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 | Public Enemy | Sources
The contest banner as it ran on Jamglue, fall 2007, recovered from the still-live static.jamglue.com bucket.
The Public Enemy “Amerikan Gangster” Remix Contest
In fall 2007, Jamglue and SLAMjamz Records opened the multitrack session for Public Enemy's “Amerikan Gangster”: eight stems plus the contest mix, under a Creative Commons license, free to copy into the Jamglue Mixer. Chuck D and Bomb Squad producer Gary G-Wiz picked the grand prize winner themselves. A crawl a week in counted 87 entries created; by the time the results page went up the count was 561.
“The days of the few making music for the multitude are over. There is a lot of talent out there, and we try to get involved with anything that is showcasing the skills of up and coming music makers.”
Gary G-Wiz, quoted in “Public Enemy on Jamglue!”, the Jamglue Blog, October 4, 2007
About the Contest
Four steps. Quoted as they read on September 11, 2007:
Enter the contest by creating your own copy of the official contest mix. 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. You can even add your own voice using the Jamglue Recorder in the 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: embed it in your MySpace and email a link to all of your friends. The First Prize 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 great prizes!
The blog announcement is the closest thing in the archive to a statement of why a group with Public Enemy's history was doing this at all, and why they picked Jamglue to do it on.
“We've done remix contests on past albums, but when I saw Jamglue's tools and interface, I knew there were great possibilities there.”
Gary G-Wiz, the Jamglue Blog, October 4, 2007
The Materials
“Here's what you have to work with. Knock yourself out!” The contest page listed the official contest mix plus eight separate tracks:
| Amerikan Gangster: Contest Mix | the starting point |
| Lead and Chorus Vocals | not archived |
| Ad Libs and Background Vocals | not archived |
| Strings | not archived |
| Horns | not archived |
| Guns | not archived |
| Bass Synth | not archived |
| Drums | not archived |
| Bellz | not archived |
The track names survive; the audio does not. The November 2008 crawl of cache.jamglue.com that saved the T-Pain and Coldcut stems did not reach these files.
Licensing. Entries had to be published under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 2.5 license, and entrants received no royalties from anyone who reused their track under it. The official rules are headed “Jamglue and SLAMjamz Records, Public Enemy / ‘Amerikan Gangster’ Remix Contest Official Rules” and list the sponsors as Jamglue Inc. of 214 Summit Ave. E, Seattle, and SLAMjamz Records.
The Prizes
As the page put it: “Chuck D and producer Gary G-Wiz will personally pick the Grand Prize winner! Their favorite remixer will win a portable DVD player from Mediastreet, and the remix will be featured on SLAMjamz.com. You and other Jamglue users will vote for 5 First Prize winners! The First Prize winners and the Grand Prize winner get an autographed copy of Public Enemy's latest album How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul???”
The official rules put numbers on it: one Grand Prize of a MediaStreet portable DVD player plus one autographed album, ARV $154.98, the highest-value prize in any Jamglue contest rules recovered so far; and five First Prizes of one autographed album each, ARV $15.98. Judging split the same way as the prize table: “The Grand Prize winning remix will be chosen by the artist, Public Enemy. The five (5) first place remixes will be determined by the number of Jamglue users who called the remix ‘A Favorite.’”
The Deadlines
| Sep 5, 2007 | The audio elements go online at 1:00 a.m. PT; the entry period opens. |
| Sep 11, 2007 | The Wayback Machine captures the live page: 87 entries created so far. |
| Oct 4, 2007 | The blog announces the contest, with the Gary G-Wiz quotes. |
| Oct 21, 2007 | Entry deadline, 11:59 p.m. PT. |
| Nov 4, 2007 | Voting closes. |
| Mar 8, 2008 | The results page is archived: 561 entries created in total. |
| Mar 20, 2008 | The blog rounds up the fall's six contests and leads with this one. |
Winners
“The results are in, and our winners have been chosen!” The contest page was rewritten with the results once judging finished, and that version was archived. Every name and title below is taken verbatim from the March 8, 2008 capture of the contest page; each mix links to its own archived page.
Grand Prize
Amerikan Gangster - Reasonmix by Reason
“This entry was hand picked by Chuck D. and PE producer Gary G-Wiz! The remix will be featured on SLAMjamz.com, Public Enemy's official website, and rapstation.com shortly. Reason will also receive a limited edition portable media player from Mediastreet and a copy of the album signed by Chuck D. Congratulations, Reason!”
Its own mix page was archived too, and is the most complete record of any single entry in this section: 83 bpm, Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike, listened to 307 times, built on a track Reason uploaded called “American Gangsta-Reasonmix.”
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!”
Titles are as the results page spelled them, misspelling included. The last entry started life as “Amerikan Gangster - DJ Leez” in September and was renamed before judging; both names are in the archive.
What survives: the names, the titles, the judges' blurb, an archived mix page for all six winners, and one full mix page with its metadata intact. No audio does, not the winning remixes and not the eight source stems. Jamglue put downloads behind a sign-in, so no crawler ever reached the files.
About Public Enemy
The bio SLAMjamz supplied ran under the heading “About Public Enemy,” and its last line explains why this contest happened where it did: “www.publicenemy.com was one of the first websites ever for a rap group and has attracted thousands of PE fans from across the planet who visit the site to communicate, find the latest news, hear and get new music, and best of all, check this out, to participate in the making and remixing of songs!” The same bio counts the touring: “53 countries. 51 tours.” The page linked out to publicenemy.com and the Public Enemy MySpace page.
Sources
jamglue.com/contests/publicenemy while the contest was live: the description, the deadlines, the materials list, the prizes, the 87-entry count, and the full official rules.
The same URL after judging, with the Grand Prize and five First Prize winners and the final 561-entry count. This capture is the source for every name on this page.
Reason's mix page: tempo, license, listen count, and the track it was built from.
“Public Enemy on Jamglue!” by Divya Bhat: the announcement, the prize detail, and both Gary G-Wiz quotes.
“And the winner is...”: the fall 2007 round-up of six contests, which opens with this one. “Grand Prize winners were chosen by the artists themselves; thanks to Chuck D, Gary G-Wiz, JR WRiter, Tigarah, and Hi-Tek for participating in this pioneering creative dialogue with their fans!”
static.jamglue.com
The banner at the top of this page, 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