‘Tale Of The Tape’ mixtape documentary details the DJ’s impact

If you are a hip-hop lover, Story of the tape A documentary about the mixtapes produced by respected industry professionals Kim Osorio and Malik K. Buie is a must-see.

Source: Courtesy / Red Summer TV

Story of the tape The documentary tells the story of mixtape culture and how DJs changed rap forever. The film follows the movement of mixtapes from the underground to the mainstream, detailing the ups and downs that followed – from commercialization to criminalization, digitalization and everything in between.

BOSSIP Senior Director of Content Janeé Bolden interviewed Malik K. Buie and Kim Osorio about the film, which was more than a decade in the making.

“We thought we would do it in a year or two and then we would get out and move on to other projects, but that didn’t happen,” Malik K. Buie told BOSSIP. “I think we captured a real space in hip hop, a specific time frame for these artists who are big artists now who weren’t before. Not only the general public, but also colleagues have told us how much they love the film and it’s on par with other hip hop documentary projects.”

As you may have noticed in the trailer, the documentary features never-before-seen performance footage from artists like Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole, as well as interviews with some of the world’s most successful DJs, including Kid Capri, DJ Clue, DJ Drama and the great Combat Jack, who share their own unique perspectives.

“It’s weird because a lot of times when you’re just working in the game, a lot of times I just have my head down, working hard not really understanding what my place was until we decided to do this and it became a passion,” Buie, who was a producer on BET’s hit shows. Rap City and 106 and park he told BOSSIP. “So I 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 say that we consider it simply special. Story of the tape takes viewers into the very heart of the culture, from its very beginnings, when the first DJs played to crowds in New York parks. Hip-hop purists will appreciate the raw New York vibe conveyed by Buie’s vintage footage, but as the story progresses through the years, we hear other voices from outside the region who have important stories to tell.

“You get calls praising what you’ve done, but you also get calls criticizing it,” Kim Osorio told BOSSIP. “Lately I’ve heard a lot of people talking about hip-hop in a regional sense, saying that hip-hop is very regional and has been very regional, and it has been. I’ve been dealing with this kind of criticism my whole career. When I was working at The source “It was like, ‘It’s too New York, it’s too East Coast, right?’ We would add West Coast editors and correspondents from the South and the Midwest just to make sure that the culture was represented in these other regions. I think in these early stages of the documentary we’re working on, as we continue to grow, we’ll be able to cover so many different regions and aspects, whether it’s mixtape culture or other facets of hip hop, so I think for us this is a jumping off point.”

“I can proudly say that the mixtape originated in New York,” Osorio continued. “There’s an internal debate about whether it was the Bronx or Queens, but we had to start somewhere and we had to start in the birthplace[of hip-hop]. There’s other representations as well — we have Kendrick in the documentary, early Kendrick, and that’s like a hat tip to Malik, because he did it! There are other regions represented, it’s just that yes, a lot of the mixtapes were heavily based in New York.”

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A story out of New York, which receives a lot of coverage in Story of the tapeis that of DJ Drama and Don Cannon of the aPhilliates. The Philadelphia-born DJs, who moved to Atlanta to attend Clark Atlanta University, were arrested on piracy charges and had their studio raided, largely because Drama Gangster grill The mixtape series had gained so much success and popularity that the feds misinterpreted the situation.

“When they tell their story, the way we crafted it, it’s like they’re finishing each other’s sentences,” Buie recalls. “That was real. We didn’t have to go and construct it. That really happened. Drama and the Philliates were real victims of over-policing in a crazy situation that was blown out of proportion, where there were guns drawn, bank accounts frozen, and holes in the wall of their office. It was absolutely ridiculous, but we had to go into detail to show that when you look at it, the power of hip-hop is a huge thing and it’s always been a real goldmine, moneymaker, shaper and culture-changer. You could probably make a whole documentary just on that, to be honest, but we had to go into detail for that.”

In addition to getting the story behind the mixtapes straight from some of the biggest DJs who made them, Buie and Osorio also brought on DJ Envy as an executive producer on the project. As it turns out, Buie and Envy have more in common than their careers in showbiz. They both attended HBCUs, and Buie has memories of running into Envy early in his DJ career.

“When I was at Morgan State, we had a store called DA Source — we sold mixtapes, DVDs, cologne, and paging services… We used to buy Envy mixtapes there and sometimes he’d come on his way to Hampton,” Buie recalled. “Clue would throw our parties, SNS would throw our parties, Ron G would throw our parties, so it was a full-circle moment when Envy’s name was brought up — who do we need to help us be a part of this, for checks and balances and to keep us honest and be that true expert?”

While this project is one that definitely speaks to the heart of any true hip hop lover, Buie and Osorio say there is still more work to be done.

“At the top of the film, we left a disclaimer that there was no way we could talk about every DJ who makes mixtapes and has any kind of impact, it’s virtually impossible,” Buie told BOSSIP. “Going into it, we weren’t sure if we were going to do Volume 2 or Volume 3, but we are.”

Story of the tape Now streaming on Prime Video, Spectrum and Verizon.

For more information, visit www.taleofthetapefilm.com