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 at the top of jamglue.com/contests/ugod, summer 2009. It is still sitting on the old static.jamglue.com S3 bucket, which is where this copy came from.
The U-God feat. Jim Jones & Sheek Louch “Magnum Force” Remix Contest
The second of Jamglue’s three Babygrande contests in the summer of 2009 opened the same night as the Grand Puba one, with a track from U-God’s Dopium. U-God is a founding member of the Wu-Tang Clan, and the contest drew 130 entries within its first week, 425 by the time the results page was archived. It is also the contest with the leanest materials, three files rather than six, and the only one of these five where every named winner’s mix page survives in the Wayback Machine.
About the Contest
“Jamglue is excited to bring you a remix contest featuring ‘Magnum Force’ by Babygrande recording artist U-God, and featuring Jim Jones & Sheek Louch.” The four steps, as they read on June 29, 2009:
Enter the contest by creating your own version 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.
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. When someone marks your mix as a Favorite, that counts as a vote. The 100 mixes with the most votes will be in the running for prizes, so break out your address book and encourage your friends to vote for yours!
Win great prizes!
The Materials
“Here’s what you have to work with.” Three files, and no separated stems at all: the whole beat came as one instrumental.
| Magnum Force - Contest Mix | the starting point |
| Acapella - Magnum Force | track |
| Instrumental - Magnum Force | track |
None of the three audio files survives. That leanness shaped the entries: with only an acapella and a finished instrumental to work from, the strongest entrants brought their own beats, and the one U-God picked was built on a beat its maker produced himself.
Licensing. As with the other Babygrande contest, the tracks were licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5, with all other rights reserved by Babygrande Records, and entrants had to attribute using the words “Remix using elements from U-God/Babygrande Records.”
The Prizes
“The Grand Prize winning remix will be chosen by U-God himself. The winner gets a Frank 151 Prize Pack (including skateboard, hats, T-shirts, and book), an autographed copy of U-God’s new ‘Dopium’ album, and a featured spot on Babygrande.com and U-God’s MySpace.”
“Five Popular Vote winners will be chosen by the Jamglue community. Each winner gets an autographed copy of U-God’s new ‘Dopium’ album and a Jamglue prize pack with a T-shirt and stickers.”
The rules valued the grand prize at $147.98 and each runner-up prize at $34.98, and defined a Jamglue prize pack as ten stickers and one T-shirt. U-God listened and chose personally; the five runners up were the five mixes with the most Favorites.
The Deadlines
| Jun 22, 2009 | Entry period opens at approximately 10:00 p.m. PT. |
| Jun 23, 2009 | Dopium is released on Frank Radio / Babygrande. |
| Jun 29, 2009 | The Wayback Machine captures the live contest page: 130 entries created so far. |
| Aug 4, 2009 | Publishing deadline, 11:59 p.m. PT. |
| Aug 18, 2009 | Voting closes, 11:59 p.m. PT. |
| By Apr 2010 | The page has been rewritten with the results, and the entry counter shows 425. |
Winners
“The results are in, and our winners have been chosen!” Six mixes were named: one grand prize picked by U-God, and five popular vote winners. Every name and title below is taken verbatim from the April 3, 2010 capture of the contest page, and every one of the six mix pages was itself archived, which is not true of any other contest on this site.
Grand Prize Winner
U-God - Magnum Force (prod. by Infamous Mikey) by infamousmikey
“This was U-God’s favorite! The winner infamousmikey gets a Frank 151 Prize Pack (including skateboard, hats, T-shirts, and book), an autographed copy of U-God’s new ‘Dopium’ album, and a featured spot on Babygrande.com and U-God’s MySpace.”
The mix page was archived on August 12, 2009, eight days after the entry deadline and while voting was still open: 93 bpm, 3:45 long, 3.5 MB as an MP3, listened to 804 times, rated 4.7 out of 5 across 96 ratings. The whole description is six words: “Beat produced by me / please leave feedbaack.”
Popular Vote
“These were the mixes with the most votes by Jamglue users. Each winner gets an autographed copy of U-God’s new ‘Dopium’ album and a Jamglue prize pack with a T-shirt and stickers.”
| Magnum Force - U God Ft. Jim Jones & Sheek Louch - VIRUS 187 REMIX - My Own beat! | virus187 |
| Magnum Force - Contest olopepe Mix | olopepe |
| ¤MAGNUM FORCE [CONTEST MIX]¤ | Xplosive_Part_III |
| Magnum Force - Contest Mix [copy] | msmoneybags81 |
| FIRE LISTEN - Magnum Force Deejay Mix | Swangin_and_Bangin |
The name at the top of that list is worth following. virus187 took a popular vote prize here and the grand prize in the J-Kwon “Fly” contest, which ran alongside this one, using the same method both times: throw away the supplied instrumental, build a new beat, keep the acapella.
What survives: six names, six titles, and all six mix pages, complete with tempos, durations, listen counts and ratings. What does not survive is the only thing that mattered, the audio. Every one of these pages has a player that will never load and a download link that always demanded a sign-in, which is exactly why no crawler ever took a copy.
Sources
jamglue.com/contests/ugod while the contest was live: the four steps, the deadlines, the three materials, the prizes, the 130-entry counter, the U-God biography and the full official rules.
The same URL after judging, with the grand prize winner and the five popular vote winners. This capture is the source for every name on this page.
infamousmikey’s entry: tempo, duration, listen count, ratings, license and description.
The published-entries browser, captured on the day the contest closed to new entries.
static.jamglue.com
The banner at the top of this page, still hosted on Jamglue’s original S3 bucket, which outlived the site.
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