Free mixtapes and EPs are usually unpolished and gritty.  Slapped together on tight schedules and low budgets, they’re a way for rappers and producers to generate noise without much expense (and, sometimes, effort).  The prevalence of mixtapes and EPs in hip-hop is probably due to a combination of several things, including the culture’s DIY aesthetic, the widespread availability of music production software and the lack of formal training and equipment necessary to spit a few rhymes (anyone can rap into a mic, playing even a basic melody on an instrument …

Yesterday, producers Deep and Ben Boogie – collectively known as 2 Hungry Bros – released Back for Seconds, a free mixtape.  And it’s damn good.  The album’s beats are incredibly diverse, ranging from rare funk and jazz grooves to more recent House tunes like Lady (!) and Music Sounds Better With You.  They’re not samples either, but rather the full tracks, preserved in their original glory for the album’s featured emcees to rhyme over.  It’s a unique experiment, for sure, and probably not for everybody.  But if you’re looking for …

Little Brother has released “Curtain Call,” the first single from their forthcoming and final album, LeftBack.  The track features a rad ’80s sample, embellished with synth drum fills and a smooth bass line.  Lyrically, “Curtain Call” has got to be one of their finest efforts.  It’s littered with the kind of witty punch lines and awesome references (“Not even Clarissa could explain it all”(!)) that make the best hip-hop joints worth re-listening to.  And it shows how far Rapper Big Pooh and Phonte have come as emcees; they’re definitely at …

Earlier today, Pitchfork reported that Blogger, the venerable Google-owned blogging service, has shut down several music blogs, including Pop Tarts Suck Toasted, I Rock Cleveland, Living Ears and It’s a Rap (none of which I have admittedly ever visited).  Apparently, the free music offered on the blogs violated Blogger’s terms of services.  As of about 11 a.m. PST, attempts to visit the blogs returned one-line ’Blog not found’ error messages.
The website The Daily Swarm has compiled several responses to the move, as well as a copy of an email sent from Blogger to I …

Huge props to p.o.b over at Metafilter for posting this.   Apparently Del decided that people need a bit of a pick-me-up in these tough economic times, so he has released a couple of small EPs for free (and legal) download.  The two song packs available for free download aren’t very long or anything, but they are definitely worth checking out.
Click on the links above to stream them before you download.

Lifehacker has run a post on a program called LastSharp.  At a glance, LastSharp will let you download those Last.fm tunes that you so greatly admire.
Not that we endorse it, of course.
Use it here.

For those of you who’ve been paying attention, we’ve been hyping up Wale for a little while now.
Wale has been working on a Seinfield-inspired mixtape, amusingly called the “Mixtape about Nothing“.  I haven’t given it a listen yet, but it’s up and available for download thanks to Elitaste.
Click here to go download it.
Just to get an idea, here’s the tracklist:
TRACK LISTING
1. “The Opening Title Sequence” (produced by Best Kept Secret)
2. “The Roots Song Wale Is On” f. Chrisette Michele (produced by ?uestlove & James Poyser)
3. “The Feature Heavy Song” f. …

In the latest of our string of posts about ways to listen to music online for free, 4080Records proudly presents Deezer.
As far as we can tell, Deezer is a french website that lets you stream popular music from a variety of wicked bands.  For example, click here to check out Portishead’s album Third, which was only released a month or so ago.
So far, it’s on the up-and-up.  Deezer has negotiated with the French version of RIAA and have somehow worked out a deal to stream this content.  Record companies seem …

The news seems to be getting better and better for music lovers who prefer the digital atmosphere for this sort of thing. CNET News.com reports that a former Google Executive has become the President of the digital music division of EMI, one of the major labels.
This is potentially huge news for music fans of all kinds. EMI represents artists like Daft Punk, Queen, Gorillaz and many others. Having this kind of variety means they appeal to a huge portion of the music listening public.
Douglas Merrill, the ex-Googlite …