MegaUpload is gone, FileTram is out the window, and Mediafire isn't far behind. File-hosting websites are now a thing of the recent past, and in their place have spawned a legion of artist-run music sharing sites. Every day, thousands of tracks are uploaded to Bandcamp and SoundCloud not by fans but by musicians themselves.
From the state of New York, a hip-hop beatmaker by the name of RAJA has signed on to both websites, releasing dozens of tracks to fans at no price. Ironically, RAJA's three-part mixtape series titled The October Series, released on Bandcamp for free, sounds almost entirely analog.
Part 1, simply titled Red, is a 33-track Frankenstein masterpiece, a hodgepodge assortment of drum kits, synthesizers, samples, samples, and more samples.
"I get images sometimes…color images." The opening sample of the first track is a warning to what is about to come: the next nearly three dozen tracks conjure vivid recollections of 1980s and '90s nostalgia, while disjointedly recounting the history of hip-hop and black music culture.
RAJA juggles samples by the Beastie Boys, Lil B, and Run DMC, while peppering the mix with absurdly obscure lines from what sound like a collection of VHS tapes that have been rewound one too many times. The gospel of samples, from sources as diverse as disco classics, anime soundtracks and Ken Nordine's Word Jazz, is accompanied by drum beats that can only be described as tight, and loops of upright bass and jazz horns fill out the rest.
In fact, the tape seems to be a tribute to jazz, with all but a few tracks consisting of one or more jazz samples looped into analog bliss—white noise, crackle, and all. The synthesized musical elements filling out the samples recall the 2010 musical genre fad dubbed chillwave; dreamy, layered synth sounds accompany classic 808 drum beats to create a strangely beautiful hybrid.
The tracks start and stop abruptly, prompting the listener to question whether this is less of a polished mixtape of hip-hop beats than a compilation of barely-finished tracks, as if the producer were hurriedly laying down the sonic ideas haunting his mind.
It's hard to tell which instruments and sounds aren't sampled, if there are any at all; only one track, "PSA", is accompanied by an original verse. In the song, Jeremiah Jae delivers a short but memorable tribute to 1990s "conscious" hip-hop, jabbing playfully at mainstream rap: "They in the attic / But we been in the basement this whole time". The lack of MC verses on the mixtape seem to clarify its purpose; these aren't beats to be rapped over, these are beats to think over.
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