I Apologize

I Apologize is a mixtape by Terrain grime and hip hop rapper, DJ Crow. The mixtape was released on August 3, 2011 for free download on Colossal Records. The eight songs on the mixtape were released to give some new music to the fans to listen to before the release of "Disc-Jockey's Nyt", because the album was taking a long time to release, thus in the mixtape title Crow apologizes for the wait. DJ Crow and TrillBron are the only producers of the mixtape. "I Apologize" mostly consists of Terrain grime beats, but also samples some R&B-soul elements. As of August 31, 2011, the mixtape has been downloaded over 600,000 times.

Background
The songs on the mixtape were mainly old songs that Crow had kept hold of from 2009 onwards. A couple songs that aren't classified as freestyles (such as "Stop Playin' Games" and "Don't Blame Me") were all ready for release. Many others, e.g. "Flippers Up (Freestyle)" and "So Cold (Freestyle)", weren't songs at first. Crow had wrote lyrics for them, and had the instrumentals with him - and were more recent material than others. Crow then quickly recorded them and mixed the songs before putting them out. "So Cold" is a freestyle and a remix of the song of the same title by Nebulent and Nyninyne. "Radio Freestyle" was a freestyle that he had performed on "TBC Radio 1Plus" a week before the mixtape release. "The Music Industry" was originally a song that favoured how music worked, but after Crow split with his record label he changed the lyrics to go against mainstream music. "Mainstream Dance Tune" is something of the similar. The "Full Volume" skit takes pokes at Dancing Penguin, and mocks pop music in it by purposely using pop elements and bad lyrics.

The cover was created just before Crow put all the songs onto his computer. In tribute of his brother Ninjinian, he added his brother's signature bandana and Cookie Crown on the cover. A bin full of scrunched-up paper is at the centre of the cover to represent starting over. Crow wrote all the songs entirely by himself.

Reception
Many major critic sites rated the mixtape. "SnowMusic" gave the mixtape a 9/10, saying; "A great, fresh start of Crow. With great Terrain grime tunes, Crow can do anything without a record label." However, some negatively reviewed the mixtape, saying that they didn't like the fact that Crow was going back to grime music. Critics that specialized in underground grime music rated the mixtape 10/10.

Trivia

 * This is Crow's second official free mixtape that has been released.
 * Crow wrote all the lyrics entirely by himself, and some lyrics he wrote within 20 minutes before loading the songs onto his computer.