In 1991, DJ Mars moved from Springfield, Mass., to Atlanta to found his crew Superfriends and back OutKast during its first tour. Then, he watched the South take over hip-hop, as chronicled by mixtapes–once live cassette recordings, now Datpiff downloads. "As a student of the game, you have to pay attention to the way things evolve," he says in his new book The Art Behind the Tape, co-authored by Djibril Ndiaye, Maurice Garland and Tai Saint-Louis.
The book delivers what Mars promised on Kickstarter–an insider's perspective. Half of its 90 interviews are DJ-to-DJ chats. Most of the featured artists and industry folk are only introduced by their names. Passing mentions of "the RIAA incident" eventually lead to Don Cannon's explanation–how a SWAT team raided his and DJ Drama's Atlanta-based studio to seize 50,000 mixtapes, mistaking such promotion for bootlegging. Diving into this book requires an already-encyclopedic knowledge of hip-hop–or, as Mars figures, an accompanying film.
His documentary of the same name is still at its infancy. Fortunately, the book already presents several examples of how mixtape culture history can be brought to life: Blown-up photos of the first mixtapes, these cassettes with names scrawled on yellowing tape. Shit-talking DJs, reclaiming firsties on every possible innovation, from '90s R&B/hip-hop blends to putting their borough on the map. J. Period and DJ Vlad, recalling how they, as rookies, created must-have mixtapes Best of Nas and Rap Phenomenon, respectively, while clearly stoked to be regarded as ones for the books.