I like Metal Mouth, Demolition Men, and DJ Backside mixtapes. Those are real mixtapes with other artist's songs. Now when an artist realeases a mixtape before his album and he includes 1 or 2 songs from their unreleased album onto the mixtapes, it really hurt's the future release of their album(i.e. The Team........great album......too many songs were released too early). It's cool to do a mixtape with a couple of borrowed industry beatz, but to do a whole mixtape (i.e. ALLNDADOE 3,4,5 & a shit load of others) you're dumbin down your lyrics and people might loose interest. Now if a record label were to release a REAL mixtape with old and new material that their label released now i'm sure it would turn out way better than the mixtapes we here today(which aren't too original......especially when rappers have rhymed over Still Tippin, How we do, and Back then millions of times). Dj Ideal, DJ Skee, Cali Untouchable DJs, MM DJs, Demo. Men DJs, DJ Green Latern, and DJ Enuff make real mixtapes.....which are priced @ 6.99 or less(4.99 if you can find the right website)......which is money well spent considering that those djs know how to do mixtapes.
As for compilations.........i only buy from Black-N-Brown because that is the only label that makes compilations worth buying and listening to. I agree with what everyone has posted and you all have valid reasons. Pac was a factor, over saturated market with artist and worthless albums was another. But the fact is that the industry looks at a certain deomographic area and sees how much artist it can pull out of there(i.e. H-Town, ATL, Chi-town, Detroit, New Orleans and L.A.&Bay at one point). Now it's up to the people with a gift and/or talent to step up to the mic while the industry is peekin it's way over here.
I will say this though......the radio stations need to switch it up a bit and play non-hyphy songs.....because that's going to overshadow the other type of music and artist that the bay has to offer.