- An e-mail alert for the unlicensed version of Acid Rap
If you attended the CHIRP Record Fair this past weekend there’s a chance you came across some of the recent rap and R&B bootleg records I wrote a B Side cover story about a handful of months ago—these are unofficial versions of free mixtapes and albums that either haven’t come out on vinyl or are out of print. I bought my first of these hip-hop bootlegs from local record distributor Groove Distribution at last year’s CHIRP Record Fair (a $20 copy of Frank Ocean’s breakthrough mixtape, Nostalgia, Ultra), so I fully expected to find more of them at Groove’s table at this year’s fair.
It’ll be more difficult to stamp out the vinyl versions of Acid Rap partially because the people making them are elusive and their products don’t have any identifying information that can be traced—there aren’t any bar codes on any of the new rap bootlegs I’ve found. When I called Turntable Lab to find out how the store received the Acid Rap vinyl, the folks there had no comment. The Acid Rap listing has since been removed from the site, but I imagine it won’t be long before the unlicensed vinyl begins appearing in retail stores around town.
