Mixtape Love: The Music Issue '09

Basically, I grew up right there on the corner of Parkway and Ponce de Leon in the apartments that sit right across the street from the Taco Bell. So I grew up around the whole dope game. I learned that wasn’t the way to go growing up. I had to come up with a better plan. — Grip Plyaz

Me and Brett were both in these little mall rat cults that hung out at Phipps and Lenox and caused trouble. We had a crew and we would hang out at the Publix by Phipps and try to get people to buy us beer and wine, and then we would go hang out in the stairwell at the mall and smoke cigarettes. — Woody Shortridge of the Balkans

We found out really quickly how the royalty checks work — they don’t! We never got a penny from our album sales. So we said, “Fuck it. Instead of handing our music over to someone else, let’s start our own label." — Dan Scanlan of Zoroaster

An Atlanta compilation featuring 27 acts we love

I feel like I’m flier than a lot of people. I may not just say it to their faces, ’cause I don’t know what kind of reaction that’s going to get out of a lot of people. So music is just where I kind of let that out. — Mums FP

I met Nathaniel and Tauseef in high school in Gainesville. Nathaniel went to a different school than me and Tauseef, but we hated everybody at both of our schools so we hung out and drank Hawaiian Punch, ate toast cheese crackers and played music. — Philip Frobos of Carnivores

Back then, we were just listening to booty-shake music and N.W.A. and stuff like that. Most of the music that was coming out of the South was more dance type, but when [OutKast] came out just rapping, we were like, “Aww man.” I remember I used to go to sleep listening to the ATLiens album every night in the little tape deck. — A. Leon Craft

Brannon and I have been in bands together for a long time and we’ve always wanted to write different-sounding stuff, whether it be something a little slower or maybe much faster, but it always comes out sounding punk because that’s the only kind of band we’ve ever been in, and that’s what we know how to play. — Mike Beavers of Predator

My first introduction to hip-hop was when my cousin had 8Ball & MJG’s Comin’ Out Hard — when they still had the [Jheri] curls on the cover. I remember sitting in front of the stereo, just looking at the stereo, listening to it. And something about it caught me — Stanza

"I Can't Take It" just kind of came out of me. It's a pretty straight-up rocker and I didn't have to think about it, really. It's nice when a song flows like that and you can capture a feeling in a song; the initial feeling that you had when you wanted to write it in the first place. — Anna Kramer

I started the Natural Extension Concept (the N.E.C.) in high school, but not really as a band. It's about exploring musical possibilities and writing songs, but also working with other people. — Cyrus Shahmir of the N.E.C.

When we did the first record, we literally threw it up. With Scramble, we thought, “OK, maybe we are musicians of some kind.” We took it kind of seriously, but with a pinch of salt. — Julia Kugel of the Coathangers