Save the Mixtapes! Free the DJs!

For years, the major label music industry has turned a blind eye to hip-hop’s vibrant mixtape trade. Artists with major label deals regularly appear on mixtapes to freestyle, talk to the streets, and even leak their own unreleased tracks. This has launched and re-launched dozens of careers: 50 Cent / G-Unit, The Diplomats, T.I., Young Jeezy, Lil Wayne.

Now through an trainwreck of arrogance and ignorance, the RIAA has decided that mixtapes are “counterfeit” products that infringe its monopoly right to sell recordings of the artists it finances. Using the police as muscle, they organized a raid on the Aphiliates’ studio in Atlanta last Tuesday resulting in the arrest of the biggest mixtape DJ team of the minute: DJ Drama and Don Cannon of Gangsta Grillz.

Hip-hop needs to speak on this matter and walk it out on the major labels. Enough of the backstabbing middlemen! We don’t need them anymore.

Please join us at Free the DJs. We are bringing together the knowledge, skills, and passions of artists, producers, copyfighters, entrepreneurs, fans, and activists from all over the world.

Free the DJs: it’s a movement.