You're looking back in time: Jamglue ran from 2006 to 2010. This page is a retrospective built from the public record.
The contest banner, recovered from the static.jamglue.com S3 bucket. On the live page this was an image map: a rectangle in the lower right linked out to fatbeats.com.
The Hi-Tek “My Piano” Guest Verse Contest
In December 2007, Jamglue and Babygrande Records ran the most direct version of the idea the whole company was built on. Not a remix contest: a guest verse contest. The offer, in the contest page’s own words, was “record your own guest verse and we’ll add it into the mix with Ghostface, Raekwon, and Dion.”
You did not need a DAW, a microphone setup, or any of it. You needed a browser, a microphone and headphones. Jamglue played the backing track in your ears, recorded your verse, and then spent a minute placing your take against Hi-Tek’s track and handed you back a finished song to publish. 308 entries were created.
Hi-Tek picked the winner himself. This page is rebuilt from the live contest page in January 2008 and from the rewritten results page in April.
About the Contest
The contest page, as it read on January 16, 2008:
Jamglue is excited to showcase a guest verse contest for Hi-Tek’s amazing new single “My Piano.” You can record your own guest verse and we’ll add it into the mix with Ghostface, Raekwon, and Dion.
Listen to Hi-Tek’s track and get familiar with it. This will be the “backing track” that you listen to while you record your part. Think about how you want your verse to sound and practice if you want.
Record your guest verse. If you’d like to use the Jamglue Recorder, follow instructions to the right. Or, you can sign in or sign up to upload your own recording!
Listen to your contest entry below. Follow the directions in the grey box below to tweak and publish your mix!
The one piece of source audio on the page was “My Piano - Contest Backing Track.” There were no stems: this contest gave you one track to rap over, not a session to take apart. The page also carried an embed of the official “Ohio All Stars” video, which was Flash and is gone.
The Recorder
The whole contest turned on one sentence of timing instruction, and on a warning about headphones. Both are worth quoting exactly, because they are what browser-based recording looked like in 2008:
“You have the first 50 seconds to yourself, then Dion comes in with the chorus. So keep an eye on the counter as you record!”
Note: Make sure you use headphones, so that the sample track doesn’t get recorded into your microphone! (It will play automatically when you hit record)
Recording Instructions:
Hit ACTIVATE RECORDER, then hit “Allow” to activate your microphone.
When you’re ready, hit RECORD. The recorder will ask you to “please wait” for a few seconds while it prepares the backing track.
When the music starts in your headphones, record your version into your microphone! When you’re done hit the stop button, or just let the backing track finish. You can cut your recording off early if you want.
Hit the play button to hear your recording. If you like it, hit SAVE to go on. If you don’t, hit CLEAR to record again.
After you save your recording, wait while we add your verse to “My Piano.” When it’s ready, it will appear to the left. Adjust the remix, and publish your contest entry!
“Hit Allow to activate your microphone” is the Flash Player security dialog. The recorder was a SWF; getting to a microphone from a web page had no other route in 2008.
The Prizes
One Grand Prize, chosen by Hi-Tek: a Pentax Optio E10 6.0 megapixel compact digital camera, a copy of Hi-Teknology3, and a Jamglue T-shirt, approximate retail value $170.21. Five First Prizes, decided by popular vote: the album and a T-shirt each, ARV $32.98.
A digital camera as the top prize in a rap contest is a period detail worth leaving in. The results page also promised the winning remix a feature on Hi-Tek’s MySpace, and told First Prize winners they would get the album, the shirt “and more.”
Licensing. The official rules stated that the tracks were licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 2.5 license, with all rights not expressly granted reserved by Babygrande Records, and that entrants must attribute Hi-Tek and Babygrande, for example “Remix using elements from Hi-Tek/Babygrande Records,” without implying endorsement. Entries had to be published under the same CC BY-NC-SA 2.5 license. Unlike the Nettwerk contests, these rules also took a non-exclusive license back to the entries for the sponsors, explicitly including distribution to mobile devices for a fee.
