What Is A Mixtape vs An Album In Today’s Time?

Many factors cause a generation gap between today’s Hip-Hop listener and the Hip-Hop listener of yesteryear. One of the big factors that I come across often is the debate about what is a mixtape and what is an album. In today’s era there musically is no audible between a mixtape and a studio album. Both mixtapes and albums now contain original material, original tracks/production, and are full length projects complete with pesonnel credits. With streaming services providing access to both mixtapes and albums equally both products are even consumed the same way as well. The idea of an album holding more weight than a mixtape has become an old school ideology. In fact Chance The Rapper has shattered the mold when it comes to how traditional mainstream media outlets view mixtapes. Chance has made award shows that only gave awards for traditional albums give awards to a “mixtape artist” for mixtapes. Chance The Rapper has made a career so for from just releasing mixtapes while never releasing an official studio album. A feat like this in years past would have been impossible to accomplish.

Let’s take Kendrick Lamar for example. We know that Lamar has technically been releasing mixtapes since the early 2000’s but for argument sake let’s start with K. Dot’s critically acclaimed mixtape “Overly Dedicated”. Overly Dedicated is the project that put Kendrick Lamar on the radar to be next up in line for Hip-Hop’s rising class. Somehow when the greatness of Kendrick Lamar is discussed Overly Dedicated (and sometimes even Section 80) is left out of the discussion. When the question is presented of “what makes Overly Dedicated and Section 80 different from good kid m.A.A.d city?” the answer is almost always “these first two are mixtapes not albums”. My question is “even if so, what is the difference between those three projects musically?”, there is never a logical answer to this question. The bottom line is, in today’s Hip-Hop world mixtapes are albums and albums are mixtapes.

Chance The Rapper’s career has silenced anything a Hip-Hop fan can say about the mixtapes being different from albums. Artist like Big K.R.I.T, Curren$y, and Joey Bada$$ (to name a few) are often overlooked because of their mixtape work not being given the same gravity as their album work. If people would properly consider Overly Dedicated as Kendrick Lamar’s debut album Kendrick would be going on album number seven right now. To put that in some sort of perspective Jay Z’s seventh album was The Blueprint 2 and at that point in Jay Z’s career he was highly considered to be one of the best emcees to ever do it. Bottom line is original material is original material. Don’t let record labels dictate how much weight you put on a project. The internet has its pros and cons but a true music lover has to appreciate how free flowing music in the internet era is.