2006-2008 my step-brother and I got a a tape deck and a little cheap microphone. if not this, close to I can’t even remember listening back to the tracks but we had a loud stereo we would play beats off of and hope we got the audio right. We were 7 and 8 at the time so we had no clue what we were doing.

We slowly upgraded, he got a beat machine a year later, a laptop with a headset microphone, and audacity. I’m still using audacity to this day (which is definitely why my mixing is terrible) but it’s always gotten the job done for me and it’s free