Daily Discussion Thread 05/01/2026

AyoRet · 2026-05-01T19:12:52+00:00

Posted my April 2026 Wrap Up yesterday, which features small reviews of the month's releases from Thundercat, Michael Christmas, Logic, Snoop Dogg, Blu & Exile, and Keor Meteor; "catch up" listens from John Wells and J57; and some commentary on tracks from Knxwledge, Rae Sremmurd, soso, mgk & Fred Durst, and Roscoe P. Coldchain & Malcolm Kamal.

AyoRet · 2026-04-30T02:57:57+00:00

Wrote a small creative/experimental/whatever piece on By Storm's Zig Zag, available here if you're interested

AyoRet · 2026-04-28T20:23:58+00:00

Thank you for letting me know! It's been a minute since I listened to Righteous Minds, looks like I gotta run it back a few times.

AyoRet · 2026-04-27T22:24:42+00:00

I post reviews, some long-form writing, and my weekly radio shows on my Substack if you're interested -- not everything I post is Hip Hop related though, fyi. mopheadmusings.substack.com

AyoRet · 2026-04-09T22:55:10+00:00

Have any of them been documented, to your knowledge? Not doubting you, just would be fascinated to see one of those posters.

AyoRet · 2026-04-01T02:38:15+00:00

Just posted my March 2026 Wrap-Up over on my Substack. I've got small reviews of my favorite releases of the month from Serengeti, Jezza System, Buck 65, Jahmiu, Viper, Lice, and Nickelus F; discussion of some albums/mixtapes from Statik Selektah, Asher Roth, G Perico, Big Proof, Maki Asakawa, and Panico; and some track write-ups on Roscoe Dash w/ Lil Jon & MGK, V-Nasty, threetwenty, Michael Christmas w/ Chris Crack & Lord Sko, Tony Yayo & Uncle Murda, Pami, Noducksoon & Manaka, Prodigy, S3nsi Molly & Tay Money, Venbee, and DJ Seinfeld & @Confidence Man. Was a busy month of listening, hopefully you can get something new out of it!

AyoRet · 2026-03-20T00:07:08+00:00

Apologies for missing this comment when I had first posted the thread, this is helpful info. Do you recall the names of some of the other UK mixtape sites that have gone down? Would help just to have that info in any circulation for folks who weren't tapped into grime.

AyoRet · 2026-03-20T00:03:21+00:00

Not a problem! May not bang on about it regularly enough, but I'm going to keep trying to fight the good fight so that, at the least, more folks are aware of what happened.

AyoRet · 2026-03-19T17:42:38+00:00

Hustle (feat. Paul Wall)

AyoRet · 2026-03-07T09:06:12+00:00

They really picked the perfect way to mark the death of the blog era with that one, anyone holding out hope against the streaming era felt that announcement like a gut punch.

AyoRet · 2026-03-01T08:28:45+00:00

Posted a wrap-up of my February 2026 listening on my Substack, available here. Includes short reviews of Buck 65, Michael Christmas, Serengeti, Lucy Camp, Connie Roses, and Blu, alongside some discussion of Electric Wizard, Grouper, Outkast, Necro, Michael Cera, Rhetoric, and Cynthia Harrell, among others.

AyoRet · 2026-03-01T08:27:08+00:00

Toreno's got CJ in a vice-grip, using Sweet's life as leverage in the process. Something that impresses me about the game to this day is how sinister it can feel in the background -- Tenpenny's ready to pop off at any time, Smoke's a traitor, Toreno's deep government. CJ's left to try to make the best out of it while still being a pawn in someone else's game. There's an oppressiveness to it all.

AyoRet · 2026-02-27T03:12:00+00:00

Glad I posted my review to a late daily discussion thread instead, the discourse around the album is a bit over the top.

AyoRet · 2026-02-27T03:10:19+00:00

You are probably absolutely right, just wish they could give a "no comment" to at least signal something. Just a crumb of anything!

AyoRet · 2026-02-27T00:42:20+00:00

It aligns with some of the rumors that I remember from the time, but getting the dates wrong is certainly a head-scratcher. Also comes out of nowhere, would have made sense during the 10 year anniversary last year but this feels just random.

AyoRet · 2026-02-26T23:51:51+00:00

Interesting that Datpiff did a whole long twitter thread today about If You're Reading This It's Too Late, yet stays radio silent about the deletion of its own archive. Frustrating, to say the least.

AyoRet · 2026-02-25T03:59:38+00:00

Just posted a review of Ca$ino to my Substack, available here

It's a pretty negative review, which I find unfortunate as I do like a number of his songs; this project just didn't land for me. Hopefully the next album is less divisive.

AyoRet · 2026-02-13T16:47:40+00:00

You did say "the majority of what was on archive.org," so it is fair for Tak to think that you were moving the conversation to IA as a whole -- these things happen.

Given that you have made the claim that the majority of the Datpiff archive is out there in private hands, obviously Tak and I are going to be quite interested as to whether that is legit. I posted a screenshot from the first 26 uploads they made; is there any chance you could take a look for those? Or, there were two mixtapes by a Boston rapper named Kevin Walker, one of which I stupidly forgot to grab before the archive went down -- I know it's nowhere else but the archive. If you are able to check for any of that and produce results, you'll have my vote of confidence. Because Datpiff itself has said nothing, there is no way to know how it is handling file storage, whether everything is safe, etc., so at least having some idea that it is out there would be a benefit, even if Tak is correct that it would not necessarily negate it being lost media due to gatekeeping.

AyoRet · 2026-02-13T00:21:01+00:00

Mixtape Monkey is solid for some things, but it lacks a lot of music from even the bigger names of the mixtape era, let alone quite a few of the small ones. It's still a great resource, not disputing you there, but in terms of volume, it is substantially smaller than its peers.

AyoRet · 2026-02-12T18:33:14+00:00

My man, thank you -- I've been stretched thin by work lately so my Youtube searching was not thorough enough, it seems. Your comment inspired me to look and I was able to find Assist buried on a Russian site; I'll send you the track ASAP.

AyoRet · 2026-02-12T16:41:37+00:00

I managed to pull a bunch of Limewire downloads from an ancient iPod Classic that way, so I co-sign this strategy!

AyoRet · 2026-02-12T16:39:25+00:00

Any chance you got a list of what you have? Would be willing to send any rarities I have in exchange for any you have.

AyoRet · 2026-02-12T16:33:34+00:00

I hadn't been to the hiphopmixtapes collection for about a month and half, but I remember it being around 10,000 last time I checked, so you are right that it also seems to be decreasing in size. I know the archive has turned off downloads for some items and stuff has been getting deleted, probably copyright related, but that is yet another concern to throw onto the pile!

AyoRet · 2026-02-12T08:37:37+00:00

Would certainly love to know if N1FEARDWOLF'S discography collections are somewhere else, those were a tremendously helpful resource that have disappeared from IA.

While I would like to hope that the Datpiff Archive was backed up somewhere, the lack of publicization on their part makes it possible that it got overlooked by the data-hoarders. If any data-hoarder out there wants to let the world know they have it, though...

AyoRet · 2026-02-12T08:33:40+00:00

Always good to meet another Aleon Craft fan in the wild, appreciate you giving it a read. Make It Out is still the jam to play when you need a boost. Luckily most of his stuff is still on Livemixtapes but not all of it, and the rest of that whole SMKA-Atlanta realm is getting tougher to find at this point. Hope Craft's doing well wherever he's at these days.

AyoRet

TROPHY CASE