So last week, Wiz Khalifa dropped his classic mixtape Taylor Allderdice on streams for the 10th anniversary. And one of the things I’ve talked about is music monetization. Artists who released mixtapes in the 2000s and 2010s are having a hard time clearing samples for the streaming platforms. So they’ll compromise by redoing the samples or leaving the songs off completely.
For most people, it’s not a big deal. But to fans like myself, who grew up in that era listening to A LOT of those mixtapes from front to back in heavy rotation, it’s somewhat bittersweet.
Wiz had to deal with this for Taylor Allderdice where he had to redo an entire song over without a Frank Ocean loop sample. And now, it’s Wale’s turn.
I’ve wondered if there was going to be any problems for any songs on More About Nothing outside of the Seinfeld samples (which Wale can get cleared with zero problems due to his relationship with Jerry). And to my surprise, there’s exactly four songs missing.
One of those four is a very pivotal song in The Trip (Downtown). I don’t know if it due to SWV or their label, but I’m highly disappointed in them not clearing the sample. It’s wack because you can’t listening to The Ambitious Girl without hearing The Trip (Downtown) first. That’s like peanut butter with no jelly.
Drake might be the only artist who manage to get one of their heavily sampled mixtapes in So Far Gone 100% cleared for streams. And even then, he ran into a problem clearing Say You Will because he was beefing with Kanye at the time. Also, Max B & Gucci Mane might be the only two artists that has pretty much every mixtape song they’ve done on streams as well.