The Deadlines
| Dec 12, 2007 | The audio elements go online at 1:00 a.m. PT; the entry period opens. The rules spell it “Decmeber.” |
| Jan 16, 2008 | The Wayback Machine captures the live contest page: 219 entries created so far. |
| Jan 20, 2008 | Entry deadline, 11:59 p.m. PT. “Publish your contest entry by January 20, 2008.” |
| Feb 3, 2008 | Voting closes. |
| Feb 28, 2008 | Last date to request the winners list by email, per the official rules. |
| Mar 20, 2008 | The Jamglue blog runs its round-up of six fall contests and names Hi-Tek’s Grand Prize winner. |
| Apr 12, 2008 | The results page is captured: 308 entries created in total, up from 219 in January. The recorder was still live on the page alongside the winners. |
Winners
“The results are in, and our winners have been chosen!” Every name and title below is taken verbatim from the April 12, 2008 capture of the contest page; the Grand Prize winner is corroborated by the Jamglue blog’s March 2008 round-up. Each mix links to its own archived page.
Grand Prize
Bravado - My Piano - Contest Mix by Bravado
“This was Hi-Tek’s personal favorite! The remix will be featured on Hi-Tek’s MySpace soon. Bravado will also receive a Pentax Optio E10 digital camera, a copy of Hi-Tek’s ‘Hi-Teknology3’ album, and a Jamglue T-shirt. Congratulations, Bravado!”
First Prize
“Our First Prize winners were chosen by popular vote - congratulations to these winners on their great mixes, as well as the incredible energy that went into promoting their mixes to collect votes! Each first prize winner gets a copy of Hi-Tek’s ‘Hi-Teknology3’ album, a Jamglue T-shirt, and more.”
| My Piano-Contest Remix [3rd verse is mine] | EthioBoy |
| Solomon’s Hi-Tek Guest Verse | Solomon |
| Official Contest Mix-My Piano- Phillykid & P-Dak | Phillykid |
| My Piano f/QUESNE | QUESNE |
| Khaotikswagga24’s Hi-Tek Guest Verse | Khaotikswagga24 |
The username Solomon also took the Grand Prize on the MC side of the Blue Scholars contest a few months earlier. A small group of regulars shows up again and again across the 2007 and 2008 contest run.
What survives: the names, the titles, an archived mix page for all six winners, and the recorder instructions in full. The audio does not, not the winning verses and not the backing track. That hurts more here than on the remix contests: what was interesting about this contest was 308 amateur rappers recording a verse into a laptop microphone and being placed next to Ghostface Killah and Raekwon, and none of those verses can be heard now.
About Hi-Tek
The contest page ran a bio: Hi-Tek “helped define the sound of New York’s independent rap scene” in the late 1990s through Mos Def and Talib Kweli, then became “one of Dr. Dre’s most prized producers” through 50 Cent, The Game and Lloyd Banks. Hi-Teknology3 was the record the contest was promoting. The bio ended on a quote from him:
“Like I said on ‘The Blast’ Verse, I really do think I’m a chameleon. I think I’ve gotten longevity in the game because I understand all aspects of people. I’m from the midwest and I grew up listening to a lot of music and respecting it. I was inside the music. I took the best from each region and made it my sound, and that’s how I think I’m able to do whatever I want to do and still feel like I’m putting my heart and soul into it.”
Hi-Tek, quoted in the artist bio on the Jamglue contest page
The page’s two outbound artist links were labelled “Hi-Tek’s CrackSpace” and “Hi-Teknology.com.”
Sources
jamglue.com/contests/hitek while the contest was live: the pitch, the backing track, the deadlines, the recorder instructions, and the entry count at 219.
The same URL after judging, with the Grand Prize and First Prize winners, the final entry count, the artist bio, and the full official rules. This capture is the source for every name on this page.
“And the winner is…”: the fall 2007 round-up, thanking “Chuck D, Gary G-Wiz, JR WRiter, Tigarah, and Hi-Tek for participating in this pioneering creative dialogue with their fans,” and naming the Hi-Tek Grand Prize mix. The only archived copy of this post is truncated partway through the Hi-Tek section.
static.jamglue.com
The contest banner, still sitting in Jamglue’s original S3 bucket.
Jamglue.com has shut down. Thanks for all your support.
Rebuilt from the Wayback Machine, the original static.jamglue.com S3 bucket, and contemporaneous press · Y Combinator: Jamglue (S06) · the retrospective