I was interviewed for a small piece in this month’s Details magazine titled, “Rewind: The Cassette Makes a Comeback” by Courtney Balestier. Most of our 20 minute discussion was reduced to one comment about the mixtape being hip-hop’s original mass medium (which I got as a concept from Angela Ards) but, of course, there is far more to say than that. Yes, I’d love for everyone interested to buy my book (my royalties all go to political prisoners), I Mix What I Like! A Mixtape Manifesto, but to see more of how my discussion of mixtapes varies from many others you can just grab this condensed article from the Journal of International Communication, “I Mix What I Like! In Defense and Appreciation of the Rap Music Mixtape as “National” and “Dissident” Communication,” and send a few dollars on your own to a political prisoner of your choice. Essentially, however, rather than relegating the discussion of the wondrous mixtape to issues of technology or the fundamentals of hip-hop history I try to argue my own view of them as also the national mass medium of an internally- colonized nation that when viewed as such brings new meaning to mixtapes and what they expose regarding the politics of media, communication and culture.

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