Archive · Soul & R&B
Summertime, Vol. 1
By Diony C.
•August 24, 2026
•4 min read
In 2010, DJ Jazzy Jeff and Mick turned one classic record into an entire mood: forty-nine tracks of deep soul, golden-era hip-hop, and warm-weather rarities that launched a decade-plus running series. Stream the origin volume in the archive.
Summer’s winding down here in New York, that specific stretch in late August where the heat’s still around but everyone can feel it changing. It’s the kind of week that has us reaching back into the crate instead of looking forward, and this one kept coming up.
In 1991, DJ Jazzy Jeff and Will Smith had a song that outlived the group, outlived the era, and turned into the unofficial soundtrack of every warm-weather cookout for the next three decades. “Summertime” hit number one on the R&B charts, cracked the top five on the Hot 100, and won a Grammy. It’s the kind of record that doesn’t need an anniversary to get played, it just shows up every June like clockwork.
The 1991 original. The record this entire mixtape series was built to honor, one more time, every summer.
In 2010, Jazzy Jeff and Mick decided that one song wasn’t enough anymore.
Press play above and hear where the whole series started.
The Idea
Jeff linked up with Mick, then still going by Mick Boogie, a DJ who’d built his name doing exactly the opposite of what the mixtape mainstream was doing at the time. Mick wasn’t chasing exclusives or racing to be first with a leak. He built full concept projects, entire tapes built around a single artist’s catalog or a single feeling, treated like an album rather than a collection of songs.
“Obviously, Will and I had a big record that has stood the test of time with ‘Summertime,’” Jeff said at the time. “Every year, when the weather gets nice, people always come up to me and ask for that song. So we thought we would do them one better and give them this entire mix that evokes that same feeling.”
That’s the whole premise. Not a tribute to one record, a feeling stretched out across an entire mix, warm, unhurried, built for a porch or a cookout or a slow drive with the windows down. Forty-nine tracks, and it never once feels like padding: Ice Cube’s “It Was A Good Day” sits next to Ramsey Lewis’s “Sun Goddess,” J Dilla and Dwele lead into Erick Sermon’s Marvin Gaye flip, 2Pac gets restrung, Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff’s own “Summertime” gets remixed into the middle of the tracklist instead of opening the tape, and Jay-Z’s “Dear Summer” closes it out.
Ten-Plus Years Running
Volume 1 dropped in 2010. It kept going, every summer, without fail: Volume 5 in 2014, Volume 8 in 2017 (still, by fan accounts, one of the best cover arts of the whole run), Volume 10 in 2019 marking a full decade, and a “Summertime 2020” edition that kept the streak alive even through a genuinely strange year for live music.
Every volume follows the same instinct this one set: deep soul and R&B cuts sitting next to golden-era hip-hop, a few surprises, and zero regard for what’s currently charting. Later volumes bring in Talib Kweli, Jill Scott, D’Angelo, Erykah Badu, Outkast, Camp Lo, The Roots, Nas, Kanye West, Big Daddy Kane, and Drake, artists spanning five decades, all filtered through the same warm-weather mood this first tape established.
The whole series still lives on Mick’s Mixcloud, free to stream, exactly the way it’s always been.
Why It Still Matters
Most mixtape series from that era are gone, tied to a moment, a platform, or a hype cycle that’s long since passed. Summertime is still running because it was never chasing anything. Mick put it simply when we talked to him about it: what kept it alive over ten-plus volumes wasn’t reinvention, it was reliability. Same partnership, same feeling, every single July, whether or not it was trendy to show up.
That’s rarer than it sounds in a culture that usually rewards whoever’s loudest this week. As the weather turns here, this is the one we reached for.
Hear the Rest of the Series
Volume 1 is streaming above, straight from our archive. Every volume since, all ten-plus of them, lives free on Mick’s Mixcloud, exactly where it’s always been.
Mick sat down with us for a Collector Spotlight interview, coming soon. More on that shortly.
More From the Archive
For the fuller story of how the hosted-tape economy got built into an industry, DJ Drama Built the Blueprint. And for the wider arc of the format itself, The Evolution of Mixtape Culture.
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