DJ Drama Reveals His First Time Being Paid For A Mixtape Was With Jeezy

DJ Drama sat down for an exclusive interview with Atlanta radio station Hot 107.9, where he revealed he wasn’t paid for hosting mixtapes until he worked with Jeezy.

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Dj Drama’s mark on the hip-hop game will be felt for generations to come. Drama had a personal hand in the era that defined where hip-hop was headed, which led to it becoming the #1 genre in the world. Drama and his Gangsta Grillz mixtape series helped break artists, usher in new sounds, and repeatedly prove Datpiff servers were absolute trash. He even changed the game forever in the way the industry viewed mixtapes.

January 16th, 2007 will forever be a part of hip-hop history as DJ Drama and his business partner, Don Cannon, had their Atlanta office raided by police for selling “bootleg CDs.” The CDs were not bootleg–in fact, the artists on the tapes were 100% involved and recorded specifically for Gangsta Grillz projects. Fast forward to the current day and artists are now calling projects ‘mixtapes’ left and right and DJ Drama is one of the top executives in the game.

Recently, Drama stopped by Atlanta’s Hot 107.9 for an exclusive interview and revealed that throughout his hustle in the early years, he wasn’t compensated financially for his work until he worked with Young Jeezy. Jeezy and Drama blessed us with what many would call the greatest mixtape of all time, Trap Or Die. Still, that mixtape however wasn’t the first time Drama and Jeezy worked together, in fact, Drama’s first time being paid for a mixtape was Jeezy’s Streets Is Watching, which came before Trap Or Die.

You can listen to Drama discuss his first payday and a little history behind the tapes below.