What’s The Difference Between A Mixtape And An Album In 2023?

Tyson Sybateli’s latest mixtape ‘Present.’ always comes up in album of the year conversations. The argument is that ‘Present.’ sounds like an album.  

Mixtapes have been sounding like albums since the late 2000s; think of Drake’s ‘So Far Gone’ (2009), Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Overly Dedicated’ (2010), Wiz Khalifa’s ‘Kush & Orange Juice’ (2010), Chance The Rapper’s ‘Acid Rap’ (2013), A$AP Rocky’s ‘Live. Love. A$AP’ (2011).  

In South Africa, the examples include AKA’s ’24/7/366’ (2009), Nasty C’s ‘Price City’ (2015), YoungstaCPT’s ‘Fr3eze Time’ (2013), KiD X’s ‘3 Quarter Pace’ (2015), Stogie T’s ‘Honey And Pain’ (2018), The Big Hash’s ‘Young’ (2019), A-Reece’s ‘Today’s Tragedy, Tomorrow’s Memory’, Shane Eagle’s ‘Dark Moon Flwr’… the list is quite long.

All those mixtapes contain songs that were recorded from scratch over original beats with proper mixing and mastering; a far cry from mixtapes of yesteryear which could be clumsy and open-ended. 

READ: Viral: Why DJ And Producer Albums Are Important In SA Hip-Hop

So, what makes a mixtape in 2023? 

There’s no clear definition. 

“In previous time periods, it was always like freestyles or, if not freestyles, certain records where you displaying your rapping skills, the best of your abilities,” Tyson said in a Twitter video explaining why ‘Present.’ is a mixtape and not an album in September. “It’s not about song structure blah blah blah. But, in the current age, it is about that song structure, although some people don’t take notice to that.

“So, I did try tie that in but mainly it was about me rapping my ass off, having songs to hit the stage, that’s what mixtapes were for; to create heat, to make you hot, that’s why you see the fire as well, that’s why you hear the fire explosions… DJ shit. It’s to create heat and create buzz before your album.”  

A brief history of mixtapes 

Mixtapes were born out of DIY culture; in the 90s, the wide use of blank cassette tapes gave the everyday-person the power to curate their own mix of songs, a practice which continued in the CD era with the existence of recordable CDs — shouts to Princo, TDK etc. 

Mixtapes have changed their form over the years; at first, they were a collection of songs by different artists put together and mixed by DJs, Hip-Hop’s original A&Rs. The likes of DJ Kay Slay, DJ Clue, DJ Screw and the inimitable DJ Drama flooded the streets with mixtapes that allowed Hip-Hop to exist in its pure form, free of the mainstream music industry’s rules and confines. 

In the 00s, rappers such as 50 Cent, Lil Wayne, T.I and Jeezy started dropping their own mixtapes usually in collaboration with DJs. In most cases, they recycled beats by other artists, making unofficial remixes and, at times, throwing in some exclusive songs. 

But, blog-era rappers like Drake, Wale, Wiz Khalifa, J. Cole, A$AP Rocky, Kendrick Lamar and the like, refined mixtapes and started blurring the lines between albums, mixtapes and EPs by using original beats and making proper songs from scratch for mixtapes. 

Mixtapes had moved from tapes to CDs to platforms like Datpiff and later SoundCloud, Audiomack and large file-sharing platforms like Mediafire, Zippyshare and, in South Africa, the infamous Datafilehost. 

South African Hip-Hop and mixtapes

South Africa’s mixtape culture was small in the 2000s, until HYPE Magazine arrived. HYPE enlisted the hottest South African DJs - DJ Raiko, P-Kuttah, DJ Bionic, C-Live, DJ Hamma etc. – in their quarterly ‘HYPE Sessions’ CDs which were responsible for introducing a generation of rappers to fans at a time when SA Hip-Hop was a niche movement. 

Individual artists and groups still dropped their own mixtapes; Slikour dropped the ‘Ventilation Street-Tape’ in collaboration with Sprite, Qba and DJ Zakes dropped ‘Gutter Butter Vol. 1’, Kwesta and C-Live dropped the K1 rapper’s debut mixtape. L-Tido dropped ‘City of Gold’, Maggz ‘Sorry For The Long Wait’…

None of those mixtapes could be mistaken for albums. 

“The process makes it a mixtape”

Today, however, you hear from a rapper themselves that their project is a mixtape. Otherwise a lot of them feel like albums to the ear. 

Mixtapes are released like albums, straight to DSPs, not DatPiff, SoundCloud or Audiomack. Whereas mixtapes used to be anti-industry street releases, today, some rappers drop their mixtapes under labels. ‘Present.’ was Tyson’s first project since joining Sony Music Entertainment Africa. It had a proper rollout and a lead single, ‘It Worked’ which was accompanied by a music video. 

Read: AKA Had A Lot To Prove In His Lesser-Known 2012 Mixtape, ‘The Exclusives’ Mixed By DJ Fanatic

“It’s the process,” Stogie T said, explaining what differentiates a mixtape and an album in 2023 during an August interview conducted for his and A-Reece’s GQ South Africa cover story. “The process makes it a mixtape. It’s like no fuss, no frills. There’s a vibe, I just wanna rap. It’s where you can get off like really really get off, where you don’t have to worry about things like, ‘should I get Shekhinah on this?’… Imma let it rock, Imma do one verse, I might do two verses…”

“I might let the beat rock for a minute at the end,” A-Reece added. “When it comes to an album, I get a bit more technical, but when I’m doing a mixtape, I’m doing what I wanna do.”

“Everything I put out, people say, ‘yo, I don’t understand why this is a mixtape, bro,’” Reece continued. “Even Maphorisa, with DEADLINES, was like, ‘bruh, you always coming with this mixtape talk and you always drop an album.’”

Even though both rappers still go off in their albums, A-Reece assured “it’s dressed differently. It’s like the play-offs and championships.” 

Mixtapes in the podcast era

DJ Switch, who’s been dropping mixtapes consistently in the last few years, feels mixtapes are still a great platform for artists to grow their fan base especially when they collaborate with a DJ. “DJs have more of a performance platform than an artist has,” says DJ Switch in an exclusive interview with SlikourOnLife. “Compared to [an artist] performing every week, DJs get more airtime, they play music on radio. So, [mixtapes are for the DJs] to introduce new music and new artists. When you’re playing on radio, that’s still a mixtape… if you’re that kind of DJ, you’re introducing new songs.” 

Speaking on his output in the last few years, DJ Switch says: “Mixtapes was basically my ‘fuck it’ attitude like, let’s just drop the music because everyone is holding back music."

“We need to put out the music. The more we shy away from dropping music, the more Hip-Hop looks like it’s not doing much. It’s important for people to keep on dropping music to show Hip-Hop lovers that, ‘hey man, we still here, doing our thing.’”

In the last three years, DJ Switch dropped four mixtapes; ‘The Rise Of Istrato’ with Bravo Le Roux, ‘4 THE MO$H’ with Tae Africa, ‘Like Water’ with PDotO O and ‘Above Water’ with PhillaBoi K and Seru The Ellipsis. “I’m approaching artists that I think got potential,” DJ Switch says. “I would have had three more if the artists who had agreed had committed to it.” 

DJ Switch rightfully calls himself “The Mixtape King” of DJs in South Africa, acknowledging YoungstaCPT’s unrivaled mixtape catalogue — to date, the rapper has more than 30 mixtapes under his belt. 

The DJ aspect of mixtapes is, however, slowly fading away. A majority of mixtapes today contain little to no shoutouts from DJs, no dancehall sirens and most of all, no blending by a DJ. Just one original song after another. 

It’s a different time. Tyson’s ‘Present.’ is hosted by the hosts of The Sobering podcast. “So, back then, the culture was always guided by what the DJ was playing,” Tyson said in September. “Now, we are in the era [when] people who are super strong in the culture and the media are podcasts, and podcasts guide and they dictate certain pop culture topics. They lead where the conversation hits.”