Mixtape Mania!

The Very Best - Super MomFoto: Moshi Moshi Records

Spring 2011 is the season of the mixtape! A lot of the hottest new music around the world right now is appearing in the form of free-to-download mixtapes. Here's the Friday Ripple's guide to the hottest mixtapes of this season, from all over Europe, America, Africa and Asia.

1. The Very Best – Super Mom
The Malawian-Swedish duo of Esau Mwamwaya and Johan Hugo returns with a second collection of remixes and originals, proving once again that nobody else on the planet sounds remotely like The Very Best. Amusingly advertised as coming from “the people who brought you The Lion King, Graceland, The World Cup, Humanity and Bono,” Super Mom puts an African twist on some very unexpected artists (Kate Bush? Billy Idol?? Oh yes. And it works.) Uncategorisable and utterly brilliant, this mixtape is simply a must-have.
[Download The Very Best – Super Mom (signup required)] 

DJ Coptic – The Black Star Line Mixtape Vol 1Foto:  The Black Star Line

2. DJ Coptic – The Black Star Line Mixtape Vol 1
Born and raised in Ghana, DJ Coptic moved to America as a teenager, and made his name producing hits for the likes of The Notorious BIG and Jermaine Dupri. Coptic is presently working on a new album with the self-explanatory title of “Back To My Roots”: a conscious effort to put the best of American and African hip hop artists together on a single album. As a teaser for the album, he’s got together with Ghana’s DJ Black and South Africa’s Lee Kasumba to produce The Black Star Line Mixtape Vol 1: an all-star pan-African, pan-US mix, with Coptic’s new productions sitting alongside existing releases from well-known African rappers like Nigeria’s Modenine and Senegal’s Abass Abass.
[Download The Black Star Line Mixtape Vol 1 (signup required)]
  

3. DJ Zhao – Fusion 3: House of Eshu
Berlin’s Sino-Afro-electro-globalist is back with another collection of mashups designed to break down your preconceptions about music, culture and identity. Indonesian gamelan gets mashed with German electro; Yoruba traditional music gets mashed with Black Panther poetry; Ethiopian funk and Cameroonian makossa get the European house music treatment. As usual with Zhao, it all comes out sounding like it was meant to be this way originally.
[Download Fusion 3: House of Eshu] 

Nomadic Wax – Diaspora Mixtape Vol. 2Foto:  Nomadic Wax

4. Nomadic Wax – Diaspora Mixtape Vol. 2
By now, mixtapes from New York’s global hip hop label Nomadic Wax are well established as a Who’s Who of microphone skills around the world. The second volume of Diaspora is no exception, with 40 MCs from 33 countries throwing down in most of the world’s major languages, over beats by Italy’s Basement UnderGround Crew. Once again, Nomadic Wax provides the freshest guide to the international hip hop zeitgeist.
[Download Nomadic Wax – Diaspora Mixtape Vol. 2 (signup required)] 

5. Word Sound Power – The Bant Singh Project
Heavy dub from India: Word Sound Power is a collaboration between Dalit rights activist and folk singer Bant Singh, junglist MC Delhi Sultanate, and India-based New York producer Chris McGuiness. Strictly speaking , this one isn’t a mixtape – it’s a 2 EP download – but it’s new, its great and it’s free, so it’s going in this list. The second EP features remixes by domestic and international producers; the remix by Nucleya, rising star of Indian bass music, is a particular standout.
[Download Word Sound Power – The Bant Singh Project]
[Download The Bant Singh Project Remixes] 

Nomadic Wax – Democracy in Haiti MixtapeFoto:  Nomadic Wax

6. Nomadic Wax – Democracy in Haiti Mixtape
Nomadic Wax's second entry on this list is a mixtape trailer for the forthcoming film Democracy in Haiti , and features hip hop, electro and reggae by politically active Haitian artists in the run-up to the 2011 presidential election. Nomadic Wax's output frequently highlights the role of music-based political youth movements in democracies in the developing world, and Democracy in Haiti follows on from project like the 2007 film series Democracy in Dakar, and the 2009 mixtape Democracy in Burundi. In what was widely regarded as a protest vote against established politicians, Haitians elected pop singer Sweet Mickey to be the country's president in 2011. Whether Sweet Mickey can help the country more than its previous presidents remains to be seen. Nomadic Wax's forthcoming Democracy in Haiti film will undoubtedly explore the story through local eyes. In the meantime, download the mixtape, for the sound of Haiti in 2011.
[Download Nomadic Wax – Democracy in Haiti Mixtape (signup required)] 

7. The Peace Revolution 2.0
Compiled by DJ Dany Neville, this mixtape is an introduction to what the Middle Eastern spring looks like from Dubai. 50% of the tracks feature members of Dubai collective UGP (Underground Procedures), working with diaspora rappers like Syrian-American Omar Offendum and Iraqi-American The Narcicyst. Although leading Arabic-language MCs like Egypt's Arabian Knightz and Palestine's Ramallah Underground are also represented here, the main language is English, which may make this the most internationally-accessible of the current crop of Middle Eastern hip hop mixtapes. There some serious lyrical skills on show here, as well as some huge-sounding 21st-century productions - if you thought all Middle Eastern hip hop sounds like the lo-fi retro boom-bap of the Tunisian scene, then this is the mixtape to change your mind.
[Download The Peace Revolution 2.0] 

