DJ Cassidy commemorated the 50th anniversary of Hip Hop with an iconic concert, bringing together fifty legends of Hip Hop’s Golden Era at the historic Radio City Music Hall in New York. The three-hour extravaganza saw legends like Big Daddy Kane, Doug E. Fresh, Rakim, Slick Rick, KRS-One, Sugarhill Gang, and many more take the stage, captivating an enthusiastic audience of all ages who sang along to every word.
What started as a show in DJ Cassidy’s living room became a viral sensation and a beloved televised primetime series on BET. Now, in partnership with the Black Promoter’s Collective, the concert series has become a must-see live experience. Following the sold-out Radio City Music Hall show, Cassidy announced the third installment of the series, set to take place on September 2nd at State Farm Arena in Atlanta. The Atlanta concert will feature Akon, Fat Joe, Jagged Edge, Keyshia Cole, Method Man & Redman, Remy Ma, Shaggy, The Lox, and special surprise guests. Tickets are now available for this highly-anticipated event.
Hip-hop is turning 50 and DJ Cassidy and some of the genre’s biggest icons will be turning up to celebrate this July at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall.
On Friday, July 21st, Cassidy will be hosting a special “Pass The Mic Live!” concert where he will unite 25 New York native icons of Hip Hop’s Golden Age on the same stage including Big Daddy Kane, Doug E. Fresh, Rakim, and Slick Rick, with Black Sheep, Brand Nubian, CL Smooth, Dana Dane, DoItAll of Lords Of The Underground, EPMD, Fu-Schnickens, Grandmaster Melle Mel & Scorpio, Kid ‘N Play, Kool Moe Dee, Kurtis Blow, MC Serch, MC Shan, Milk Dee of Audio Two, Monie Love, Nice ‘N Smooth, Onyx, Roxanne Shante, Special Ed, The Sugarhill Gang, Treach of Naughty By Nature, and in the tradition of “Pass The Mic,” special surprise guests.
Artists for the historic lineup were personally selected by Cassidy himself. He explains that as a way to celebrate Hip Hop’s 50th Anniversary, he set out on a mission “to unite the most iconic, most comprehensive, most definitive line-up of legendary New York artists who defined the Golden Age of Hip Hop (from the early 1980s to the early 1990s) together on one stage for the first and only time.”
While Radio City Music Hall has hosted hundreds of icons of all genres over the years, Cassidy’s event will be unique because it will combine elements the spirit of his “Pass The Mic” television specials on BET with the added excitement of a live concert experience.
“The music is continuous. The pace is relentless. The performance is interactive. The Radio City show, however, is unique from all other “Pass The Mic Live!” shows by the mere quantity of icons sharing one stage,” Cassidy states.
One of “Pass the Mic’s” defining features is that Cassidy emphasizes the importance of seamlessly blending individual artists’ contributions into a larger performance, like pieces of a puzzle.
“Every song performed will be a piece to a puzzle,” Cassidy explains.
“Together, these emcees laid the foundation for what was to transform global culture. Each of these artists were my childhood idols. Sharing the Radio City stage with twenty-five of my Hip Hop heroes in their hometown, my hometown, and the birthplace of Hip Hop, will be my greatest honor.”
The event, which will be presented by Martell Cognac and Power 105.1, is being produced in partnership with the Black Promoter’s Collective and is one of several upcoming live “Pass the Mic” experiences that the group is putting on.
On May 12th, Cassidy will kick off “Pass The Mic Live!,” a series of one-night-only events, each with one-night-only lineups, at the Prudential Center arena in Newark, Jersey. Expected performers for that event include Ashanti, Fabolous, Ja Rule, Lil Kim, Ma$e, Ne-Yo, Robin Thicke, 112, and special surprise guests. The show at Radio City Music Hall will be the second in the series.
Cassidy explains that he hopes to bring an entirely new spirit to the traditional concert experience. “‘Pass The Mic Live!’ is the real-life manifestation of the series that began in my living on July 2nd, 2020. My dear friend, legendary music mogul, and “Pass The Mic” collaborator, Steve Rifkind, told me then that “Pass The Mic” would change my life. He was right. It’s quite surreal, to say the least,” states Cassidy in explaining what fans can expect at his upcoming events.
