The New York Times is reporting that Atlanta mixtape king DJ Drama has been arrested by jackbooted RIAA thugs. Ridiculous. No hip-hop artist releases an album these days without doing a DJ Drama mixtape first–the artists know that it’s all about iTunes downloads, ringtones and uses in advertising these days, and the best way to get those is with a hot mixtape. They could care less about the cut into album sales, especially since the people who buy mixtapes usually don’t buy albums anyway–those are for the suckers at Walmart. So what the hell is going on here? Is it that the record companies are pissed that the artists are going behind their backs to do mixtapes (most of Drama’s tapes feature the artists themselves doing cameos, shoutouts, freestyles, etc)? In that case, this is as clear a message to the artists as can be: leave your label and go independent because your label clearly doesn’t have your best interests in mind.

If you want to sample some of Drama’s handiwork, I recommend any of the tapes he’s done with Jeezy, and Welcome to the ATL, but it’s all good, really.

On a related note: anyone out there seen this movie yet?

Update: for those of you unclear on the whole mixtape concept, Jay Smooth does an excellent job of breaking it down:

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