Hip-Hop Made: 2 Live Crew's Mr. Mixx

We continue to celebrate the 50 years of a groundbreaking, culture-shifting movement of Hip-Hop, so we’re back with more from Hip-Hop Made and we’ve got the originator of booty-shaking music, The 2 Live Crew’s Mr. Mixx to talk about how Miami got its foot in the door in the world of Hip-Hop and the creation of “Miami bass.” Taking it back to about 1985, David Hobbs (Mr. Mixx) and Christopher Wong Won (Fresh Kid Ice), founders of The 2 Live Crew served in the military together. During their free time they would listen to undercover tapes, Mixx revealed and with him already having a DJ setup– the two figured “let's try to go to the studio and make a record,” he shared. So they partnered up, “we took a shot at it and that's the record everybody knows– ‘Beat Box.’” Now while “Beat Box" was originally released in California, it moved around mainstream media and led to the two flying out to Miami. “We showed that the music could be commercialized.” Mr. Mixx talked about how they shook up the Hip-Hop industry because at the time, Miami didn’t have much of a rap scene or identity. “We really kinda upset the industry because Miami wasn’t known for having any kind of situation… having a rap identity, there was no such thing,” he said. The “Hoochie Mama,” artists fostered the idea of "uptempo Hip-Hop." With Miami already being a frisky and hot scene, The 2 Live crew “brought out the sexy in music” and it quickly turned into “Miami booty music.” “It got embraced in a lot of places throughout the south… it just wasn’t embraced in the New York mecca,” he revealed as the music they were making, known to many as "Miami bass,” was frowned upon in the New York area. But he believes that their music was not a “derailment to what so-called traditional New York Hip-Hop was.” They made music that people could relate to more than what was coming out of New York. “Some of the slang words that came out of New York, you had to have a New York state of mind to follow the music.” Mr. Mixx believes that “New York created it but we changed the game.” Listen to DJ ZOG's full talk with Mr. Mixx above, and find more to celebrate the first 50 years of Hip-Hop at audacy.com/hiphopmade.