Episode 580: In The Seats With....Omar Acosta, Tony Touch and 'Mixtape'

Back in the day, we had to work to discover our new music and the DJ's were the ultimate tastemaker's...On this very special episode we jump into a documentary that takes us into the legacy and the lore of a very important piece of hip hop culture and a driving force in the rap music community.  It's to plug in 'Mixtape'.Mixtapes have an out-sized role in the emergence of hip hop around the world. Before radio play, the internet, and social media, there were mixtapes. No matter where you lived, you could pop a cassette into a tape deck, and be transported to a party halfway around the world. DJs were taste makers, trendsetters and creators of the sound that became the biggest musical genre on the planet. A meteoric rise for an art form not yet 50 years old. The importance of mixtapes goes well beyond the tapes themselves. Mixtapes were a form of currency. A signifier that you were In-The-Know and had your ear to the streets. A skeleton key to the underground. The culture was too strong to be stopped, and the artists were too talented to be ignored - so they turned the sub-culture into the mainstream, and made hip hop what it is today.So much more then pulling up a playlist on Spotify or Apple Music today, the mixtape made what was hot and fresh tactile and necessary.  With this documentary now available on Paramount + we had the unique pleasure of sitting down the with the film's director Omar Acosta and the one and only DJ Tony Touch who dropped his fair share of tapes back in the day who collaborated on the film.I asked them about what made them want to tell this story, track the varied evolution of what a mixtape was over the years it's musical and cultural significance and much, much more....Mixtape is on Paramount+ now.