Somebody went digging in old James Yancey’s crates. The product was a De La Soul mixtape hosted on BitTorrent. Yancey was an acclaimed music producer with J. Dilla being one of his known aliases. De La Soul and BitTorrent will be offering a full-length mixtape for free downloads in support of the J Dilla foundation. The mixtape, Smell the D.A.I.S.Y (Da Inner Soul of Yancey), re-works some of De La’s earliest verses, superimposing them over beats that had previously been unreleased by Dilla. Through the mixtape, De La Soul hopes to draw support to the work done by J Dilla Foundation in funding music programs run by inner city schools.
De La broke into the hiphop scene when sampling became a big part of the art form. Back in February, the group decided to share their whole discography online as part of their 25 year anniversary. The result – server went down due to the number of excited fans.
Hosting the new project over BitTorrent’s P2P network should make the download available regardless of the many fans who’ll want to access it. By entering an email address, fans can download the BitTorrent Bundle containing the 11-track mixtape, an audio letter, J Dilla documentary and wallpapers. In the past, BitTorrent has collaborated with Public Enemy to create a multi-track Bundle made available directly to hiphop heads. To date over 8,000 artists have signed on to BitTorrent Bundle in an effort to distribute their content directly to the Internet.
