Today marks the 10th anniversary of Mac Miller’s beloved breakout mixtape, K.I.D.S., and Rostrum Records celebrated the occasion with the release of new, deluxe edition of the project featuring a pair of new songs. The standard edition of the project already made the jump to streaming services earlier this year, followed by a vinyl reissue. Now, there’s new music to go along with it, too.
The new songs bring the mixtape back up to 18 tracks total. “Traffic in the Sky” and “La La La” didn’t make the cut for the original reissue, presumably due to clearance problems.
In addition to being Mac’s breakout moment, K.I.D.S. proved to be an important development for the free mixtape era after Miller was sued by Lord Infamous for using the beat for “Hip 2 Da Game” on “Kool Aid and Frozen Pizza.” They settled out of court, but the case proved that artists weren’t exempt from copyright laws just because they distributed music for free.
Back in October 2018, Rostrum Records founder Benjy Grinberg told Genius that Mac requested the retroactive clearance of K.I.D.S. shortly after they successfully brought Macadelic and Best Day Ever to streaming.
“You’re dealing with a lot of copyright issues that all have to be sewn up, and every track has to be cleared, and there has to be a contract for it,” frequent Mac collaborator E. Dan told Genius. “That’s been a challenge. Every one of these mixtapes that comes out, there’s been a bit of legwork behind that side of it.”
