“Smarten up,” That’s what Lil Wayne told MTV news about mixtape DJs. He said of the Aphilliates arrests, “It’s a bad thing, but you gotta play the game fair. If you don’t play fair, all kind of things can happen. You gotta watch people like DJ Clue, watch people like DJ Khaled. They do it right.”
The advice from Lil Wayne seems a bit out of place since the two were planning the third album in the trio of Dedication albums that created most of the supreme buzz that Wayne rode through 2006. They had planned to release the third album early in 2007. Street CD’s such as Drama‘s Gangsta Grillz albums have been integral to Weezy‘s success, especially his success in the mixtape circle.
“You gotta do it right,”Wayne said, “It’s gonna be a message. [The authorities] ain’t playing. They gonna make an example. They gonna straighten the game out. A lot of companies take a fall with those mixtapes. Niggas be caking up off them mixtapes. The artists can drop his album — and everybody knows that hip-hop [album sales are in] decline — nobody ain’t gonna buy the album, and everybody gets the mixtapes off of the Internet or whatever way they get it. The artists ain’t caking, but the nigga you made the mixtape with is caking up. Thank God I ain’t got that problem, but I know a lot of people who do.”
A DJ who wished to remain anonymous in case the RIAA was listening or reading, “I think they got a snitch among them . Somebody snitched on them. Drama is working for the down South artists. I don’t think he’s bootlegging. He’s really helping the movement and promoting, especially the new cats. I’m almost sure that 30,000 out of the 50,000 [CDs confiscated in the raid] were new cats that’s next to come up. He uses his mixtapes as a promotional marketing tool that was looked at the wrong way. Drama and Cannon were two of the coolest motherfuckas to get ran through like that. They treated them like they was fucking drug kingpins. I was watching it on Fox News, that sh– was like, ‘Get out of there.”
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Interestingly enough, during the raid police found nothing in terms of drugs or weapons but stated that during confiscations of this variety, they usually find that type of “trouble”.
Diplomats head of A&R, DukeDaGod said of the Aphilliates‘ drama, “This is like D-Day in hip-hop.”
“DJ Drama is like our favorite mixtape DJ,” he said. “Everybody loves Drama. It’s crazy. It’s like it’s in your own backyard when it comes to Drama. He helps a lot of artists out. It’s kinda messed up. I think they’re trying to make hip-hop illegal or something. They’re trying to make too many regulations on it. This is one of the worst days ever I can remember in hip-hop. I remember when Biggie got shot, when Pac got shot, it was crazy, but this right here is bad because it could determine the future of our music.”
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DukeDaGod says the fans will be the ones feeling this most, “Why are [the RIAA and FBI] getting involved?” Leave us alone. Let us make our hip-hop. Nobody is dying, nobody is killing nobody. It’s just music being made. Everybody is gonna feel it whether you’re on the radio, not on the radio. Even if you’re a consumer, you gonna feel it, ’cause it’s gonna be hard to find certain tapes. Certain people are not going to carry the mixtapes anymore because they know what could happen. It’s so many people that wanna hear our stuff. We get e-mails from all over the world. They don’t care about the RIAA, they wanna hear some Dipset, they wanna hear some Drama. So it’s messed up for the whole world.”
