[female reporter] A couple of local DJs
are accused of bootlegging thousands of CDs.
Fulton County SWAT Team and officers from Clayton County
raided Gangsta Grillz recording studio last night.
Among the items seized, 50,000 counterfeit CDs,
recording equipment, computers, cars, cash, and bank statements.
[hip-hop music plays]
[ambulance siren burst]
[traffic sounds]
[male narrator] Rewind hip-hop's history all the way back,
to a time before rappers,
and you'll find DJs.
As hip-hop entered the new millennium, DJs were still the culture's taste makers:
the bridge between what was happening now,
and what would happen next.
And one way in which DJs played hip-hop's unofficial A&R role,
was through mixtapes.
[DJ Mars] The mixtapes were how a lot of DJs got their name.
It was your audio calling-card.
[Riggs Morales] Kid Capri, Ron G,
Chill Will, Clue.
They were our radio before radio got into hip-hop.
That's what the mixtape DJ was.
They were highlighting either singles that were due out,
or awesome album cuts that the masses didn't really know about.
There was people getting known off of being on my mixtapes
that wasn't getting any shows or anything, they wasn't eating.
So, that was helping a lot of people.
Now, keep in mind that this was an underground thing.
It wasn't something that was really lawful.
You're dealing with other people's music.
[narrator] Mixtapes were collections of the hottest music on the streets.
They also happened to break every copyright law on the books.
But, as long as DJs were also breaking new artists,
a delicate peace between record labels and DJs existed.
It was a system that benefited everyone,
and it kept hip-hop firmly connected to its roots.
And there was no better place in the world to cop the newest mixtapes
than the chaotic, open-air market in downtown Manhattan:
Canal Street.
[hip-hop music playing]
[car horn blows]
[DJ Whoo Kid] Canal Street was the biggest hub in New York.
We had Irish, African, Chinese.
Every race bootlegging, selling shit.
Every idiot from all over America, or overseas, would go to Canal Street.
These tapes were so legendary that they came to buy tapes.
[DJ Mars] The Canal Street market was the internet of mixtapes.
The cats on Canal Street were the very first ones
to set the bar for what happened in New York City on the mixtape scene
and the entire rap industry, period.
[DJ Drama] The mixtape culture was just booming in so many ways,
and it was pandemonium.
Like, the streets were on fire.
Mixtapes became so much more at that time.
I always look at mixtapes like there's a post-50 Cent era
and there's a pre-50 Cent era.
Fif' revolutionized that part of the game.
[narrator] For decades, the DJ was the marquee name on the mixtape.
A DJ's reputation was what made a mixtape hot.
It was a crucial position in the culture
because a DJ's blessing was a lifeline to up-and-coming rappers,
and the first step towards a coveted record deal.
Or, at least, that's how it used to work,
back before one MC with a chip on his shoulder
changed how mixtapes and stars were made in hip-hop forever.
[50 Cent] I met Jam Master Jay a while... Like, three years ago.
And, I was signed to JMJ Records for, like, a year.
I recorded 18 songs with him.
He kind of, like, taught me how to write in song format.
- [interviewer] Okay. - [50 Cent] So, he helped me a lot, like.
[interviewer] How did you meet 50 Cent?
[Sha Money XL] I was in Jam Master Jay's studio
in Rosedale, Queens.
Jay was playing me music.
He was playing me Onyx, he was playing me Sweet Tee, Lost Boyz.
All the stuff he was doing. A lot of Queens stuff.
Then, all of a sudden, he started playing something different.
He was playing a record called "The Hit,"
and I heard that voice.
Something different from everything else he was playing.
Nobody was screaming, no one was...
You know, just, it was somebody rapping
and talking some real good shit.
♪ The only thing hotter than my flow is the block ♪
♪ That's why I left this snow biz and got in to show biz ♪
♪ Let's get this clear ♪
[Sha Money XL] I was like, "Yo, who is that?"
And when he saw my face,
that's what made him get excited, like,
"Yo, let me go get this kid."
I went back to my hood and kind of told them, like,
"Yo, I just met this kid, he was dope."
And a lot of people already knew who he was.
"Yo, that kid got caught in school with a gun."
You know what I mean? He had a story.
I heard 50 Cent... He started putting out demos,
started putting out freestyles.
He was a different type of heartbeat.
