Drake Reveals His Mixtape-Making Success, "You Have To Approach It With A Selfless Mind-Set"

Young Money's Drake has shared his secrets to making a successful mixtape and explained why artists should avoid using their unreleased album cuts on an underground project.

Drake believes artists should take a unique approach when making mixtapes.

"I think that when creating a mixtape, you have to approach it with a selfless mind-set," Drake said in an interview. "A mixtape can't be the songs that don't make your album, or songs that aren't good enough to make your album make your mixtape -- unless you're that good. There aren't that many people that are that good. I'm not that good. That mixtape [So Far Gone] is me working my hardest. It wasn't 'Oh, here are the songs I'm gonna give away to you 'cause I have better songs coming.' A mixtape has become an album."
Last summer, 50 Cent also talked about how he crafts his underground releases.

"It'll be some more records they're playing," 50 said in a July 2009 interview. "Mister Cee plays a lot of that music still, 'Old School At Noon.' I had Cee send me a CD that he thought would be hot to hear. Even some of his favorites, I listen to 'em and production-wise, I wanted them to still meet what the youthful audience feels is hot right now. So some of those records, some of the things they were saying was cool that I could have wrote from that perspective like writing a remix is easy. Like writing a song that already has the context of the song already there is easy for me. Then it's not process, it's just putting the words to the scenario. If you have a production plan but no idea where you're going or what to write, that's when it starts to get difficult. Mixtape material is easy for me. Two days, three days, [I record it]. I know who I'm talking to."
Drake previously talked about the reasons behind re-releasing his So Far Gone mixtape for retail release.

"There are people that buy sell and trade evil on a daily basis...," he wrote in a blog posting last August, "when u believe in their brand is when they win...I also want people to know that I am only releasing this EP so that everyone involved in the project can hold a physical copy of the CD in their hands and see it in the store. And for anybody else who feels that So Far Gone marked a moment in time I just wanted to give you the option to have the disc. If you got it for free and want to keep it that way than by all means I urge you too. That was a gift from me to you...Thank Me Later."
The mixtape's re-release features seven tracks including an unreleased song called "Fear."

Tracklisting: 1. "Houstatlantavegas" 2. "Successful" featuring Trey Songz & Lil Wayne 3. "Best I Ever Had" 4. "Uptown" featuring Bun B & Lil Wayne 5. "I'm Goin' In" featuring Lil Wayne & Young Jeezy 6. "The Calm" 7. "Fear"