Chamillionaire Retires from Mixtapes
Chamillionaire is closing one chapter of his career and focusing on a new one.
The 29-year-old rapper released a statement on Friday clearing up rumors that he is retiring from making music. “It was definitely not my intention to mislead anyone into thinking that I plan to completely retire from music,” he said of the confusion that started after he did a live broadcast on his website. “I love making music and will continue to do so.”
While he’s not retiring, the Houston MC who rose to fame on the mixtape circuit, is ending his long-running mixtape series. “What I am retiring is the Mixtape Messiah part of my career. This means no more jacking beats and no more underground mixtapes,” he revealed. “I have been making and putting them out for over a decade and I feel like it is time to step to another level.”
His next mixtape will be his last. “The upcoming installment of the Mixtape Messiah series, Mixtape Messiah 7, will be the final one. Moving forward, a large majority of the music I release will be on original beats.”
Cham has scrapped plans for his third LP Venom and is working on material for another as-yet-untitled studio album. “Additionally, even though I don’t plan on releasing any of the original material that I had wanted to call Venom, I will definitely be releasing a third Chamillionaire album with Universal.”
He is turning his attention to creating records for the radio instead of the streets, and hopes his fans will understand. “I hope that my fans will understand that over time, you grow as a person and this means you will evolve as an artist. The experiences that you encounter throughout your life all contribute to those changes and that is bound to affect the music an artist feels like making at any given time,” he continued.
“I love that my fans feel so deeply about the work I have done in the mixtape scene or the Get Ya Mind Correct era of my career, but at this time I want to focus 100% of my studio time on perfecting the commercial music I will release in the future.”
Chamillionaire’s sophomore album, Ultimate Victory, has sold close to 400,000 copies since its release in 2007.