Raw, pure,
and I was a huge fan.
But, then, he came up with "How To Rob."
"How To Rob" is this concept record
where he went around robbing rappers.
Most of these rappers were still alive,
which made it all the more audacious.
I want to take hip-hop to being, like, back.
Like, back to when we were a little more competitive.
Now it's to the point where the artist is even scared to say your name.
So, I figured it would be groundbreaking for me to come out the gate
and, just, say whatever.
"How To Rob" was what made me love Fif',
because he don't give a fuck what he says or who he's saying it to,
and if you're offended, so what?
I was offended because he said he'd rob Big Pun.
I wasn't trying to hear all that.
♪ I’ll rob Pun without a gun Snatch his piece then run ♪
♪ This nigga weigh 400 pounds How he gonna catch me, son? ♪
[Fat Joe] But, I knew it was, like, a parody, it was a joke.
But, still, we wanted to beat 50 Cent up.
Big Pun addressed it,
♪ To the 50 Cent rapper Real funny, get your nut off ♪
♪ Real life, you don't know me I'll blow your motherfuckin' head off ♪
Rappers were like,
"Is he gonna come try to rob me?
Who is this guy?
He's out of his mind."
Like, to the point where dudes thought they were gonna get robbed.
It created a whole bunch of energy that a lot of people didn't like,
but, it was just a marketing move.
Like, "How can I make the entire industry like me, love me,
but, most importantly, talk about me."
[Riggs] 50 really showed from there, like, he was not gonna stop.
He wanted everyone's attention, he got it.
That's one of his biggest contributions to the game,
which was, like, not really giving a fuck.
You don't do that, and not be prepared for the repercussions that come from that.
Whether it's from the business standpoint,
or from a street standpoint.
[narrator] "How To Rob" wasn't the only record bringing 50 fame and infamy.
The Queens MC dropped other controversial tracks,
name-checking real-life New York City drug kingpins on "Ghetto Qu'ran,"
and publicizing his never-ending beef with Ja Rule on "Your Life's On The Line."
50 quickly became a polarizing figure in the NYC rap scene,
and his on-wax recklessness and mayhem
was making him serious enemies in the music industry,
and in the streets.
I got shot in the thumb.
My legs a bunch of times.
I got shot in the face.
I was scared the whole time.
Nobody gonna tell you they ain't scared.
It's a hit, man. You supposed to die.
[Sha Money XL] When he came home from the hospital,
he called me and was like,
"Yo, they put Humpty Dumpty back together again."
I said, "50?"
He was like, "Yeah."
I said "Yo, get the fuck out of here!
Yo, this nigga's back!"
So, here you got me, Sha Money, the new producer on the scene,
intern at Def Jam,
running around, speaking his name to everybody.
Like, I'm speaking... Jesus, like, seriously, like,
I'm telling everybody, "He's coming back."
But, guess what?
No one wanted to fuck with him.
He was already dubbed, just, "fucking troublesome."
So, a lot of people actually were like,
"Hmm, I don't know."
[Riggs] No one would sign him.
Guy got shot nine times.
Like, most label folks, they didn't want that problem.
They didn't want that kind of energy.
[Sha Money XL] He called me and was like, 'Yo, this is fucked up."
I was like, "Yo, Fif',
I just bought a new crib,
I got a studio in my basement.
Come to my house, you can record.
Nobody knows where I live.
Come fuck with me, bro.
You can rock, bro."
And he listened to me.
He came with the soldiers,
Tony Yayo, Lloyd Banks: G-Unit.
So, we're in my basement.
My baby mother is not allowed to come down.
It's a lot of weed smoke,
ninety-nine-cent burger wrappers on the table,
guns on the table,
50 doing push-ups in between verses.
A lot of niggas, man.
That shit was crazy.
The next thing is,
"Alright, 50 got the hardest part locked.
We need a DJ."
[funky breakbeats]
[Sha Money XL] Whoo Kid's my cousin, so I brought him to the table.
[DJ Whoo Kid] I was scared to go see him
because he'd just finished, like, dealing with all the shooting.
Because I'd heard he'd got shot and all his teeth came out or something.
I don't know. Maybe he did, I don't know.
But I was like, "Damn, I'm gonna meet him?"
Everybody had bulletproof vests, there's guns all over the basement.
