Ok, I've read things over and I've got a few words to say. As much as I may seem like a stickler over deadlines, at the end of the day it's just a project and we're all doing this for the fun of it. I really would have liked to get things done by the deadline or shortly after. It pains me too that we've had to drag things out and, trust me, I feel for all of you who have to sit on your finished tracks because others are not finished. I really wanted to avoid that lag phase and I've gone so far as to promise a release date so certain artists wouldn't have to hold onto their finished songs for months/years. Depending on the situation, those promises might have been broken on my part, and I feel terrible about that. So, before I get into anything, I'm sorry to those of you who are having to wait.
However, I've always, always said that real life comes first when it comes to these projects. I know each and every one of you (even Brandon :3) are real people with jobs, lives, significant others, commitments, and any number of extenuating circumstances. I realize that you're all taking a lot of time out of your lives to do something for me, and it's really my honor to have any of you here in the first place. If any of you had to go through personal hell to finish your songs, you should have, and still can, talked to me about it. I would have been understanding and made appropriate arrangements to accommodate you. As of such, it's really on me to be understanding of the situations that you're all experiencing. I'm not a hardass for deadlines because if I was, we'd have to settle for a lot of remixes that would be rushed, uninspired, and sloppy in comparison to what the artists who've missed deadlines has in mind.
Fun fact: Dave Wise didn't even make the final deadline. Should I have cut him? I don't think so. I've gotta balance promptness of project release with the fact that, if I was completely compliant with cutting people who missed deadlines, we wouldn't have such FUCKING AWESOME REMIXES like Dave's, Monobrow's, zyko's, ilp0's, Theophany's, OA's, Will's, Proto's, and so many other remixes that were finished after the deadline. Trust me, when you guys hear these remixes, I think you will agree that the extra months we spent on the project was absolutely worth it. Those remixers are one-of-a-kind and they brought something to the project that nobody else could have. As such, I'll take what I can get
I want to make it clear though, me, Cody, and Flexstyle are doing absolutely EVERYTHING in our power to get things done. I've actually spent the night at his place recently so we can spend time mastering the project and making sure everything flows right. I've put in countless hours trying to track down unfinished remixers/remixes and hooking up collabs and basically doing what a director ought to. We've listened to the whole project (in its current form) dozens and dozens of times to make sure the tracklist flows as well as possible. tl;dr - we're working our asses off behind the scenes to make sure everything is as good as it can be.
Ultimately, I'm taking this project VERY seriously because the last two DKC remix projects that've come before were extremely high quality and we're trying to outdo that. I understand the current frustrations and I empathize with them... the missed deadlines get me really disheartened too but at the end of the day, it's going to be worth the wait so that every artist currently on the project can finish to their own satisfaction.
tl;dr I love you all and appreciate your contributions, whether you made the deadline or not. I consider all of you friends by now and I don't want any feelings to be hurt over this. I want things to be finished but I'm putting my trust in the rest of you to get things finished in a timely manner. I'll do the best I can to make this happen. Let's all get along
PS I'm super medicated right now so I probably sound like a goddamn hippie lol
PPS This project was started in November 2009. It's only been a year and a half since we started. And we have almost 60 finished tracks when you count in the bonus tracks with 10-15 more to go. The first two DKC3 remix projects have 57 tracks combined. Those projects took 2-3 years to complete, EACH. In a quarter of the time, we've gotten more remixes than those two projects combined and average song quality is just as high, if not better. We should all be proud of that. Some food for thought (disclaimer: I am not a math major and I cannot math very well. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA and are not intended to treat or cure any disease.)