Underground hip-hop deluxes and release groups

In the underground rap scene, I’ve been seeing a few different forms of artists releasing deluxes, and I’m curious about when these deluxes do or don’t warrant their own release groups. Some examples:

  • New Disc: slayr released Half Blood (BloodLuxe), including the original Half Blood as its second disc. slayr mentioned once casually (to the extent I’m not 100% sure he meant it this way) that BloodLuxe was a “whole new tape” (loose quote).
  • Distinct Release: prettifun released FunHouse Deluxe, which does NOT include any of the original FunHouse’s tracks. it seemingly has no actual relationship to FunHouse outside of name.
  • Distinct Release: yit’s Sweet Hz: SugarFree (the ‘deluxe’ version of his prior Sweet Hz) was released in a similar format to prettifun’s FunHouse Deluxe (no original tracks included)
  • Same Disc: 637iso’s biipolar (deluxe) simply adds the new tracks to the end of the original tracklist. The deluxe includes all of the original tracks and 7 new tracks. I imagine this is the normal way to put out deluxe releases.
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If it contains the original track listing, I believe it should still be the same release group. I’ve seen others putting the new tracks first and then the original after. Still same release group. However, If they are re-recordings, new release group. If they do not include the original track listing, but only share a name, that is still a new release group.

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Awesome, that makes sense. I definitely need to make some adjustments, lol