Back in the day, mixtapes were the OG way of listening to your favourite musicians on the go, without having to lug around your entire collection. They were also a handy way of sending handpicked music to your friends or school/uni crush on cassettes or CDs.
Or, if you are enterprising entrepeneur-in-waiting Sheffield schoolboy Oli Sykes, later to find fame as the frontman of Bring Me The Horizon frontman , you might use that CD-burning facility on your computer to start amassing a handsome - albeit strictly illegal - add-on to your weekly pocket money.
Many of us will remember a kid at school who used to run a mini tuck shop from inside their locker, sneakily selling sweets and other highly sought-after playground goods, and it appears that Oli Sykes ran a similar side hustle, but instead of bartering gobstoppers and fruit laces he ran the monopoly on nu metal CD mixtapes.
His bootleg products - the first titled Quakebeat, its sequel known as Quakesound -were comprised of a self-curated mix of nu metal heroes such as Crazy Town, Limp Bizkit, Rob Zombie, Papa Roach, Linkin Park, Eminem, and more. Some tunes would even be remixed, or mashed-together, by 'DJ Oli', which is pretty sweet, considering the frontman is now a legitimate DJ at his very own club night, Greebo, which debuted in his hometown of Sheffield back in July.
Taking to Instagram to show off the rediscovered discs, Sykes writes: "my brother found my bootleg compilations I used to make and sell at high school lol. 5 quid each or 3 for a tenner along with every unofficial Eminem album that ever existed. Big up valley cru."
Check them these collectors' items below:
