You're looking back in time: Jamglue ran from 2006 to 2010. This page is a retrospective built from the public record.
Quick Links:About the Contest | The Materials | The Prizes | The Deadlines | Winners | The Entries | Sources
The contest banner as it ran on Jamglue, recovered from the static.jamglue.com S3 bucket.
The MC Lars “White Kids Aren’t Hyphy” Remix Contest
In April 2007, Jamglue and Nettwerk Music Group put four stems from MC Lars’ “White Kids Aren’t Hyphy” on the site and asked people to remix it. Lars picked the grand prize winner himself; the five first prizes went by popular vote. It was the second contest Jamglue ran with Nettwerk, and it set the shape every later one followed: stems under a Creative Commons license, an artist judging the top pick, and votes deciding the rest.
The Wayback Machine caught the contest page twice over: once while it was live, in May 2007, with 27 entries listed, and again in October 2007 after the results went up, by which point the page listed 81. This page is rebuilt from those two captures and from the Jamglue blog.
The MC Lars promo graphic Jamglue used to run the contest on its own home page.
About the Contest
The contest page opened with four steps. Quoted as they read on May 3, 2007:
Jamglue is excited to showcase a remix contest featuring “White Kids Aren’t Hyphy” by Nettwerk Music Group recording artist MC Lars. Here’s how you can participate:
Enter the contest by creating a mix containing at least one of MC Lars’ tracks. The easiest way to do this is to click the “Start Mixing Now!” button and then “SAVE A COPY” in the mixer to create your own version of the song.
Remix the song by adding new sounds, rearranging the clips, etc. using the Jamglue mixer. Be creative, and don’t forget to publish your mix when you’re done so that people can vote for it!
Promote your mix by embedding it in your blog/MySpace and emailing a link to all of your friends. The winning mixes are determined by how many people mark them as a Favorite, so break out your address book and encourage your friends to vote for yours!
Win cool prizes!
The blog announcement on launch day was blunter about why Jamglue was excited:
“MC Lars describes his music as ‘Post-punk Laptop Rap’; he’s a super cool guy with lots of talent and contagious energy. We saw him play last night at El Corazon and he put on an amazing show.”
Divya Bhat, “MC Lars: White Kids Aren’t Hyphy – Remix Contest!”, the Jamglue Blog, April 20, 2007
The Materials
“Here’s what you have to work with. Knock yourself out!” The contest page listed the original mix plus four separate tracks:
| White Kids Aren’t Hyphy | the starting point |
| Vox · White Kids Aren’t Hyphy | not recovered |
| Groove · White Kids Aren’t Hyphy | not recovered |
| Boom · White Kids Aren’t Hyphy | not recovered |
| Synth · White Kids Aren’t Hyphy | not recovered |
Unlike the 2007 T-Pain contest, none of the MC Lars audio has been found. Jamglue put track and mix downloads behind a sign-in, so no crawler ever reached the files, and the 2008 crawl of cache.jamglue.com that preserved the T-Pain stems did not cover these.
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 Nettwerk Music Group),” and that entrants must attribute MC Lars as well as Nettwerk, for example “Remix using elements from MC Lars/Nettwerk Music Group,” without implying endorsement. Entries themselves had to be published under the same CC BY-NC-SA 2.5 license.
The Prizes
“The grand prize winning remix will be chosen by MC Lars himself, featured on his MySpace for a week, and announced in his MySpace blog! The grand prize winner and five first prize winners will get an autographed copy of MC Lars’ ‘The Graduate’ and an autographed MC Lars poster!”
The official rules put numbers on it: one Grand Prize, being a week of the winning mix on myspace.com/mclars plus a blog post there, an autographed The Graduate, and an autographed limited edition poster, approximate retail value $35.98; and five First Prizes of an autographed album and poster each, also ARV $35.98. 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
| Apr 20, 2007 | The audio elements go online at 1:00 a.m. PT; the entry period opens and the blog announces the contest. |
| May 3, 2007 | The Wayback Machine captures the live contest page: 27 entries listed. |
| May 14, 2007 | Entry deadline, 11:59 p.m. PT. The page told entrants to “publish your contest entry by May 14, 2007.” |
| May 21, 2007 | The voting deadline as originally printed on the contest page. |
| Jun 15, 2007 | Voting actually closed here: the blog’s “Last Day to Vote!” post gives 11:59 p.m. PT on June 15. The window was extended by about four weeks. |
| Jun 30, 2007 | The blog announces the winners. |
| By Oct 2007 | The contest page itself is rewritten with the results: “The contest is now closed to new entries.” |
Winners
The winners were announced on the Jamglue blog on June 30, 2007, and the contest page was later rewritten to match. Both sources agree on all six names. Every title and username below is taken verbatim from those two pages; each mix links to its own archived page where one survives.
Grand Prize
“my criteria was: sounds most different from the original, keeps the tempo during the verses, and has a distinctive chorus…. this one got an A+ on all!!”
MC Lars, quoted on the Jamglue Blog, June 30, 2007, on how he chose. The contest page added: “The Grand Prize remix was chosen by MC Lars himself! The winning remix will soon be featured on MC Lars’ Myspace, and mclars.com.”
