It's that time of year again when we reflect on the good and the bad (but mostly the bad) events that happened over the past 12 months. Looking over the year of mixtape releases, unfortunately a lot ...

The line between mixtape and album is steadily blurring. Classifying the mixtape now as something "we got for free" seems rude, and it also undermines the increased effort these projects receive.

Gabrielle Ulubay is a Music writer at Collider. She has previously been published in The New York Times, Bustle, HuffPost Personal, and other magazines, and wrote at Marie Claire for nearly three ...