Today’s post is still part of my daily blogging experiment of posting at least 500 words a day, but I’m temporarily putting the subject I was writing about yesterday to the side, since today is the official release date of the newest rap project I’ve been a part of, and it wouldn’t be right not to post about it, I feel like I have to do my part to get it out there, because I’m really happy with how it turned out overall, as well as super proud of the work that everybody involved put in in order to make that happen.
“Exceedingly Dope Things, Vol. 1 (Side A)” is the first official mixtape/album release by the Reddit r/makinghiphop community to be released on all streaming platforms. If I’m not mistaken, an earlier mixtape was released a couple of years ago as well, just not on all platforms, since I don’t even think streaming was much of a thing back then. I contributed a good number of verses for this project, and although I didn’t contribute on the instrumental side, I did work on a good deal of the mixing, and did most of the final mastering for the album as well.
One of the biggest topics I’ve touched on during this whole writing experiment so far is how I always dive right into whatever wave of interest comes to me at any given time, and when I first introduced this topic, I mentioned how, at some point towards the end of last year, I was struck by my love for rapping again. I’m not sure what did it, but it hit me hard all of a sudden, and I started reaching out to different artists and communities in order to get some collabs going, with the intention of seeing what would happen if I initiated some connection. Before this experience I’ve always much preferred working on my own, when it comes to my music and the creative decisions I can take with it. I guess I’m subconsciously realizing that I’m getting kind of old, at least when it comes to hip-hop, and that if I don’t get this rap shit going now, I never will. After all, one can always be an old writer, or an older artist or content creator of any kind, or even a singer, but let’s be honest, not many people are listening to 60 or 70-year-old rappers, if there even are any. Maybe Eminem at 50 but that’s simply because he’s a legend and is already famous.
Anyway, being a Reddit user, not really posting, just always lurking and reading random shit from lots of subreddits, I came across a post on the r/makinghiphop community, posted by GHATS, who is a really talented producer with some super smooth beats that span all rap subgenres, suggesting the idea of getting various artists together to work on a collective subreddit mixtape. I posted my music on there for consideration and, along with a few other talented rappers and producers, we got on Discord and started planning out potential collab tracks for the tape. The Discord server was moderated by one of the subreddit mods, D.O.M of Dnd, who not only is a really dope and unique rapper with an admirable work ethic, but who also did a great job at moderating the server and making sure everything went smoothly.
The first track I worked on, ‘I Believe’, was actually the first track to be submitted for consideration, and it also ended up being the intro track for the tape. Multiple YouTube playlists were created for producers to post their beats for rappers to hop on, and when I heard G.C Wens’ beat ‘I Believe’ on the boom bap beats playlist I knew I was ready to get on that. If you know my music you know I always try to stay on the positive and uplifting side of things, and this beat was just the perfect fit. From there, I tried working with as many artists from the group as I could, and some really dope tracks emerged from that.
We are planning on many future volumes, and I’m excited to be part of that and to witness the eventual growth of the collective group as well as mixtape series and everyone involved in it. There’s definitely a lot of variety on this tape, including many different styles of lyrical content, flows, voices, and cadences. If you have 40 minutes to go on a hip-hop journey through old school and new school instrumentation, I encourage you to check it out. I know it would mean a lot to everyone who participated. Listen to the album below:
rebel eye 