Really quick spins: Paste, Ballerstatus.com

Both Paste Magazine and Ballerstatus.com have new mixtapes out this week and both are good, as they should be — if publications that report on music and musicians put out mediocre product, they lose the right to talk smack.

Paste’s “Songs for Haiti 2010” isn’t really a mixtape, per se — it’s a vault of MP3s donated by a diverse group of artists -- Ludacris, Hanson, and Of Montreal, to name a few. Make a non-tax-deductible donation to Doctors Without Borders, Red Cross, or Yele Haiti (or provide proof that you’ve already given) through the site Paste has set up and you have access to a whole slew of tracks (some released, some unreleased) via the Paste download vault. Enjoy, but, as the people at Paste point out, no one should be rewarded for doing something that they should be doing anyway.

Urban lifestyle site Ballerstatus.com’s free “Baller Status” mixtape is helmed by DJ JS-1(Rocksteady!) and DJ Dutchmaster and comes in two versions: with breaks or without. Rappers including Wordsmith and Duece Poppi appear on the mix of new, exclusive and previously released music, as does everyone's favorite VA rap duo, Clipse ("Freedom"), and the DMV's own Phil Ade, who lends a freestyle.