Pochette de « August 26 » — Post Malone / Mercury Records
Some records only ever lived in the corners of old rap forums and on download platforms that no longer exist. ‘August 26’, Post Malone’s very first mixtape, was one of them. On August 26, 2026, the Texas artist finally sets the record straight: the project arrives across every major streaming platform for the first time, paired with its debut vinyl pressing. It is the anniversary gift fans had been asking about for years, and a perfect excuse to revisit the earliest days of one of the most-streamed artists on the planet.
A ghost record, finally available
Uploaded in the spring of 2016 on DatPiff, back when free mixtapes still circulated like an underground currency, ‘August 26’ never had a real official existence. It was absent from Spotify, Apple Music and the rest, and the only versions floating around were uneven, often incomplete rips. For the many listeners who discovered Post Malone through his global smashes, this first chapter was almost a myth. The remastered reissue makes it available to everyone at last, in audio quality worthy of his stature.
The title itself is a wink: August 26 was the date first floated for his debut studio album. That record, ‘Stoney’, would eventually land in December 2016, but the mixtape kept the name as a marker of the pivotal moment when the young artist was still finding his lane between rap, melodic trap and cotton-soft pop.
Ten tracks that trace an artist in the making
Across its ten songs, ‘August 26’ already boasts a serious guest list: 2 Chainz drops in on ‘Money Made Me Do It’, Lil Yachty rides ‘Monta’ and a very young Jaden Smith turns up on ‘Lonely’. You can hear a Post Malone still under construction, swinging between mixtape bravado and the hazy melancholy that would soon become his signature. The outline of his style, those hooks hummed on the edge of singing and rapping, is already there, raw but unmistakable.
What strikes you most, a decade later, is how little the core recipe has changed. The autotuned croon, the guitar-tinged beats, the willingness to blur rap, country and rock into one warm, downcast mood — it is all in embryo here. Where his blockbuster albums would later polish those instincts to a mirror shine, the mixtape keeps them loose and unguarded, which is exactly what makes it such a fascinating listen today.
Hearing this project again in 2026 is a way to measure the distance travelled. Just months after it went online, ‘White Iverson’ pushed Post Malone into another dimension, eventually becoming one of the rare diamond-certified songs of his generation and racking up more than a billion views on video platforms. The mixtape sheds light on that tipping point: an all-but-unknown artist already laying the foundations of a pop empire.
A collector’s vinyl for the tenth anniversary
The headline of this reissue, beyond streaming, is the object itself. ‘August 26’ gets its first vinyl pressing, in an anniversary edition designed for collectors. After a decade spent as a phantom file, the record finally becomes something you can hold, drop on a turntable and hear in the order its author intended. It is a way of reconciling the streaming generation with the mixtape culture this project came from.
The release lands in a busy summer 2026 for American rap and pop, packed with ceremonies (such as the 2026 MTV VMAs), comebacks and heritage reissues. It is also a reminder that Post Malone, long filed away too quickly as a chart-tuned hitmaker, carries a deeper story than it seems, one built on trial and error, collaborations and a hook obsession that never left him. Putting the mixtape back in circulation is, in a sense, closing the loop on a story that started right here.
To rediscover where it all began, nothing beats the song that started everything.
