Remember when a friend from another town who always kept up with music would have rap locals from their hometown and sometimes but never shared their tapes or cds cause of how nobody would never give 'em back so you could never get copies of some local rap artist from like ex: NYC, Detroit, Atlanta, Houston, Bay Area, Seattle, Chicago, etc. but you couldn't find anything at your local record store.

This is one of the main reasons why I became a dj, cause I wanted those songs so bad I started to buy vinyl from underground hip-hop artists for b-sides & shit.

With the invention of download share sites, message boards, & etc. people started to share these gems of artists they had their demos and material before an artist got signed to a major.