Before Dr. Dre and DJ Yella produced Straight Out Of Compton, before Greg Mack and the KDAY Traffic Jams radio show and before Ruthless Records went multi-platinum, it was a teenage Dr. Dre (then known as The Master of Mixology) making amazing mixes of early rap tracks on cassette as far back as 1985. These were the days of The Radiotron, the ‘Cabbage Patch’ dance, and the b-boy inspired hip-hop documentary Breakin’ and Enterin’.

Produced in bulk on cassette and sold at open air markets across Los Angeles, the Dr. Dre mixtapes were ostensibly 4-track ‘mash-ups’ of all the newest and dopest records of the time. They had simple photocopied covers but they were raw… and they were incredible. Dre’s tapes were sold at swap meets, which were just organized yard sales held in giant parking lots, like The Roadium. However, it was at these swap meets that Dr. Dre first made a name for himself by simply adding another dimension to the new west coast style of hip hop.

The greatest thing about these tapes was that there were so many jams crammed onto each side, yet only a small percentage of them were actually listed on the covers. This was the next level of mixing capabilities – layers upon layers on top of each other that was so technically advanced at the time that it was hard to figure out exactly how Dre created them. The choice of tracks and the passion in which the mixes were created is what made them classic. The Roadium Swap Meet Mixes have an untreated and unprocessed sound that will bring you back to the mid 1980s at a time when hip hop was just getting started.