First Prize
“First prize winners were chosen by popular vote. Our Jamglue voters have great taste, because they made some great choices.”
Honorable Mention
“And here are our two honorable mentions: they made fantastic remixes, but since they didn’t use the Jamglue mixer for their remix, their entries had to be disqualified. We just wanted to recognize their talent though, so here they are.” Both were disqualified for the same reason, and neither appears in the winners list on the contest page.
| White Kids Aren’t Hyphy (Rock Remix) | afireinside13t |
| White kids mc lars untunedradio ft luda dre joung jeezy twista kenye produced by keggah | keimiles |
What survives: the names, the titles, the artist’s judging criteria in his own words, and an archived mix page for all six winners. The audio does not, for the winning remixes or for the four source stems. Honorable mention afireinside13t’s “Rock Remix” has no archived mix page at all, only fragments of the page furniture around it.
The Entries
The May 3, 2007 capture lists 27 entries, thirteen days into the entry period. The October 2007 results-era capture lists 81. Both captures print the whole list rather than a page of it, so the entry titles below are the complete field as of that first snapshot, in the order the page showed them.
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy [copy] · enzoadam
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy (Rock Remix) · afireinside13t
jamesbr’s White Kids Aren’t Hyphy · jamesbr
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy my band version keggah · keimiles
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy · lilro
White kids mc lars untunedradio… · keimiles
Tim’s mix · afireinside13t
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy [copy] · cre8nhavoc
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy [copy] · Rockets12
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy [Remix] · IceTre
I AM HYPHY · DaveyB
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy Vs. E-40 and The Pack · hershey43224
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy (Rock Wit Us Remix) · afireinside13t
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy [copy] · jah
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy remix · yoshie333
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy Urban Mix · Bio
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy [copy] · cre8nhavoc
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy (Greenleaf Remix) · Greenleaf
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy mixed by KING SBS · Kingsbs
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy mc lars ft 50cent and ti produced by keggah · keimiles
Carloslfc does White Kids Aren’t Hyphy · carloslfc
MC Lars vs 50 Cent - White Kids In Da Club · Tomaz
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy [copy] · AlienTechKilla
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy [copy] · enzoadam
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy [copy] · Jamboy66
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy [copy] · hitman1432
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy (Even if they’re wearing Vans) · stanlleydagamer
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy (Rock Remix) · afireinside13t
jamesbr’s White Kids Aren’t Hyphy · jamesbr
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy my band version keggah · keimiles
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy · lilro
White kids mc lars untunedradio… · keimiles
Tim’s mix · afireinside13t
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy [copy] · cre8nhavoc
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy [copy] · Rockets12
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy [Remix] · IceTre
I AM HYPHY · DaveyB
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy Vs. E-40 and The Pack · hershey43224
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy (Rock Wit Us Remix) · afireinside13t
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy [copy] · jah
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy remix · yoshie333
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy Urban Mix · Bio
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy [copy] · cre8nhavoc
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy (Greenleaf Remix) · Greenleaf
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy mixed by KING SBS · Kingsbs
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy mc lars ft 50cent and ti produced by keggah · keimiles
Carloslfc does White Kids Aren’t Hyphy · carloslfc
MC Lars vs 50 Cent - White Kids In Da Club · Tomaz
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy [copy] · AlienTechKilla
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy [copy] · enzoadam
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy [copy] · Jamboy66
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy [copy] · hitman1432
White Kids Aren’t Hyphy (Even if they’re wearing Vans) · stanlleydagamer
About the Artist
The contest page ran an artist bio built around a single long quote. It reads differently now than it did in 2007:
“I want to be someone who people recognize and want to come to see, but stayed true to their art and message through their whole career. I want to be able to tour the world and play sold out shows. I’d love to have some mainstream exposure to subversively bring my ideas into the popular eye, as long as I don’t have to compromise what I’m doing for the sake of popularity. I want to work with more artists that I admire and be known for having one of the most fun live touring shows that has ever hit the road. I’d like to die having put out one of the most original greatest hits albums in the history of the popular music. That would be awesome.”
– MC Lars, on the Jamglue contest page
The page also carried a video podcast from MC Lars and a note that he was “on tour now with MC Frontalot.” The video was a Flash embed and is gone.
Sources
jamglue.com/contests/mclars while the contest was live: the four steps, the materials, the prizes, the deadlines, the 27-entry field, the artist bio, and the full official rules.
The same URL after judging, with the Grand Prize and First Prize winners and 81 entries listed. This capture is the source for the winning mix titles and IDs.
“MC Lars: White Kids Aren’t Hyphy - Remix Contest!” by Divya Bhat: the launch, the El Corazon show, and the original deadlines.
“MC Lars: Last Day to Vote!”: the real close of voting, and how voting worked (mark the mix as a favorite by clicking the star).
“MC Lars Remix Winners Announced!”: the winners, the honorable mentions and why they were disqualified, and MC Lars’ judging criteria in his own words.
static.jamglue.com
The contest banner and promo graphic, 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