What is a mixtape?
In a cute, off-putting, short-run cartoon show called “Over The Garden Wall” (2014) one of the main characters, Wirt wants to give his would-be crush Sara a cassette tape with recordings of his poems, his badly played clarinet music, and sounds of nature. This is his love letter to her. It’s called “For Sara..”.
This is a mixtape.
In 2013, Chance the Rapper released his mixtape called “Acid Rain” in 2013. It was distributed for free on the internet. It was downloaded about 1,000,000 times and it skyrocketed Chance the Rappers exposure and fame.
This is a mixtape.
In Kurt Cobain’s 2015 documentary, Montage of Heck, Cobain describes one of the first instances he’s exposed to punk music. He’s given a cassette tape by his friend that is a compilation of a bunch of different punk bands at the time. Kurt states that he kept listening to that track over and over and over again. And the rest was history.
This is a mixtape.
Way back during hip hop’s first years of infancy, it was a practice of many DJs, like Grandmaster Flash and DJ Kool Herc, at the time to record and sell their club performances.
This is a mixtape.