Tickets will be on sale to the general public starting Friday, April 14th at 10:00am EST. Tickets can be purchased at Ticketmaster.
The event is produced in partnership with the Black Promoters Collective (BPC), a coalition of six of the nation’s top independent concert promotion and event production companies. As a 100% Black-owned business, its mission is to be the world’s leading producer and provider of culturally relevant live entertainment experiences.
Next week, DJ Cassidy‘s final edition of his famous ‘Pass the Mic’ will air on BET, directly following the 2022 BET Hip Hop Awards. What began as a virtual series hosted from Cassidy’s home grew into a global phenomenon over the last two years. As he prepares to transition ‘Pass the Mic’ from a BET television series into one-time-only live in-person shows, Cassidy sat down with The Source to share how his final performance will be the capstone on celebrating what he calls “one of hip-hop’s golden eras.”
In his true showmanship style, Cassidy is putting on quite the event, teasing an all-star lineup of approximately 20 high-profile hip-hop heavyweights including Busta Rhymes, Method Man, Swiss Beatz, The Lox, Too Short, and Ice Cube, as well as over a dozen surprise artists whom Cassidy refers to as his “hip-hop heroes.”
[Author’s note: I know who they are, and trust me when I say that it will be an epic performance.]
Cassidy explained to The Source how some of his shows have strategically showcased what he refers to as “Hip-Hop’s golden eras.”
He explains how the first golden era of hip-hop is considered by many to span from the early 1980s to the early 1990s, an era that gave birth to the first superstars of the culture – Run DMC, LL Cool J, Public Enemy, Salt ‘N Pepa, so on and so on.
“It was this pivotal era that I celebrated with ‘Pass The Mic: Volume One,’” he explains. “That edition featured thirty-six iconic hip-hop stars, all who debuted between the years of 1983 and 1993. This is best exemplified by the opening and closing songs of the show, “Sucker MCs” by Run DMC which was released in ‘83, and “Hip Hop Hooray” by Naughty By Nature which was released in ‘93.”
The second golden era of Hip-Hop is considered by many to span the ten years that followed. According to Cassidy, during this definitive period, music that would have typically been considered music for the streets became music for the mainstream. “Hip-hop began selling millions of records like never before, transforming global pop culture, from music to fashion to film. Rappers became pop stars, designers, and actors,” he states.
As for how these eras relate to his final installment of the ‘Pass the Mic’ franchise, he explains:
“After premiering ‘Pass The Mic: Volume Two,’ I immediately dreamt of a sequel, and I just knew that sequel should be the grand finale. Hip-hop is my first love and my greatest inspiration, so it felt right that the culmination of the series as we know it should be a celebration of Hip-hop. In this final edition, I’m going to pass the mic to twenty iconic hip-hop superstars, all of whom changed the game in their own massive way. These artists changed the sound, the look, and the influence of the culture. Their careers span decades. Their music transcends time and place. Simply put, this is the grandest finale I could have ever imagined.”
While this edition of ‘Pass The Mic’ marks the grand finale of the series as we know it, it also marks the beginning of the future.
“‘Pass The Mic’ has really just begun and will continue to bring the celebration to party people around the world,” Cassidy says. “One of the next chapters is ‘Pass The Mic Live’ in which I will bring the celebration to the live stage. In anticipation of what’s to come, I’ve already produced two epic pop-up shows, one at the Pegasus World Cup in Miami which featured surprise live performances from Ja Rule, Lil Kim, Mase, and Jadakiss, and one at the opening of the Hard Rock Hotel in New York City which featured surprise live performances from Nas, Busta Rhymes, and Fat Joe. The third pop show will take place on October 21st at the Grand Prix Formula 1 in Austin and will feature live performances from Robin Thicke, Wyclef Jean, and Shaggy. These pop-up shows are just the beginning of what’s to come for ‘Pass The Mic!’”
As Black History Month comes to a close, the 2022 NAACP Image Awards cap off a month celebrating black contributions to society. After the ceremony on Saturday, February 26, the celebrating will continue in a big way with DJ Cassidy’s special Reggae edition of Pass The Mic following the 53rd NAACP Image Awards. The special, DJ Cassidy’s Pass The Mic: BET Afterparty 2022, brings together Reggae and dancehall icons, celebrating Reggae’s influence on hip-hop and global culture.
