Joell Ortiz Mixtapes - The Early Years

Getting started in the hip hop industry is difficult on its own, and many artists need to deal with personal issues on top of it all. While he was recording and releasing the first Joell Ortiz mixtapes, the artist had quite a lot to deal with both in and out of the studio. Although the early years were not easy, they gave him material for excellent hip hop songs that would take him far into his career.

Joell Ortiz was born in 1980 in Brooklyn, New York, where he competed in a number of rap battles throughout the years. While competing, he met a number of artists who would influence his sound and eventually put the experiences into the first Joell Ortiz mixtapes. While working on new mixtapes, he also put his energy into locking down a record deal.

In 2004, Joell Ortiz started getting the attention he deserved when he appeared on The Source Magazine's Unsigned Hype list. He was also on the Chairman's List for XXL Magazine, but his big break came when he won the EA Sports Battle that year. As the winner of the battle, he was given the opportunity to record a song for release on the NBA Live Soundtrack.

After appearing on the NBA Live Soundtrack, Joell Ortiz finally got the break for which he had been looking. Hip hop legend Jermaine Dupri signed Ortiz to his label, So So Def Records. Unfortunately, the deal did not pan out and Ortiz began collaborating with artists like KRS-One and Kool G. Rap to release new Joell Ortiz mixtapes.

Finally, after shopping around for a new deal, Ortiz signed to Dr. Dre's label, Aftermath Records. Although he was signed to Aftermath, Dre let him take an opportunity to record an album with Koch Records entitled The Brick: Bodega Chronicles. It seemed as if things were finally going his way, but many personal issues distracted the rapper from pursuing his success. He has been compared to Big Pun many times now, a comparison that he takes very seriously.

Joell Ortiz mixtapes provided a great venue for the rapper to stay connected to the industry when his record deal fell apart. Unfortunately, he had personal issues to deal with in addition to his professional issues and his career took a rocky turn for quite awhile. However, with some perseverance and patience, Joell Ortiz would eventually get back on track and realize his dream of making it in the rap industry.

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Jim Jones Mixtapes - The Early Years

Even when their rap mixtapes are a success, many artists need to work long and hard before they are successful in the commercial markets. Jim Jones mixtapes are a perfect example of an artist who had to wait quite awhile before finally becoming successful in the mainstream. The early years were difficult but Jim Jones eventually became one of the biggest stars in the hip hop industry.

Jim Jones was born Joseph Guillermo Jones II in 1976. He was born in the Tremont section of The Bronx but was raised in Harlem. While growing up, he attended Catholic school but would often cut classes to hang out at the local train station. The experiences he had around the train station influenced him greatly and appeared in later mixtapes.

After releasing a few mixtapes, he released his first major album, On My Way To Church, in 2004. Two singles were released off of the album, entitled "Certified Gangsters" and "Crunk Muzik." Unfortunately for Jones, they only reached numbers eighty and eighty-four respectively on the hip hop music charts. He returned to the studio and started working on songs that would get better radio play and make him a household name. When he first came out with Cam'ron, no one had any idea who he was, besides Cam'ron's homie.

In 2005, Jim Jones released his sophomore album, Harlem: Diary Of A Summer. Although the album reached number five on the Billboard charts, Jim Jones was once again disappointed with the performance of the singles on the radio. "Baby Girl" made it to number fifty-eight on the charts, while "What You Been Drankin' On" did not get any higher than number one hundred and six.

Not to be deterred by the disappointing reaction to his hip hop songs, he released another album in 2006 called Hustler's P.O.M.E., which stood for Product Of My Environment. The lead single was called "We Fly High" and featured rap superstar Lil Wayne. His perseverance paid off and Jim Jones saw his new record become certified gold.

Jim Jones mixtapes were just one stop on the long road to success for the rapper. He released two albums that had disappointing sales and even more disappointing radio play before finally putting out the album which put him on the map. His willingness to stick it out through the hard times helped launch him into stardom, but there was much more in the future for this rap artist.

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Three Big Home Audio Formats From The Previous 150 Years

One of the initial reasonably priced home entertainment technologies were the fascinating vinyl records. Compact discs were yet another revolutionary disc medium that appeared almost 100 years later. The non-disc counterpoint to both, tape cassettes, were popular commencing in the later years of vinyl and concluding in the earlier years of CDs. The three distinct media enabled people all over to hear their favorite songs (or skip over or through them) anytime they wished, with each exhibiting strong and weak points.

The classic vinyl records were an outgrowth of the invention of the gramophone, which at last ensured that a broad range of Americans and those in other industrialized states would be able to afford to listen to various non-live songs whenever they so desired. Thomas Edison had earlier invented a contraption that made use of wax or tinfoil cylinders, but this appliance, devised by Emile Berliner, utilized space-saving vinyl discs instead. Little grooves in a vinyl record would emit sound via a vibrating stylus which moved over them, with the audio then being amplified by an attachment of some kind. As a positive, sounds from many frequencies could be replicated on a vinyl record, but as a drawback, records' surfaces were easily damaged and the discs were often warped under higher temperatures.

The gramophone was rather large, though, and tape players were supposed to be a smaller alternative. A long piece of tape wound over a pair of spools, all encased in plastic, composed an audio cassette, the medium read by these machines. The tape inside of a cassette, readable by playback components through a gap on the underside of the plastic case, had aural information magnetically written into it. A significant advantage of cassettes was their capacity to be taken places, with a number of portable players being popular for quite some time. Major drawbacks included the risk of the tape becoming snagged and possibly even damaged by a player, and playback pitch varying with the factory-set speeds of players.

The most popular purchasable audio format at present, aside from mp3s, is the compact disc. A spiral track with incredibly tiny pits of different lengths, which a player's laser picks up on and transmits to decoding firmware in the machine, is imprinted on each compact disc. The main drawback with CDs is their likelihood of being scratched on either of their surfaces, although this problem has been somewhat alleviated by the development of re-surfacing solutions for the clear side on the bottom.

Without needing to rely on radio, we had the option to hear our favorite songs anytime on Beatles vinyl records, Allman Brothers cassettes, Nirvana CDs, and tons of others. Thus, our lives were without a doubt more enriched by the availability of these three technologies.

SoundStage Direct, LLC is an online independent store based in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. SSD has the largest selection of Beatles vinyl online. You don't want to miss amazing closeout deals available at our LP outlet! We have vinyl records for everyone and a variety of genres and formats available and ready to be shipped at your doorstep.

Seth Frank
SoundStage Direct, LLC

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