Subeed Jinn Arts Blog

You get what you pay for, as the old adage goes. Sometimes, when you pay nothing, that’s just what you get – or at least, nothing that’s worth anything. This is just the case with rapper Wiz Khalifa’s anticipated internet release of “Kush and Orange Juice Mixtape”, on April 14th, 2010. With Myspace, Twitter and Facebook, it’s so easy for musicians to create a fanbase that has been known rival that of existing musicians who have spent years creating their image and collecting fans. However, the internet is fickle, and social-networking site created fans are apt to be just as fickle, since the music they get all hyped up about turns out to be a letdown. Wiz Khalifa set up Twitter links for his fans to download the music, although both links lead to a 120+ megabyte file, which was corrupted and therefore undownloadable. So, faced with this obstacle, I located an online playlist and resorted to YouTube to individually locate the songs – which immediately proved to be incredibly juvenile and extremely similar to existing, popular rap styles. On top of that, the quality was extremely poor, and could be likened to the product you get with Garage Band or another such looping software. In some songs, the beats were actually louder than the lyrics which to me says that the lyrics weren’t exactly up to par and the simple solution was to drown them out with excessively loud music. Each song blends into the next, which may have been an attempt at cohesiveness but turned out to feel very repetitive, as if there was some kind of rush to finish the album in order to give it away sooner. Some of the songs can be likened to Warren G, a 90′s rap icon from California, mixed with Kid Cudi, although Wiz Khalifa cannot compare to either. It’s very easy to get a couple tattoos and make an album and then give it away, but you cannot duplicate or fake enthusiasm and soul, which Wiz Khalifa makes very apparent with his mixtape. It’s not clear where you are supposed to download this mediocre mix cd, I gave up looking after I listened via YouTube. Sometimes the publicity and hype created by social networking sites is proves to be correct when the end mixtapes are released, which is evidenced by Radiohead’s 2007 internet release of “In Rainbows”. The album turned more revenue than all their other mix cds combined because they allowed their fans to set the purchase price. Some fans paid the least possible amount, while the majority forked over the full price, which gained the album recognition and critical acclaim. Wiz Khalifa’s mixtape cds landed well below par, and left a lot to be desired. Another example of internet advertisement and promotion paying off is “A Poet’s Life”, released by punk rock icon Tim Armstrong for free, which did so well that the mixtapes fans requested that he produce hard copies. In the end, it’s about the quality of the work, which is something that Wiz Khalifa would do well to learn, whether it is albums or mixtapes.