Houstatlantavegas
Little Bit
The Calm
Drake
So Far Gone, 2009

I’ve recently stepped up my RSS game and subscribed to the feeds of 30 or so music blogs and I’ve realized one thing so far: a lot of them post the exact same stuff. I guess there are only so many releases, wait, is that true? (no, but I guess 1 of each 50 unknown producers/artists are actually decent and a hustler as well). This is definitely a highly blogged about mixtape (1,2,3,4,5…although there isn’t much editorial past announcements of the release) and I’m sure I look horribly out of date (two months late!) to anyone who keeps score but I always post whatever I’m listening to (Julian actually put me up on this before the RSS deluge) so why stop now?

I don’t know much about Drake other than he’s from Toronto and Lil’ Wayne is a big fan (he’s on at least four songs on this mixtape). There’s a lengthy interview with Complex Magazine’s Blog that I just found and haven’t made it through yet. I’m having a hard time pinning down what makes this mixtape so compelling to me, probably not the production, although I do love the 3:00 a.m. feel of the whole thing. It’s probably the contrast between the commercial packaging and the (many) honest moments like:

Hopin’ Western Union doin’ currency exchange
Cause my dad called and got me feelin’ guilty and ashamed
Like, how I had a Rolls and I went and got a Range
And he payin’ for his cigarettes with dollars and some change?

You can download the whole project for free from what appears to Drake’s blog, October’s Very Own. It’s also available as of right now on mediafire. The zShare link that most of those blogs link to appears to have expired.

While looking for the blog links above I found a great tip on Smoking Section. If you download a lot of music from zSHARE, you’re very aware of that annoying 50 second wait time before you get the actual download link. Apparently, when the counter starts, you can paste javascript:var%20time=0 into the address bar and skip the wait. Say word.

Songs are available for two weeks.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 16th, 2009 at 12:51 pm and is filed under Covers, Music Appreciation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.