Archive · Maybach Music Group
Dreamchasers 3 (Hosted by DJ Drama)
By Diony C.
•July 2, 2026
•6 min read
September 29, 2013. Meek Mill and DJ Drama released the blockbuster the Dreamchasers series had been building toward. 500,000 downloads in 48 hours. Every guest earned their spot. Stream it in the archive.
Meek Mill had already proven himself. This was him proving it to everyone who still wasn’t paying attention.
Meek came out of North Philadelphia with nothing backing him except the tapes. Flamers in 2008. Flamers 2 in 2009. Flamers 3.5 in 2010. Street level, blog to blog, city to city. By 2011 Rick Ross had signed him to Maybach Music Group and the first Dreamchasers arrived. DJ Drama hosted it. The series had a name.
Dreamchasers 2 followed in May 2012 and changed everything. That tape was record setting. It moved Meek from a promising signee to a genuine star. When the third installment arrived on September 29, 2013, the expectations were as high as they had ever been for a free tape.
Dreamchasers 3 met every one of them.
The Blockbuster Done Right
Within 48 hours of release, the tape had been downloaded more than 500,000 times, far surpassing the 50,000 units the collaborative Maybach Music Group project Self-Made Vol. 3 sold during its entire first week. Two tracks debuted in the top 10 of HotNewHipHop’s Top 100 within 24 hours.
The guest list read like a marquee. Travis Scott, Diddy, Nicki Minaj, Rick Ross, Mase, French Montana, Future, Yo Gotti, Fabolous, and Jadakiss all appeared alongside Meek’s Dream Chasers Records artists. But the tape never felt crowded. Every feature served a purpose. Nobody showed up who didn’t belong.
DJ Drama’s role was exactly what the Gangsta Grillz format always demanded: he amplified the energy without overtaking it. His adlibs punctuated the right moments, the drops landed where they needed to, and the sequencing kept the tape moving like a single unbroken statement. The chemistry between Drama and Meek across the full series is one of the better DJ and artist relationships the hosted mixtape era produced.
Philly on the Mic
What made Dreamchasers 3 land differently than the first two installments was focus. The tape had a coherence the earlier volumes sometimes lacked. Meek was rapping about where he came from, what he had built, and what was still in front of him, and the production matched the ambition.
Boi-1da, Cardo, Scott Storch, Key Wane, and Southside all contributed beats. The sonic backdrop was large. On I’m Leanin with Travis Scott and Diddy, on Make Me, on Hip Hop where Meek went back to North Philadelphia and told it without flinching, the tape showed an artist who had figured out how to use the mixtape format the way Drama always intended it to be used: as a real creative statement, not just a placeholder between albums.
Lil Snupe appeared on the tape. He was nineteen years old and one of the most exciting young voices Meek had signed to Dream Chasers Records. He was shot and killed in June 2013, three months before Dreamchasers 3 dropped. His verses on the tape are a document of what was lost.
Drama’s Fingerprints
By 2013, DJ Drama had already hosted Trap or Die, Dedication 2, We Got It 4 Cheap Vol. 3 with the Re-Up Gang, and dozens of other tapes that defined what the Gangsta Grillz brand meant. When he put his name on a project, it carried weight.
Dreamchasers 3 is one of the cleaner examples of what that weight produced. The tape arrived at a moment when the blog era was shifting and the streaming era was beginning to take over. Free mixtapes were still the dominant format for building and maintaining an audience, and Drama understood better than almost anyone how to make that format work at the highest level.
The Dreamchasers series went on to a fourth installment in 2016 and continued through the Dream Chasers Records label Meek co-founded with Jay-Z under Roc Nation in 2019. The brand Meek built from those early Flamers tapes became a functioning infrastructure. Vol. 3 is where that arc reached its creative peak.
”Make Me” became the most-streamed record on the tape. Directed by Will Ngo, the official video is Meek in his element, turning North Philadelphia ambition into a flex.
From the Archive
No physical release exists for Dreamchasers 3. Stream it in the player above.
DJ Drama put his name on this tape. His own catalog is in the shop, vinyl and CD from the Gangsta Grillz architect.
LP · Marble Vinyl
I’m Really Like That
DJ Drama’s 2023 solo album, the Gangsta Grillz architect front and center with the same all-star Rolodex that built the tapes. This pressing is on marble vinyl.
Shop I’m Really Like That LP
2xLP · Gold Vinyl
Quality Street Music
Drama’s all-star showcase album, guest verses stacked across two records. This pressing is on gold vinyl.
Shop Quality Street Music 2xLP
CD
I’m Really Like That
The CD edition of Drama’s 2023 album for the shelf and the whip.
Shop I’m Really Like That CDShop the full DJ Drama catalog →
The Artists
Featured Artists
Lil Snupe
Dream Chasers Records
1994 – 2013
More From the Archive
DJ Drama and Meek turned the Gangsta Grillz format into a launch pad. To hear where that hosted-tape blueprint started, Lil Wayne’s Dedication 2 is the tape Drama used to give Wayne the same street validation, two years before this one. Same host, same formula, different city.
For the full story of how Drama built the platform that made tapes like this possible, read DJ Drama Built the Blueprint. And for the wider arc of how the format itself grew from street corners to streaming, The Evolution of Mixtape Culture.
Stream the full tape in the player above.