If you’re a lover of hip-hop, Tale of the Tape a documentary about mixtapes produced by long revered industry professionals Kim Osorio and Malik K. Buie is a must watch.
Source: Courtesy / Red Summer TV
Tale Of The Tape details the history of mixtape culture and how DJs forever changed rap. The film follows the movement of mixtapes from the underground to mainstream audiences, detailing the ups and downs that followed— from commercialization to criminalization to digitization and everything in between.
BOSSIP Sr. Content Director Janeé Bolden interviewed Malik K. Buie and Kim Osorio about the film, which was over a decade in the making.
“We thought that we’d do this in 1-2 years and it would be out and we’d be on to other projects and that’s not what happened,” Malik K. Buie told BOSSIP. ” I think we capture a real space of hip hop, a real specific time frame for these artists that are huge artists now and they weren’t then. I’ve had, not just the general public, but colleagues tell us how much they love the film and it’s like up there with like you know other hip hop documentary projects.”
As you may have noticed in the trailer, documentary boasts previously never-before-seen performance footage from artists including Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole, as well as interviews with some of the world’s most successful DJs like Kid Capri, DJ Clue, DJ Drama as well as the late great Combat Jack who share their own unique perspectives.
“It’s weird because a lot of times when you’re just kind of like working just working in the game, a lot of times I just have my head down, grinding away not really understanding what my place was until we decided to do this and it became such a you know passion,” Buie who was a producer on BET hit shows Rap City and 106 & Park told BOSSIP. “Then it was like ‘I can do this, I can do anything,’ But also having the footage, being the one who captured it, made me feel really really special.”
It would be an understatement to leave it at just special. Tale of the Tape transports viewers into the very heart of the culture, from the very beginning – when the very first DJ’s were playing for crowds in NY parks. Hip-hop purists will appreciate the gritty, New York feel that comes courtesy of Buie’s vintage footage, but as the story journeys through the years we hear other voices from outside the region who have critical stories to tell.
“You get the calls praising what you’ve done, but you also get the calls of criticism,” Kim Osorio told BOSSIP. “I’ve heard a lot of people talk about hip-hop lately in a regional sense, to say that hip-hop is very regional and has been very regional, and it has been. I’ve been dealing with this type of criticism my whole career. When I worked at The Source it was like, ‘It’s too New York, it’s too East Coast, right? We would add West Coast editors and Southern correspondents and Midwest correspondents just to make sure that the culture was represented across these other regions. I think in this infant stages of the documentary that we’re working on, as we continue to grow, we’ll be able to cover so many different regions and aspects of, whether it’s mixtape culture or other facets of hip hop, so I think for us this is a starting point.”
“I can proudly say the mixtape originated in New York,” Osorio continued. “There’s a debate internally about whether it was the Bronx or Queens but we had to start somewhere and we had to start at the birthplace [of hip-hop]. There are other representations too — we have Kendrick in the doc — early Kendrick and that’s a total like, tip your hat to Malik, cause he got that! There are other regions represented, it’s just that yes a lot of the mixtapes were heavily based in the New York.”
Source: Julia Beverly / Getty
One story outside of New York, that gets a lot of coverage in Tale of the Tape, is that of DJ Drama and Don Cannon of the aPhilliates. The Philly born deejays, who relocated to Atlanta to attend Clark Atlanta University, were arrested on pirating charges and had their studio raided, largely because Drama’s Gangsta Grillz mixtape series had gained so much success and popularity the Feds misread the situation.
“When they tell their story, the way we crafted it, they’re like finishing each other sentences,” Buie recalled. “That was real. We didn’t have to like go and construct that. That really happened. Drama and the aPhilliates were actual victims of over policing in a crazy situation that was blown out of proportion which had guns drawn and bank accounts frozen and holes knocked on the wall of their office. It was absolutely ridiculous but we had to really go into detail to show like when you look the power of hip-hop is a huge thing and it’s always been a real cash cow, money generator, culture shaper and shifter. You could probably do a whole doc just on that to be honest, but we had to really go into detail for that.”
In addition to getting the story of mixtapes directly from some of the biggest DJ’s to make them, Buie and Osorio also enlisted DJ Envy as an executive producer on the project. It turns out that Buie and Envy have more in common than careers in entertainment. Both attended HBCU’s and Buie has memories of bumping into Envy early into his tenure as a DJ.
“When I was at Morgan State, we had a store called DA Source – we sold mixtapes, DVDs, colognes and pager services… We used to get Envy mixtapes there and a few times he would come down on his way to Hampton,” Buie recalled. “Clue would do our parties — SNS would do our parties, Ron G would do our parties, so it was very much a full circle moment when Envy’s name was brought up as, who do we need to help us be a part of this, for the checks and balances and to keep us honest and to be that actual expert.”
While this project is one that definitely speaks to the heart of any true hip hop head, Buie and Osorio say there is still more work to be done.
“We give a disclaimer at the top of the film there was no way we’re really going to be able to talk about every mixtape DJ that has some sort of impact, it’s pretty much impossible,” Buie told BOSSIP. “Going into this, we weren’t sure if we would do Volume 2 or Volume 3, but we will.”
Tale of the Tape is now streaming on Prime Video, Spectrum and Verizon
For more information visit www.taleofthetapefilm.com
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