ICYMI: The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do

I miss cassettes. In particular I miss mixtapes. You don't know what's on there until you take a listen. And there's something nerdily pleasurable about giving someone an unlabeled mixtape to expand their musical horizons.

There are rules to this process.



It's nigh impossible to be surprised by music nowadays. My iPod not only tells me the name of the song, album, and artist, it tells me the number of minutes and seconds that have played and that remain and even shows the album artwork! If I put a CD in my computer I get most of the same information. My CD player only gives me track number and time outputs, although fancier ones can tell you about the artist and song. Hell, even my car tells me the name of the song and artist playing on FM stations.

When Dave's friend asked me to put together a "bangin' old-school hiphop playlist" during a recent chili-themed minisummit, I felt competing pangs of joy (someone recognizes the superiority of my musical taste!) and pain (there will be no suspense over which to drape my superior musical taste!). Sunshine and rain, if you will. Simply put, I could list some song titles here and call it a day. But it's entirely possible, nay, probable, that you will simply look at the list and poo-poo it, or not listen to any of it because you're familiar with the tracks. There likely is a way to combine a bunch of songs into one MP3 with no track breaks, but I don't know how to do that.

So I'm doing this:

Track 1 (I really consider this part of Track 2)
Track 2
Track 3
Track 4
Track 5 (best cellphone ever!)
Track 6
Track 7
Track 8 (this is all yootoob has?!)
Track 9
Track 10
Track 11
Track 12
Track 13

Everything except for track 8 is 19+ years old and all these songs are bangin', so I believe I accomplished the assignment (i.e., I created a bangin' old school hiphop playlist). If you email me I'll send you a Spotify link. Enjoy.