10 x Dr Dre ROADIUM Swap Meet Mix-Tapes from the 80’s…

Before Dre and Yella produced ‘Boys N The Hood’ , before Greg Mack and the KDAY ‘Traffic Jams’, before Ruthless Records went multi-plat, before Dr Dre was ‘buying MCM, Fila and Gucci, and diamond studs the size of marbles’, he was comin outta his teenage years and makin crazy noise across California…

Andre Young was producing records with the World Class Wreckin’ Crew back in 84 [alright, so weve seen the sequins], it was around this time he went by the name of the Master of Mixology, puttin out bootleg tapes of Rap tracks as far back as 85, and maybe even earlier

These were the days of the Radiotron, KDAY, the Mack-Daddy Record Store, the Cabbage Patch dance, and early documentation of early b-boy inspired Hip-Hop in German documentary, Breakin and Enterin [featuring a teenage Ice T]

Roadium swap-meets were just organised lawn sales in parking lots, and the Roadium mixtapes were simply another slice of old school Hip-Hop, this time, ‘West Coast style’. Mixed by DJs like Battery Brain, Dre and Tony-A [from Hi-C] amongst others, they were ostensibly 4-track [mash-up for want of a better term] mixtapes of the Hip-Hop smashes of the time, produced in bulk on cassette and sold at open air markets across Cali… later to be bootlegged further across the country

They had crappy photocopied covers, with somewhat shitty scratchin, they were raw, they contained hiss, [mmmm, tape hiss] and essentially, they were amazin’

The main thing about the tapes is that there were so many jams crammed onto even one side of each mix, and only a small number of the main bulk of the tracks were actually listed on the covers. 4-track mixtapes back then were the next level of listening and mixing capability, with layers and layers of tracks lasagne-style on top of each other, for the time, technically on some next shit…

With names like Buggin, Cuttin and Kickin, they may sound cornball, but the choice of tracks and the passion with which they were created is what makes them classic …. Not everybody back then was makin dope-ass mixtapes with Juan Atkins [Model 500], Mantronix and Maggotron on em ! There’s somethin Latin Rascal-ish about them, even if the Latin Rascals are famous for their radio broadcasts and choppy machine-gun edits, the Roadium tapes have that same untreated and unprocessed sound of the moment

Along with people like DJ Prince Ice and Battery Brain, Dre was one of the pioneers, and they are truly amazin documents of the time [shame his standard of productivity levels arent up to this kind of output in 2008]

Ten of the mixes [as well as the odd Battery Brain tape & World Famous Supreme Team Show] are all available to download here at WFMU, leave a comment while yer there, these are rare as hens teeth. Show some love, the chaps [Listener Fodder] have been upping these for a while and there may be more classics to come, even if the Roadium mixes are now spent

Wake Your Daughter Up have some more over here for all you completists…