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 as it ran across the top of jamglue.com/contests/jrwriter, November 2007 to spring 2008.
The J.R. Writer “Where You At” Remix Contest
On November 15, 2007, Jamglue and Babygrande Records opened the session for “Where You At,” the first street record off J.R. Writer’s Writer’s Block 5. Five stems went up under a Creative Commons license next to the official contest mix, J.R. picked the Grand Prize himself, and the community voted on five First Prizes. It became one of the biggest contests Jamglue ran: 1,200 entries by mid-January 2008, and 1,473 by the last archived count.
The prize J.R. paid off in the most Jamglue way possible: he went into a booth and recorded a custom spoken intro for the winning remix, and Jamglue uploaded it to the site as a track of its own.
The Materials
“Here’s what you have to work with. Knock yourself out!” The contest page listed the official contest mix plus five separate tracks:
| Where You At | the official contest mix |
| Acapella - Where You At | track 1024061 |
| Orchestra - Where You At | track 1024067 |
| Drums - Where You At | track 1024079 |
| Cymbals - Where You At | track 1024065 |
| Strings - Where You At | track 1024077 |
What survives: the track list and the track IDs, from the archived contest page. None of the five stems was ever crawled, so unlike the T-Pain contest there is no audio to play here; the titles are all that is left of the session.
Licensing. The official rules stated that the tracks were “licensed for use under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 2.5 license (and that all rights that are not expressly granted under this license are reserved by Babygrande Records),” and that entrants must attribute J.R. Writer and Babygrande Records, for example “Remix using elements from J.R. Writer/Babygrande Records,” without implying endorsement. Entries had to be published under the same CC BY-NC-SA 2.5 license.
The Prizes
“J.R. Writer will pick the Grand Prize winner! The winner will receive a portable Microsoft Zune MP3 player and will have their remix featured on J.R. Writer’s MySpace and CrackSpace pages, with a personalized introduction by J.R. himself.”
“You and other Jamglue users will vote for 5 First Prize winners! The winners will get autographed copies of ‘Writer’s Block 5’.”
The official rules put numbers on it: one Grand Prize of a Microsoft Zune 30GB, an autographed Writer’s Block Volume 5, and the MySpace feature, approximate retail value $167.97; and five First Prizes of one autographed Writer’s Block Volume 5 each, ARV $17.98. The Grand Prize was the artist’s pick; the five First Prizes went by “the number of Jamglue users who called the remix ‘A Favorite’.”
The Deadlines
| Nov 15, 2007 | The audio elements go online at 1:00 a.m. PT; the entry period opens. |
| Dec 16, 2007 | Entry deadline, 11:59 p.m. PT. |
| Dec 30, 2007 | Voting closes. |
| Jan 16, 2008 | First archived capture: judging is still open, 1,200 entries created so far. |
| Jan 20, 2008 | Last date to request the winners list by email, per the official rules. |
| Feb 22, 2008 | Still “stay tuned and we’ll announce winners soon,” now at 1,357 entries. |
| By Mar 16, 2008 | The page has been rewritten with the results: “The results are in, and our winners have been chosen!” |
| Mar 20, 2008 | The Jamglue blog rounds up six contests at once, J.R. Writer among them. |
| Dec 17, 2008 | Last full capture of the results page: 1,473 entries created in total. |
Winners
“The results are in, and our winners have been chosen!” Six mixes were named: one Grand Prize picked by J.R. Writer, and five First Prizes decided by popular vote. Every name and title below is taken verbatim from the archived results page; each mix links to its own archived page.
Grand Prize
JR Writer - Where You At (Produced by TurreekK) by TurreekK
“This was J.R.’s personal favorite mix! The remix will be featured on his Myspace and CrackSpace. TurreekK will also receive an autographed Writer’s Block 5 mixtape and a ZUNE compliments of Digiwaxx. Congratulations, TurreekK!”
Above the winning mix, the results page carried the promise J.R. had made when the contest launched, delivered as audio: JR’s Intro for “Where You At” Remix Winner, uploaded to Jamglue by the artist’s own account, JRWriter. The track page is archived; the audio behind it is not.
The house promo Jamglue ran when the fall 2007 results landed, covering three contests at once.
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!”
| Desia “Where U At Mix” | aisenod |
| Where You At [contest mix] | thehoofispimp4sho |
| Where You At...J-Starr Contest Mix Feat. Desia | starrtraxx |
| Where You At((Dipset Remix)) | bucboy32 |
| J.R Writer Contest Remix By: Beast On Beats Productions | Beast_On_Beats |
What survives: the six names, the six titles, and an archived mix page for every one of them, plus the track page for J.R.’s recorded intro. None of the audio does. Jamglue put mix downloads behind a sign-in, so no crawler ever reached the files, and no copy of the winning remix or of J.R.’s intro has been found anywhere else.
About J.R. Writer
The bio Babygrande supplied for the contest page, quoted as it ran:
“Getting his start as an extended member of the Dipset crew (including multiple appearances on frontline Dipset releases & mixtapes), J.R. is perhaps most renowned for his highly regarded ‘Writer’s Block’ concept mixtape/album series. ‘Writer’s Block 5’ is characterized by J.R. as the defining offering from this series to date.”
“But first... it’s back to the streets with the gritty stylings of ‘Where You At.’ The first street/leak record from JR’s November 20th release ‘Writer’s Block 5,’ ‘Where You At’ embodies the gritty, New York street sensibility that has catapulted JR out of the shadow of Dipset and into the lyrical limelight.”
Sources
jamglue.com/contests/jrwriter after entries closed and before results: the materials list, the prizes, the deadlines, the entry count, the artist bio, and the full official rules.
The same URL after judging, with the Grand Prize and the five First Prize winners. This is the source for every name on this page.
The last full capture, and the source for the final entry count of 1,473.
“And the winner is…” by Divya Bhat: the round-up of six fall 2007 contests, with the full title of the winning mix and J.R.’s intro track.
static.jamglue.com
The contest banner and the winners promo, still sitting in Jamglue’s own S3 bucket, mirrored here.
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