mixtapes

Exmillitary and Hi This Is Flume will always hold a special place in my heart

very nice video , as always , i love a lot of mixtape but the flume mixtape is a real travel every time you listen it

u need to post more bro youre one of the only people i look forward to seeing post

Super interesting video, actually really enjoyed it!

Live.Love.A$AP, New Jet City, Amerikkkan Korruption (long live STEEZ) and How Fly are examples of phenomenal mixtapes. They showed what the artist is capable of and showed that they are the best at being themselves

Cool video. I've listened to quite a few mixtapes back in the day. Earl Sweatshirt's debut mixtape, Tyler the Creator's Bastard, and Cyhi da Prynce's Black Hystori Project are great mixtapes.

I love the animation in this video

I love your videos, especially those animations! :) (btw at 7:50 the album title is misspelled. It's "Summer's Gone" instead of "Summer's Over")

3:13 omg the timing of this is perfect 😭

Exmilitary is easily my favorite mixtape. It was necessary for music.

The kingdom hearts music in this video is something i can appreciate

you should go over how barter 6 was thugs debut album until it wasn't and then that other album that didn't come out and then so much fun did well so they were like yeah, this is the debut

So i decided to look at the albums on the shelf you had on 7:19 and then decide if you have good taste. I saw some classics like Plastic beach, Lonerism, Saturation 2, MBDTF, DAMN, College Dropout. But then i saw Troupeau Bleu by Cortex which is not only my favorite jazz album of all time but it is probably up there to be one of my favorite albums of all time. You have real good taste.

your channel is so good man

Great stuff man! Can you make a video about the debut album of any artist? To see the good and the bad ones

2 of my favorite mixtape discographies are Lil B with just his 855 song based freestyle mixtape alone and Charles Hamilton who has released over 700 mixtapes and still releases them to this day via his blog

1999 is definitely a classic mixtape and one of my favorites, opposite end of the spectrum UltraClub4k by doves and wicca phase is one of my favorite projects ever and one of the most genre bending mixtapes of all time

I was thinking about John Frusciante's 2001 internet album "From The Sounds Inside" A digital-only album released exclusively through the internet in August 2001, the album was free to download from his official website and includes material recorded during the To Record Only Water for Ten Days era of his solo career, most of which remained unmixed or unfinished. No track titles were given originally, which has given rise to songs appearing under different names in different sources. This had me wondering if the album was a precurser to the way Hip Hop artists would distribute their mixtapes via the internet in the 2000s through sites like Datpiff.

When we needed him the most 🤧

your videos are well edited and well research

smallbites is the only RU-vidr that can draw a character used in this way that doesn't look corny and gross, usually the character is a white kid with brown hair and hoodie or like a rlly over expressive stick figure that ends up just looking gross, ur character is just a very fun cauliflower man that is cool (:

Favorite RU-vidr rn

ur actually one of the best music yters in the game rn

I love when artists just use mixtapes to deliver a bunch of song they did in the timespan of like a week or couple of days like Denzel Curry with Kenny beats on Unlocked and 13lood in, 13lood out with zilakami.

working on my first mixtape, this helped a lot, thx

Echoes of Silence is my favorite mixtape of all time

Your videos are so cool Having made some beat tapes myself this is really interesting

black kray's Crack Cloud$ Over Arts Kitchen is my favorite mixtape such a legendary mixtape

one of my all time favourite mixtapes is Duality by Captain Murphy. Flying Lotus adopted this adult swim moniker to craft a concept mixtape around the Heaven's Gate cult introductory video. very fun and off-the-rails abstract hip hop release. i'd highly recommend it if you like stuff like DANGERDOOM or early Odd Future because it's similarly cartoonish and explicit. also another favourite mixtape of mine that came out this year has got to be Caprisongs by FKA twigs. it's kinda in line moreso with Drake's 2015 mixtapes in that it was straight to streaming and is a mixtape in ethos and aesthetic. but i absolutely love the production, vocals, and lyrics across Caprisongs, really continues to help me through 2022.

my favourite mixtape is Consequence's "A Tribe Called Quence". SO many crazy remixes and verses.

You forgot to mention drake Care Package mixtape. (Old songs from over the years on SoundCloud and old drafts) To be honest.. I actually love all of drake mixtapes over his actually studio bodies of work. (Take is my favourite studio project and I consider Honestly,Nevermind a mixtape as well if you really take it in its not like his normal work) This channel by the way is truly amazing.

you should do a video specifically about the trap/drill mixtape scene like bricksquad, black migo gang, otf, etc

Great video as always

I literally have a mixtape coming out(3/3) called “not a mixtape” 😂😂 this video cam at the perfect time

I've been listening to mixtapes growing up since I was a kid, and I'll always have great memories of it. DatPiff is a legendary website, and you can't tell me otherwise. As for my favorite mixtape of all time, it's Da Drought 3 by Lil Wayne.

kendrick lamars overly dedicated is one of my favorite mixtapes ever so underrated and glossed over

Thursday is the best mixtape in my heart

Nice inclusion of Jet Grind Radio music for the background.

Maas ting my brudda

the drizzy drake bit made me sub instantly lmao

Love your vids

I am working on Animating an old underground 90s mixture right now. Having trouble finding a cassette player for real. Pretty sure they are practically non available. Thanks for sharing.

I’m starting to feel like the distinction between an album and a mixtape is mostly arbitrary by now

hi this is flume mixtapes goes hard ngl also i didnt know kero kero bonito - intro bonito is a mixtape