Lil Wayne & Drake's Mixtapes Inspired Fabolous, "There's Still Definitely Potential There"

News: Lil Wayne & Drake's Mixtapes Inspired Fabolous, "There's Still Definitely Potential There"
Thursday, Dec 24, 2009 7:00AM

Written by Cyrus Langhorne

New York rapper Fabolous recently credited the mixtape success of Lil Wayne and Drake over the past year for helping to re-inspire him to launch forward with his own underground movement.

According to Faboloso, the mixtape game initially seemed to be dying out prior to witnessing the Young Money front runners' success with So Far Gone and No Ceilings.

"The Drake mixtape of course was a huge success," Fab explained in an interview. "Lil Wayne's tape generated a lot of interest. I saw Wayne and just listening to his tape gave me kinda the feeling that people still accepted the mixtapes and wanted to hear it. I guess it's particular artists that they attach to but I had felt even with the most high-class artists, people were getting so used to getting free music that the mixtape game wasn't that influential anymore. So when I seen what [Wayne's] No Ceilings did, it let me see that there's still definitely potential there, there's still that market there. I think for me it's definitely there because my albums tend to be a little more mainstream than my mixtapes." (Real Talk NY)
Fab recently spoke on working toward his next album along with a forthcoming DJ Drama mixtape.

"I'm looking to come next summer," Fab said of the album's release date. "I like summer releases. It's good timing. People are out, a lot of people need good music to ride to. I'm looking towards June or July again and come with Loso's Way 2." As of now, the roll-out for the original Loso's Way is still underway. Fab wants to release viral visuals for "Lullaby," "Last Time" and "Makin' Love," while a clip "I'mma Do It" hit the 'net a few weeks ago. Look for Fab to keep heating up cyberspace with a new mixtape on December 25, hosted by DJ Drama. (MTV)
Fabolous has continued his mixtape grind and previously announced plans to drop releases with Drama and DJ Clue earlier this year.

"We're working on [a mixtape] now," Fab revealed in an interview. "We're actually going to be with DJ Drama, it's a double disc with DJ Drama and DJ Clue. It's gonna be a Gangsta Grillz on one side and a DJ Clue mixtape on the other side. For the Gangsta Grillz, it will be a There Is No Competition Part Two and the DJ Clue one, we are calling it That Fabolous Basterd kinda like the name of the Brad Pitt movie, Inglorious Basterds -- It's definitely gonna be Street Fam on there, expect to hear Freck Billionaire, expect to hear Paul Cain, expect to hear Red Cafe -- it's gonna be a lot of our Street Fam on that tape." (iHipHop)
While he believes mixtapes are declining in popularity, Fab previously said there were ways to help strengthen them.

"That game is really saturated," Fab said in an interview about the mixtapes. "I feel like you really have to do something special now, but there's not really anything special you can do on a mixtape besides trying different things musically or with the way you distribute it...There's nothing special to me about a mixtape now...There's pretty much one coming out every five minutes. Right now, I think the dopest thing is to have a mixtape online--don't even have a hard disc, because even that's slowed down. When was the last time someone went somewhere and bought a hard copy of a mix CD? So maybe the next step is to release something digitally and tie it in with that." (Hip Hop DX)

From SOHH.com

http://www.sohh.com/2009/12/lil_wayne_drakes_mixtapes_inspired_fabol.html