Chance the Rapper’s Acid Rap mixtape was one of the great success stories of 2013. Self-released for free download in April, the tape featured the likes of Twista, Action Bronson, and his good friend Childish Gambino. Chance’s bittersweet portraits of druggy teenage life in the shittier parts of Chicago were an instant hit, and made him a household name for rap fans. It even got him in the studio with Justin Bieber. What Acid Rap did not do was sell a lot of records. There was no single, and the project is not on iTunes. (Incidentally, bootleg copies of Acid Rap sold well enough for it to reach #63 on the Billboard charts, but that was only about 1000 units.)
Acid Rap is a mixtape, not an album. The exact definition of a mixtape has grown and shifted over hip-hop’s several-decade history. They’ve come a long way from DJ-mixed compilations of hot tracks that complement radio and club play, over the years mutating into all-star line-ups of emcees spitting hot bars over familiar beats, then to a single crew spitting bars over familiar beats, then eventually to a single crew (or artist) spitting bars over unfamiliar beats. At that point, they became “street albums,” basically just full-length projects that didn’t go through standard record label vetting and distribution.