This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Artist News
Drake intended album to be free mixtape, says free mixtape website
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 23 February 2015
Drake’s surprise album release ‘If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late’, dropped earlier this month, only became a proper album release at the very last minute, according to the owner of DatPiff, the self-proclaimed “authority in free mixtapes”.
According to HipHopDX, DatPiff’s KP says that Drake himself intended the album to come out as a freebie, most likely under DJ Drama’s Gangsta Grillz mixtape banner. But his label, Cash Money, intervened, turning the whole project into a proper release via iTunes and Spotify et al.
Says the DatPiff man: “Originally we were in talks to release it for free, and have DJ Drama host, and even make it an official Gangsta Grillz. However, the label was not in favour of that and they struck an agreement to release the project the retail route”.
Implying that Drake’s preference throughout was the free release option, he goes on: “[Cash Money] said, ‘Hell no’ … so they ‘agreed’ to do it this way, but it would count towards his Cash Money deal album total. The label had zero input or creative control over ‘If You’re Reading This Its Too Late'”.
No official word on this from any party, though the whole thing slips in nicely with rumours that Drake has been caught up in the falling out between Lil Wayne and Cash Money, and may have agreed to make his mixtape a proper album release, providing it would count to his contractual commitments to the label, so that he can leave the Universal-allied record company all the sooner. HipHopDX is already tipping Warner as his next label.