He said, "Yo, if somebody comes at me, with, like, guns and shit like that,
what the fuck you gonna do?"
I'm like, "I'm getting the fuck out of here, yo!
What the fuck do I look like, a hero? Get the fuck outta here!"
He was like, "You know what, I don't have to ask you the second question,
you're hired."
They knew I was a mixtape DJ.
So, we just was like, "Oh, why don't we just make, like, mixtapes?"
The traditional mixtape was either a DJ blending,
or a DJ having new exclusives that he would put on a mixtape.
I was like, "Yo, 50, we did all these freestyles,
let's put it on the streets and let the hood hear it."
That's what the first mixtape was.
And it was called 50 Cent Is The Future.
I was the one that distributed every mixtape.
I literally slipped the inserts into CDs
and got it to Queens, Bronx, Canal Street.
Then the African bootleg at night.
Spotify like you never seen it.
It's out of here, man.
That shit was everywhere, man.
[hip-hop music playing]
[Sha Money XL] When I came back the next time,
"You, Sha Money?
50 Cent? Oh!
Yo, let me get that shit, bro."
They wanted that like it was fucking Blue Magic, for real.
This was the Blue Magic of mixtapes.
It was crack, man.
It was fucking crack.
What 50 did was, I would call a ghetto album.
"I'm gonna take your record and make it hotter than you.
I'm gonna take your song and make it hotter than you,
and I'm gonna resell it in the street, and that shit will make me a superstar."
And what did it do?
[Sha Money XL] So, the bootleg was out there.
This shit was traveling.
So, it got to Detroit.
Em was hearing it as it was coming out,
and he was playing it non-stop,
and he was loving it!
To the point where he called me and 50 at my house,
and told us he wanted us to get on a plane tomorrow
to come fly to meet with him and Dre.
And that was the meeting that changed 50's life.
I'm on the dream team right now.
I got the two biggest bodyguards
I could possibly have at Interscope Records.
Eminem and Dr. Dre. You heard me?
[Fat Joe] The moment he got with Eminem and Dr. Dre,
people realized, "Oh, this shit is real."
And then they gave him that,
♪ Go shawty, it's your birthday ♪
That's when niggas knew,
"Oh, my god.
This guy is here to stay."
♪ I'm feeling focused man ♪
♪ My money on my mind I got a mill out the deal ♪
♪ And I'm still on the grind ♪
[DJ Drama] You know, even after Get Rich Or Die Tryin' came out,
I think he dropped a mixtape, like, two weeks after.
Here's a guy that's a million records out the gate,
and he drops a mixtape with more material.
It comes from a background from the streets.
Like, "I'm really gonna flood the block."
Like, "I'm not letting nobody in."
[50 Cent] I'd like to thank Eminem and Dr. Dre.
This is a special night, thank you.
[DJ Whoo Kid] He became bigger than life.
In that era, if you listened to 50 Cent,
he had, like, "In Da Club," "PIMP."
He had, like, so many songs on the radio but then he had mixtape cuts on the radio,
which had never been done before.
[crowd cheers]
[Kid Capri] "You ain't gon' get me a record deal?
You ain't spending money on me?
You don't think I'm an artist you could push?
Who are you to decide my fate for me?"
He's waking up the industry.
[narrator] 50 Cent broke hip-hop's decades-old model for mixtapes,
turning mixtapes into street albums,
and empowering rappers to cut their own path to stardom.
The impact of this massive shift was immediate across the country,
and no city would use it to greater effect than Atlanta,
where mixtapes would facilitate the birth of a whole new sub-genre of hip-hop:
trap music.
And one of the architects of the trap sound is this man:
T.I., who I met sitting in his very own trap museum.
Thanks for the consideration.
I see you shuffling.
Yeah, man, I was just, you know... Nervous energy.
I was just killing time.
Why don't we start with where you're from in Atlanta.
What was your neighborhood like, growing up?
So, I grew up with my grandma and my granddad, you know.
And then I went to live with my mom.
The communities that my mom stayed in were heavily, heavily Section 8.
You know, apartments and trap houses.
Now, all the while, while I was living with my mom,
is probably where I learned all the stuff that you shouldn't be talking about.
I was about 15 at the time.
That's when I learned to sell crack.
I hooked up with my guys, who we know now as the P$C,
and we basically started trapping.
Everyday, that was, like, our clubhouse.
The trap was our clubhouse.
We would meet there every single day and sell dope.
Every single day.
Finding a way to take this product,
and turn it into currency
so I can have something to eat tonight
and so my mama's lights won't be cut off.
A lot of people were going through that.
And I mean...
I just felt like they needed a voice.
I started writing my own raps
and I'd perform at the trap,
but I needed a studio.
My homeboy Dennis, he told me,
"There's a man up there, he got a studio in that house."
We hit the path.
I headed straight to the crib, knocked on that door.
- [door knocking] - [door opening]
Big, burly guy that had a beard, deep voice,
"What's up?"
I was a little, bitty kid, like,
"You got a studio in there?"
[T.I. laughing]
He said, "Yeah I got a studio, why you ask?"
"Man, I wanna record."
So, he let me in.
So, we went in and recorded a demo,
and in the midst of us doing all this,
he introduced me to DJ Toomp.
Little, skinny red dude, walking up my driveway,
arms out like he big as hell.
And then he started playing some of the music.
I was blown away, man.
I was like, "Yo, this kid is amazing."
He has an East Coast flow with a Southern drawl,
and that's all I needed,
because I was looking for rappers at that time, for real.
During that time, it was more of a beat-driven era.
That's what really gave us our sound, man.
The Roland TR-808.
Out of the drum machine you had...
Boom! Boom!
You can adjust the decay, where it's just a solid kick.
So, what we did was sample all the sounds out of that drum machine
and we used to put it on a floppy, so we got our 808 floppy.
And we got on the SP1200.
They have this thing called "time correct."
If you hit "time correct" and hold a kick, snare, or hi-hat,
you can adjust it to when you got...
[imitates accelerating metronome]
So, now, here we started having our own sound,
as far as that drum roll,
with the snares and the hi-hats real repetitive,
and it was just our sound, man.
What gave it the thing when we were doing it,
was the subject matter,
and of course the sound, too.
But the subject matter was what really made people start saying,
"Oh, that's a trap song."
To hear, you know, someone like Tip rap over that.
He was the first person to put trap music together.
There was a trap.
- Yeah. - There was music.
Trap music.
["Dope Boyz" playing]
♪ Do it fifty mo' times ♪
♪ The quarter go for five And the half go for nine ♪
♪ Still in the trap with them Break down dimes ♪
♪ Hit me on the hipper anytime I don't mind ♪
I mean, the first trap song was "Dope Boyz and Trap Niggas."
That was really just an ode to my old lifestyle,
to what I was doing,
and to what the people around me were doing.
How we were living.
That's where you get trap music from.
That's where you get the language of the trap.
That's where you get the ideology of the trap.
We get T.I. popularizing it.
♪ Standing around in my trapp I think you fucking up shawty ♪
♪ Same nigga who taut AK Getting paid in the trapp ♪
♪ Made a song for the niggas And the J's in the trapp ♪
♪ The dope boyz in the trapp nigga ♪
♪ The thug nigga, drug dealer Where you at nigga ♪
[DJ Toomp] You know, the album came out, I'm Serious.
We had signed to a label, LaFace.
I love L.A. Reid, but he really didn't understand.
He was like, "What y'all mean, 'the trap?'"
His whole thing was like, "Man, is it built for radio?
Y'all talking about selling dope
and y'all want me to push this song to radio?"
I really don't get it."
You know what I mean? L.A. really didn't get it.
So, that was just a project sitting on the desk
that nobody really knew what to do with.
As a rapper, he got a bunch of attention really fast,
but it wasn't supported in the way that I thought it should be,
or he thought it was, right?
Because, he sold about 200,000 of those,
so it felt unsuccessful.
So, we all kind of went in our little hole, like,
"We don't know."
Well, the world would consider our album a flop.
But, to us, we were like,
"Shit, man, down here in the south. I hear y'all hollering this flop shit,
but this "Dope Boyz In The Trap," everybody's crazy about it."
[T.I.] I was discouraged but I wasn't defeated.
Everybody who heard my shit loved my shit.
So, I said "I just gotta get it in the hands of the people."
In New York, you have 50 Cent starting his dominance of mixtapes.
"Let's do what 50 Cent's doing right now.
This dude is winning, let's do the same thing."
"Man, these dudes living in mansions off mixtapes, man."
I'm like, "What?"
And he's like, "Yo, man, we need to bring that shit to the south.
We need to start doing mixtapes."
[DJ Toomp] Most of the beats were coming from me,
for all the P$C stuff.
My house was the office, basically.
I mean, I might wake up by eight or nine and work on a beat
and everybody might come to the house around one.
And while we were making a track,
I used to cut everybody's hair.
But, while I was cutting the hair, I'd have some type of beats playing.
["24s" playing]
I had there the "24s" beat.
[imitates bass line]
I was cutting Tip's hair, man. He heard the beat.
He was like, "Dude, don't play that for nobody else, I got something, man.
By the time you finish that line up, I'll have a hook.
Got a hook for that shit."
And he had...
[murmuring lyrics of "24s"]
He was mumbling.
I was like, "Bro, let's get it."
♪ Money, hoes, cars, and clothes That's how all my niggas roll ♪
♪ Blowin' dro on 24s That's how all my niggas roll ♪
♪ In a drop top Chevy with the roof wide open ♪
♪ My partner's looking at me To see if my eyes open ♪
♪ Cause I've been drinkin' And I've been smokin' ♪
♪ And flying down 285 But I'm focused... ♪
We decided to put that song on one of the mixtapes.
And that's when shit went crazy.
♪...Still bumpin number eight on NWA Straight Out of Compton ♪
[T.I.] So, we put out In Da Streets Volume 3,
and passed them motherfuckers out in the hood, you know what I'm saying?
Outside the club.
The song, "24s," is going crazy.
Enough for L.A. Reid to call us and, you know, say,
"Hey man, how about, you know, we start working on the second album."
I said, "Tell you what, we work on the second album,
I'm gonna need a million dollars,
or you let us go."
He said, "I tell you what,
I'll get you what you want."
I say, "Shit!"
"I'm letting you go."
[interviewer laughs]
"What?
Yeah, great."
[T.I.] But, the million dollars that L.A. didn't give me,
I negotiated two million
and a joint venture at Atlantic.
So, that worked out.
Yeah, L.A. did me a favor.
[T.I. laughs]
I started recording the first album that we did on Atlantic Records.
I ain't giving them nothing but trap shit.
I'm gonna call it Trap Muzik.
David Banner came and we did "Rubber Band Man."
That's why he came.
I have to be totally honest, I didn't know what it was.
Beause if I knew what "Rubber Band Man" was,
I'd have used it for myself.
He said, "If you let me have this beat,
I'm gonna return it to you in a way that you will never forget."
I told Tip, like,
"Bro, you can have it for five."
He said, "I don't have five, but I'll give you $2500."
- [trap music playing] - And he looked me in my eye,
he said, "Watch what I do with this if you give this to me for $2500."
That was the song that made me a platinum producer.
♪ Rubber band man Wild as the Taliban ♪
♪ Nine in my right Forty five in my other hand ♪
♪ Who I'm is? ♪
♪ Call me trouble man Always in trouble, man ♪
♪ Worth a couple hundred grand Chevy's, all colors, man ♪
♪ Rubber band man Like a one man band ♪
♪ Treat these niggas like the Apollo And I'm Sandman ♪
♪ Tote a hundred grand Cannon in the waistband ♪
♪ Looking for a sweet lick? Well this is the wrong place man ♪
[DJ Drama] When "Rubber Band Man" hit, it was a dope boy anthem.
It was like a coming out party.
Like, T.I. was the sound of Atlanta that came from the streets,
that wasn't crunk music, that wasn't Ludacris' sound.
It wasn't OutKast, you know.
This was street music.
People were talking about selling drugs and stuff before,
but I don't feel like it was as in depth.
That's just, kind of, like, Atlanta culture.
Guys in Atlanta, period, they actually love to sell drugs.
["Rubber Band Man" playing]
T.I., I think if he had not started putting out mixtapes,
he would be forgotten and probably would've been a one-hit wonder.
Mixtapes gave him a way to communicate directly with people.
You got people all over the world talking about trap music
and trap beats and trap this and trap that.
Like, it's infiltrated the whole culture and created a whole life of its own.
♪ Rubber band man Wild as the Taliban ♪
[narrator] Both 50 Cent and T.I. used mixtapes to revive their careers
and turn themselves into bona fide stars.
But, what if you were already a star?
How could giving music away for free benefit you?
The answer to that question would come from an overlooked child star
who would use mixtapes like a public sketch pad,
pumping out rhymes and flows at such a furious pace
that he transformed himself
into one of hip-hop's premium rhyme stylists.
[Li'l Wayne rapping]
[Mannie Fresh] Wayne was this kid at the time
who was really waiting for a platform to shine.
Cash Money was in trouble.
Juvie was gone, and we were failing miserably.
I'm like, "If we don't fix this shit, we out of here."
We got Wayne on the back-burner while all of this is going on.
And I'm going, "Bro, now you gotta step up to the bar. Like, you gotta step up."
And I think he took it serious, dude.
Super serious.
This was the importance of Tha Carter.
♪ I'm the Cash Money Makaveli, Y'all ain't ready ♪
♪ Quick, fast like Tom Petty, Y'all just petty ♪
♪ '82, I was born ready, I'm too ready ♪
♪ Y'all baller blockers I'm too heavy ♪
Wayne was fascinated with Missy.
Missy's wordplay, how Missy did raps, and did the...
[scatting]
He'd do ad-libs, you know, and he'd make a sound.
He's like, "I make my alarm 'beep beep' and 'chirp chirp.'"
And I'm like, "Okay."
That was Wayne's style, but then we do the first Carter,
he's really rapping.
♪ I be easy, Fall back and be cool with it ♪
♪ Pallbearer is moving his dead Flow I'm through with it ♪
♪ I'm in the sh... Naw I'm sewer-rich ♪
♪ Weezy-f baby I do this... ♪
Everybody was like, "Ah! I like Lil Wayne.
I like his voice, I like his delivery and all of that."
So, then, everybody's paying attention to him now.
But, even when we were doing the first Carter,
he's like, "Bro, I feel like there's something holding me back, creatively."
And then, he's telling me about DJ Drama and these mixtapes.
For Wayne, this is what was missing.
[interviewer] Where would you say Wayne was at in his career,
in terms of popularity, in terms of respect?
Wayne had already become, like, a phenom
from the Cash Money days.
Those guys were already going into the record books
because of records like "Bling Bling."
I'm not gonna lie. Like, you know, I liked Wayne
but he was, like, the "Drop It Like It's Hot" guy.
But, man, he shined on Tha Carter.
He was more lyrical than we were used to around that time.
I was on the road with T.I., I was his DJ.
And Tip was on the phone with Wayne, and I was like, "Lemme talk to him."
And I was like, "Yo, let's do a tape."
And he was like, "Bet. Let's do it."
The Dedication 1 mixtape... I wasn't even prepared.
His wittiness, and, you know,
the creativeness of how he was putting words together...
It was a whole other level of lyricism that was going on.
I'd done mixtapes all my life,
but I'd never done it with a known DJ
and DJ Drama was the first known DJ I've done it with.
He's well-known in the South and it got it pushed heavy, you know.
I've never had a mixtape circulate the way that one did.
That tape wound up getting flooded in New York.
And around this time, in the mixtape world,
it was still very East Coast-driven.
Like, the majority of the mixtape world, you know,
still lived on the East Coast, lived in New York City.
From Dipset to, you know, G-Unit.
The South still had a bad rap when it came to lyricism.
[Don Cannon] On Dedication 2, he really wanted to show his talent.
Like, a freestyle talent.
"Give me a beat, I'll shred all of 'em."
Me and Drama sat down to pick some beats.
My idea was to take "C'mon N' Ride This Train,"
which was, like, a bass song in Miami,
and flip it to an East Coast beat.
["C'mon n' Ride This Train" beat playing]
[Don Cannon] When we sent this beat to Weezy,
I didn't really know what he was gonna do to the Cannon beat,
but it was back within an hour.
He gave us three minutes straight and we were like, "Damn!"
♪ Howdy-do motherfuckas it's Weezy baby ♪
♪ Niggas bitchin' and I gotta tote the (cannon) ♪
♪ Listen close, I got duct tape and rope
♪ I'll leave you missing Like the fucking O'Bannons ♪
That's what the fuck I'm talking about.
That's what was missing.
Like, something in him clicked.
Like, he got pissed off about something.
Because he is running raps that...
a style that I never heard him do.
Shit, like, where's all this coming from?
I'm like, "Dude, this dude's delivery is nuts."
Man, those mixtapes are so good.
Arguably better than the albums.
And, you know, that just goes to show you, the approach is different.
With a mixtape, you put out what you fuck with, what you like.
Whereas, with an album, you're thinking "hits, charting, mass."
It's less stress, less overthinking with a mixtape.
♪ You fucking with the hitman ♪
♪ Kidnap a nigga, make him feel like a kid again ♪
♪ Straight up, I ain't got no conversation for you ♪
♪ Nigga talk to the (cannon) ♪
[White] They'd reintroduce him to people, because he was putting albums out,
but I felt like he wasn't all the way getting that respect.
Wayne was like, "Nah. I rap." You know what I mean?
Like, "I really rap. I'm the down-South Jay-Z."
He was just going crazy on it, man.
Like, every song was, you just felt like it'd never stop
and he just keep on coming and coming with the bars.
[DJ Mars] It was just total creativity that you hadn't seen from Wayne before.
Southern rappers weren't rapping like he was.
You had lyrical artists in the South, clearly.
OutKast, Goodie Mob, T.I.
But, Wayne just took it to an entirely different stratosphere.
I thought it was dope because you looked at him in this one particular way,
and then, next thing you know, he's on mixtapes,
standing like a giant, killing it.
["C'mon n' Ride This Train" playing]
[Don Cannon] For a long time, it's like, mixtapes were "B" music and not "A" music,
but most of the critics in the magazine would say,
"We love Dedication more than we love his album."
You know, that became a thing in rap, where it's like,
"Your mixtape's better than your album."
So, I come from the record-selling days where we sold tapes and CDs.
You know, I thought, "You giving away music for free,"
but not knowing it would turn into actually a business.
He saw the future.
He was on something that I didn't see.
But, when he dropped that "A Milli" record,
that song there, like that...
I was like, "Oh, man, he going bananas."
["A Milli" plays]
♪ I'm a millionaire I'm a young money milllionaire, ♪
♪ Tougher than Nigerian hair... ♪
[narrator] The Dedication mixtape series came in the midst
of one of hip-hops greatest runs.
Wayne's free association rhyme style found the perfect home on mixtapes,
and he'd apply his hundreds of hours of rhyme practice
to his next studio album, and earn a spot
in the most coveted barbershop conversation in hip-hop:
Who's the greatest rapper alive?
♪ They say I'm rappin' like B.I.G., Jay, and 2Pac, Andre 3000 ♪
♪ Where is Erykah Badu at? Who that? ♪
♪ Who that said they gon' beat Lil Wayne? ♪
♪ My name ain't Bic, but I keep that flame, man
[DJ Drama] He was a monster.
Like, he was just a savage.
It was very key, you know... He understood the mixtape culture.
You know, and even on those tapes there were early jabs at...
you know, he was coming for hoes.
Like, Jay was top of the food chain.
Like, Jay was the king of rap, lyrically.
But, around that time was when Hov said he was gonna retire
so, when a guy like Wayne really stood up and said, like,
"The best rapper alive."
Like, yeah, you're fucking right.
[Kid Capri] He had 77 songs out in one year.
I remember Busta Rhymes said to me,
"Lil Wayne is my hero."
He said, "Nobody works like Lil Wayne."
This is Busta Rhymes saying that.
Somebody that I know did some beats.
♪ Like, "look at bastard Weezy! ♪
♪ He's a beast, he's a dog he's a muthafuckin' problem ♪
♪ Okay, you're a goon, but what's a goon to a goblin? ♪
♪ Nothin', nothin', you ain't scarin' nothin' ♪
[Mannie Fresh] I show up in LA to go to the studio,
and there's kids out there.
They got posters and motherfuckers with candles,
and teddy bears and all kinds of shit.
And I'm like,
"So, what happened? Somebody passed away or some shit?"
And they just like, "No, they been out there all day,
waiting for Wayne to come out the studio."
[crowd cheers]
[Mannie] That's bigger than rap.
I'm like, "This dude is really a rock star."
Like, you know, on a whole other level.
This dude is rap God.
[Don Cannon] We gave him that platform.
