It’s been a while since I released some new music. In fact, it’s been almost a year-and-a-half since Rootbeer Ruins Everything and I apologize. Life has been very productive and eventful, but I assure you: multiple projects are in the works and music is coming in 2018. Until then, let’s take a look back at a project I quietly released ten years ago today: the Hood Release Mixxxtape. Much like I did with Obey Me for its ten-year anniversary, I’ve written up some uninteresting facts you won’t care about. So listen to this poorly-mixed, unmastered relic of yesteryear again, or for the first time, and then learn a bit more about it.

1. This mixtape was released more than two years before Machine Gun Kelly’s Lace Up which I will assume completely and purposefully jacked the name from my “Lace Up” intro.

 

2. The “grab a fur burger” line in the intro is a reference to “Project Princess” by Tony Yayo in which he says “Legs behind your head, I’ll eat your fur burger.” The track then transitions into a freestyle over Tony Yayo’s “So Seductive.”

 

3. “Baby Make Me” was one of the last songs completed for the mixtape.

 

4. The songs on this mixtape were recorded over the span of about five years with the oldest being “Adambabadam” recorded circa 2003.

 

5. The mixtape was originally released without a cover. I created the cover some time later when I uploaded all of my music to Bandcamp.

 

6. LJ called me back immediately after I made the call to his house, saying “my mom said ‘someone called pretending to be you, I think it was Adam.'”

 

7. “Get That Money” was the first of my own songs I played when I got my radio show in 2008.

 

8. I’m pretty sure the prank calls to churches were recorded before I was 18. There is no way I’d get away with doing that as an adult but I’m glad I had the audacity to do so in my youth.

 

9. The primary reason I remixed “One to Talk” is because I thought the chorus on the original version was too long – a full 16 bars. Outside of that, all I did was swap out one set of strings for another, remove my first verse and had Ghost record a new one.

 

10. “Nobody’s Perfect” is the only song in my entire catalogue where the beat was made after the verses were recorded. Daku asked me to send him some vocals. I asked for a beat to record over and he said just use anything. I chose “Nobody’s Listening” by Linkin Park.

 

11. G Money on “Adambabadam” is my brother. The high-pitched voice samples were from our friend Tim. Longtime fans might remember him as Crazy Tim from “Know Life” on Sittin’ Here. Although Hood Release is the only official Rootbeer mixtape, G Money, Crazy Tim and I put out a limited edition Liquid Mixxxtape in 2003 – just after Sittin’ Here came out and that was where “Adambabadam” first appeared. To my knowledge the only remaining copy of that project is in my possession and I intend to keep it that way.

 

12. “WAIH Commercial” was another late addition to the mixtape tracklist since I had already had my radio show when I recorded it (obviously). I’m pretty sure they still use it as a station ID even though I haven’t done the show since 2011. In their station ID version, though, “Chance” is backmasked.

 

13. “Jerry” was intended to be a sort-of PSA about social media privacy. I wanted to give the song a human name to make it clear I was rapping from a persona and that I’m not the creepy Facebook stalker (in this particular case). The name Jerry was so inconsequential. It is never used in any part of the internal rhyme scheme so you could swap it out with another name and it wouldn’t change the song at all. If I remember correctly, I chose the name because Jerry Seinfeld was in the news for some reason the day I recorded it.

 

14. Multiple people have asked me if “I’d Hit That (SHEmix)” is a true story and I’m afraid it is not. However, the song does include perhaps the first reference to the Nissan about which the Alternate Ending song “Hoopty” was written.

 

15. “G-MeTAL” stands for “Generic Mixtape Track About Loyalty.”

 

16. “Alone With Myself” is the only song off this mixtape that was ever performed live because the sound guy requested it. The intro lines of the song were taken from the Sittin’ Here song “Alone.” I used a megaphone to record those lines. Did not add the effect after.

 

17. I wasn’t sure which sound effect I wanted to use to separate “you’re going to die alone, what you think of that” and “not yet.” I finally decided on the buzzing that you hear in the song, but my second choice was the bubbling you hear behind “bass riffs are just too basic.” Instead of deleting that sound in the DAW, I accidentally dragged it a few bars to the right so it ended up appearing in the song anyway. I thought it sounded cool so I kept it.

 

18. “Mathrap” originally appeared on Target Practice and I decided to include it here because “Mathrap [Squared]” was one of the songs from that album repurposed for Obey Me and I wanted to give it some context.