Machine Gun Kelly and Wiz Khalifa released Blog Era Boyz, a nine-track joint mixtape, on May 22 — mid-run of the Lost Americana Tour the two have been co-headlining since May 15. The lead singles "Girl Next Door" and "Everything Tatted" preceded the drop; the rest of the tracklist arrived with the project. Production credits include Slegren, SlimXX, BazeXX, No Love For the Middle Child, and the brothers Eric and Issac Dan (ID).
The bit is the era it's named after
The "blog era" is shorthand for the late-2000s and early-2010s window when Tumblr, NahRight, 2DopeBoyz, and the comment sections of HotNewHipHop dictated which mixtapes broke. It is the period that produced both artists — Wiz's Kush & Orange Juice dropped on those blogs in April 2010, MGK's Lace Up in late 2010 — and the period before either had to think about an algorithm. The two first collaborated on "Mind of a Stoner" off MGK's debut Lace Up album in 2012, then again on Black Flag in 2013. Blog Era Boyz is the deliberate re-staging of that origin point thirteen years on.
The release also lands in a hip-hop moment unusually crowded with explicit nostalgia plays — Drake's Iceman in May, Tyler the Creator's reunion talk, the steady ten-year-anniversary reissue cycle. Blog Era Boyz is more candid about it than most. The title says exactly what the project is.
The commercial play
Releasing a project while you are on tour with your collaborator is one of the few remaining ways to move a meaningful amount of catalog. The Lost Americana Tour runs through July 1, with Austin, Dallas, Atlanta, St. Louis, Toronto, Kansas City, and Vancouver still on the calendar before the finale in Ridgefield, Washington. Every show is a built-in promotional asset for the tape; the tape is a built-in reason to extend the set. The "mixtape" framing — rather than a proper joint album — also keeps streaming expectations modest, which is the right read on what this is.
Like the other anchor of the May 22 New Music Friday window, Bleachers' Everyone for Ten Minutes, Blog Era Boyz is artists who came up in the 2010s wrestling with what that decade meant. Bleachers does it as anti-modernity reflection; MGK and Wiz do it by going back to the source files. Both records are on every streaming platform now.
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