Like, "Man, I can be myself
and I can show these people I can really rap?
Let's do it this way."
And then, even for our mixtapes and our careers,
it kind of pulled us this way because everybody called us, like,
"Yo, I need to do a Dedication."
Everybody remembers that, you know, that point.
That point changed everything.
♪ Motherfucker I'm ill Not sick ♪
[narrator] Lil Wayne, T.I. and 50 Cent
were just the tip of a giant mixtape iceberg.
For barbershops and bodegas, and even traditional record stores,
new mixtapes were hitting the shelves daily.
The mixtape business model had become the new norm in hip-hop,
and DJs and rappers were making good money from it,
but that wasn't true for the record labels.
And as studio album sales dropped, the tenuous partnership
between the record industry and mixtape DJs finally broke.
[female reporter] Fulton County SWAT team and officers from Clayton County
raided DJ Drama's Gangsta Grillz recording studio last night.
[DJ Mars] A friend of mine lived across the street
from where their studio was in Atlanta,
and my phone rings.
The phone call was like, "Yo, Drama and them going to jail."
"What are you talking about?"
"The cops are outside the studio right now I'm telling you, look."
I see these black Tahoes coming down the street.
There's cars coming from both sides and they jumped the curbs.
You know, right in front of me and Cannon.
These SWAT guys jump out with M16s drawn,
and tell me to get on the ground.
Like some shit out of a movie.
[Don Cannon] It was a real sting. Like, you know, they had helicopter views
and vans riding back and forth
and taking pictures of us.
Like, this was some real, like, Goodfellas shit.
But, of course we were terrified
at the moment when we heard charges of racketeering.
[female reporter] Donald Cannon, known as DJ Cannon,
and Tyrese Simmons, known as DJ Drama,
are accused of bootlegging thousands of CDs.
Among the items seized,
50,000 counterfeit CDs, recording equipment,
computers, cars, cash and bank statements.
[DJ Drama] You know, me and Cannon are shook.
My first time ever in jail.
I don't know if it was a definite tape that alarmed them,
but, they said they confiscated, like...
I've heard 50,000, I've heard 80,000, mixtapes.
It was crazy.
It really was crazy.
I mean, I was the top of the food chain when it came to mixtapes.
[Kid Capri] Y'all gotta remember how hot Drama was with the mixtapes.
You know what I'm saying? He was hot.
It now becomes too much attention on it.
You gotta remember the repercussions that's gonna come with that.
The music industry as a whole,
the powers that be felt that they were losing power,
and losing their grip on what gets out.
And that's a big deal.
[male police officer] Under the New York State Penal Law,
failure to disclose the origin
of a recording is a misdemeanour and you're under arrest.
Put your hands behind your back, please.
Put your hands behind your back.
Turn around.
[DJ Mars] After that day happened,
the game died.
[engines starting]
The raid ended the distribution of mixtapes.
Mixunit: dead.
The mixtape spots downtown: dead.
The artists, mixtapes, the way they were doing it,
collabing with the DJs: all of that died.
[Cannon] It was time for change.
We did mixtapes so much
that it was going in a direction it didn't need to.
That changed the game to go into streaming.
The attempt to shut something out,
as it always does,
brings so much more light to it.
And it helped the next wave of mixtapes that were coming.
Everyone was way more internet-savvy
so you didn't have to necessarily go to your local bodega to get a tape.
You could just go to the next blog,
and get it that way.
For the last ten years,
we've gotten all our biggest artist off mixtapes.
We get Wiz, we get Cole,
we get Kendrick, we get Drake.
Mixtapes will never die.
You know, they became bigger than ever after that.
[narrator] From the beginning, hip-hop's been about using what you got
to make something happen.
If you can't sing, rap.
♪ All the ladies love me Because I'm, Oh so "G" ♪
♪ Well I'm din ding dang From the bla bla bla ♪
[narrator] No instruments? Sample.
[drum beats playing]
Mixtapes are part of that same hip-hop pragmatism.
And even though they haven't been actual tapes in a long time,
the spirit and purpose of mixtapes remains intact,
and innately hip-hop.
Mixtapes have always been about getting your voice out there
without asking permission.
And what greater amplifier could there be
than hundreds of millions of computers networked together?
If hip-hop can build empires with analog tech,
just imagine what it could do in the digital world.