An Interview with Saul Williams by Robert Walsh
“It blew up this year! It came out in 2002 and they put it back out, and finally the people were ready for it, but it was a hit with the people in the know way back in 2002. So really, what mixtape culture does is put the critic in the position of not really being able to critique what’s happening in hip-hop based on the mainstream because the real heads know that the mainstream is three years behind what’s really happening. The mixtape culture is just a documentation of how fast the changes, trends, and updates are really happening. The mixtape culture is the same as those little iTunes updates-“4.8 update is now available” and iTunes 6.0 is out two weeks later. That’s what the mixtape culture is, the updates. These continuous updates and the mainstream cannot keep up with that.” – Saul Williams
See a full list of resources on mixtape related study on our Scholarly Papers page.