DJ Cassidy sat down with The Source to talk about the show, whose lineup includes artists such as Shaggy, Maxi Priest, Super Cat, Barrington Levy, Ini Kamoze, Sister Nancy, Junior Reid, Patra, and more.
The inspiration for the show came from his past experience DJing, the overwhelming success of Pass the Mic, and his passion for a wide variety of musical genres.
He describes how the overwhelming emotional response to the first Pass the Mic in July 2020 inspired him to continue and he immediately began envisioning future installments of the concept.
“Looking back, I see now that each vision was a derivative of my former record crates that I carried to each deejay gig around the world,” he explains. “Before technology changed the game, I loaded six to eight one hundred pound steel cases that each held about 100 pieces of vinyl into every New York City taxi and onto every airplane. I categorized each crate by some form genre or era of music. From the very beginning of my Pass The Mic journey, I dreamed about a Reggae edition, a manifestation of that coveted Reggae record crate. As a hip-hop kid growing up in New York City, incorporating Reggae into my deejay sets was second nature. Dancehall stars were also hip-hop stars.”
He explains how when he first began conceptualizing this edition, he “wanted to represent those iconic dancehall records that played a special role in that crate, in my repertoire, and in my life in general.”
He also emphasizes how he really wanted to represent the various diverse facets of Reggae music, unbound by era, year, or decade, stating that “each of the sixteen songs featured on this show not only holds a special place in my heart, but holds a special place in the history of Reggae music and its massive influence on hip-hop, R&B, and pop music. Some dominated the hip-hop airwaves of radio stations like Hot 97 in the 1990s, while others topped the Billboard Pop Charts in the 1980s. Some fused with R&B and achieved massive commercial success, while others remain the most sampled songs of all times. Simply put, each of these records changed the game.”
While the show will definitely have many of the Pass the Mic trademark staples, Cassidy is also quick to note that viewers are in for a special treat with some of the differences that this show promises.
“Sixteen iconic records are featured in this show, more records on one show than ever before,” he explains. “There were simply so many definitive songs I wanted to celebrate. This edition brings the rapid-fire pace of Pass the Mic to new heights.
Cassidy has also partnered with some major industry names to make the upcoming show a success. In addition to superstar television producer, Jesse Collins (who recently produced the iconic hip-hop Superbowl Halftime show) and legendary music impresario, Steve Rifkind (founder of Loud and SRC Records), Cassidy partnered with renowned Reggae renaissance woman Sharon Burke and her team of Judth Bodley and Debrina Smith. “As a producer, promoter, and manager, Sharon has been at the helm of countless iconic Reggae moments over a span of decades. I knew that with her by my side, we would create something truly special that would go down in music history”, says Cassidy.
As for the future, Cassidy has no plans to limit his Pass the Mic experience to the western hemisphere, especially since over the course of the first eight editions of Pass the Mic, one of his signature catchphrases has become, “passing the mic all over the world.”
“Through Pass The Mic, I’ve always sought to create global connections between artists and fans and build bridges between both genres and viewers. Never has that mission been more fulfilled than in this installment,” he says of the upcoming performance.
“Witnessing the massive global response that Pass The Mic: Volume One and Pass The Mic: Volume Two received, I was overwhelmed by the international influence of classic hip-hop and R&B,” he says. “I always sought for the series to connect people musically on an international level, and no edition represents that mission more effectively than this upcoming special. In the future, as Pass the Mic continues to grow both on television, the stage, and beyond, I hope to constantly expand on that mission. As Afrobeat and Reggaeton’s cultural influence continues to explode, I would love to pass the mic to the icons, past, present, and future, that shaped their global impact. During President Biden’s televised Inauguration, I passed the mic to Ozuna and Luis Fonsi in front of 40 million viewers with two records that dominated global music charts, “Taki Taki” and “Despacito.” The sky’s the limit. I’d also love to celebrate Brazilian music and pass the mic to one of my greatest musical heroes, Sergio Mendes.”
He concludes by saying that “at the end of the day, no matter the category, genre, or era of music, each installment of Pass The Mic celebrates the greatest artists and greatest songs of all time by connecting those artists to their fans in a more intimate way than ever before.”