8. SudanEyez: Fight the Cause
This story will doubtless sound familiar to regular Friday Ripple listeners: in Sudan, hip hop has become the voice of disaffected youth tired of the brutality of their ageing rulers. Yes, it’s this again; check out OnIslam.net to learn about the specific background to protests in Sudan. Musically, this is a scene which is still finding its own sound: the productions are mostly quite lo-fi, and some of the attempts to incorporate Sudanese traditional music sound a little forced. However, it's early days, and there's enough genuinely innovative music on show here – Young David in particular deserves a shout-out – to make Sudanese hip hop a scene worth paying attention to in future.
[Download SudanEyez: Fight the Cause] 

Al-Jisr Mixtape (Bridging Cultures) Part IIFoto:  Re-Volt Radio

9. Al-Jisr Mixtape (Bridging Cultures) Part II
Mixed by Beirut's DJ Lethal Skillz for underground Saudi Arabian station Re-Volt Radio, this one shares a lot of common ground with Peace Revolution 2.0 above, and contains some of the same tracks (Arabian Knightz, Omar Offendum). There are also some cheerfully provocative international selections here, like Detroit rapper Invincible (who, being female, Jewish and gay, probably doesn’t usually get a huge amount of exposure in Saudi Arabia). This is a single-track affair, with terrific mixing and scratching from Lethal Skillz. One complaint though: no tracklisting? C'mon, Saudi underground radio, we wanna know what you're playing! (Update: tracklisting here)
[Download Al-Jisr Mixtape (Bridging Cultures) Part II] 

Finally, a speculative recommendation for an almost-certainly-upcoming mixtape which hasn't even been announced yet, much less released: 

10. Coming soon? - Benghazi rebel hip hop 2011 mixtape - ?
Admittedly, we’re just guessing here: at present, there is no such mixtape. But it’s only a matter of time. There are already detailed reports in the African media about an apparent hip hop renaissance in the Libyan rebel stronghold of Benghazi. It seems that Libyan rebel forces are actively encouraging the production of new hip hop CDs as insurgency music. The kids in late-1970s New York who invented it all would never have predicted this.
Making predictions is a dangerous game, but here's one anyway: as soon as large amounts of those CDs start appearing across the border in Egypt, mixtapes will start hitting the web. When that happens, you know you’ll hear it on the Friday Ripple. 

* 

In the meantime, there are so many good mixtapes to download already - just follow the links above. Or, if this collection looks like too much to download at once, why not listen to the Friday Ripple summary instead? We've condensed all the best bits into a 2-hour set, and you can stream it from Radio Wave's Jukebox streaming archive – select Friday Ripple from the programme menu, and click the show titled 29.04.2011. 

The full playlist is below; the numbers at the end of each track refer to the mixtapes in the list above. 

Abass Abass – Generation [Senegal/France] 2
MOA Feat Asem & 3Nitro - One Nation [Ghana/Ecuador] 2
General Steele & Dead Prez - Cry Freedom [USA] 2
DJZhao mashup: Frances Bebey - Bameda / AudioFly - Sweeter Than [Cameroon/UK] 3
Oumou Sangare - Yala (DJ Zhao fix) [Mali] 3
Nomadic Wax - Diaspora Mixtape Vol. 2 excerpt, feat. Rafiya [DR Congo/USA], Hired Gun [USA], Shokanti [Cape Verde/USA], Alex Antonov [Italy], Amkoullel + Ramsès [Mali], Outspoken [Zimbabwe], Mr. Reo [Haiti/USA], Final Outlaw [USA], Delaceiba [Honduras/USA] 4
Word Sound Power - DuBSingh [India] 5
Word Sound Power - Modern Dayz Slavery (Nucleya remix) [India] 5
Vox Sambou - O Haiti [Haiti] 6
Emrical – Oublie [Haiti] 6
Omar Offendum, Freeway, Ayah, Amir Sullaiman & The Narcicyst- Jan25 [USA] 7
Arabian Knightz – Prisoner [Egypt] 7
Meta & The Cornerstones - Somewhere In Africa [USA] 2
Modenine - Black Rap Messiah [Nigeria] 2
Smif -n-Wesun & Prince Eddie Atlas - Live By Da Gun [USA/Uganda] 2
Nile Rhythmik - SudanmeloDrama [Sudan] 8
Young David - Anna Sudani (Im Sudanese) [Sudan] 8
DJ Zhao mashup: Sarah Webster Fabio- Boss Soul [USA]/ Osunlade Native Tongue [Nigeria] 3
DJZhao mashup: Bole 2
Harlem - Home [Ethiopia]/ Booka Shade - Hide And Seek In Geisha's Garden [Germany] 3
Robin feat. Lupe Fiasco - Show Must Go On [UAE/USA] 7
Invincible – Sledgehammer [USA] 9
Nomadic Wax - Diaspora Mixtape Vol. 2 excerpt, feat. Daddy Jeff [Euskadi], Entroterra Roots [Italy], Stichiz [Haiti], Baf Diguess [Burkina Faso], LMNZ [Germany], Grandmaster Chu [China/USA], Wes Chen [China] 4
Stichiz - Haiti Peyi Mwen [Haiti] 6
The Very Best - Tengazako [Malawi/Sweden/France/UK]*
The Very Best - Sister Betina [Malawi/Sweden/France/UK/South Africa]* 

*(Because The Very Best's new mixtape wasn't available at the time of original broadcast, the last 2 tracks come from their 2008 mixtape Esau Mwamwaya and Radioclit are The Very Best. This is still a truly brilliant release, and it’s still available online)