We recently had the chance to interview Dex Digital, the creator of one of our favorite podcast shows, the mixtapeshow.net. The show kicks ass and Dex is informative in a major way. Read the interview and learn what the show is all about!

Yo Dex, it’s been a year since we first talked. Your Hip-Hop podcast show has received major attention, including winning several awards. Tell us about the shows achievements.

Ha ha, I’m not so sure about “several” awards. If you’re talking achievements, though, I’d say that the most important achievement for me has been that the show has just been getting crazy support from all angles. The people who listen to the show range from cats in the UK to graphic designers in South Africa to activists and artists in the US to wherever.

So for example being a Podcast Awards nominee in ‘06 was cool, and getting into Britain’s Q Magazine was great, but really the best part of this so far has been people from both a listener and industry perspective feeling what I’m doing, emailing or calling me, and so on. Like I get emails and voice mails that say, “I love your show, thank you”. Just the respect and support has been the best part of this project thus far.

When did you originally decide to start the Mixtape Show and why?

The Mixtape Show was actually sort of a side project of mine that started when I was doing a radio show at my college (UC Riverside, in Southern California) where I was the Director of Programming. I was meeting with all these high-profile-ass lawyers from D.C. on FCC issues, and pretty quickly realized that playing proper hip-hop on a college station was damn near impossible – I mean, because of profanity and indecent lyrics and all of that. $325,000 fines per word, directed at the DJ personally, will do that.

So I was getting all these great songs sent to me, and I couldn’t play them because they had a mis-edited “fuck” here or an “ass” there, and that shit pissed me off. So as soon as I heard about podcasting, I jumped right on it. This was like mid 2005. At first, it was just like “okay, yeah, now I can play whatever the fuck I want”, but pretty soon it started to go beyond the boundaries of a traditional radio show.

Where is the show currently based? Who is involved?

Ha-ha, who isn’t involved? Like I said, the community plays a huge role in how the show is run. I do put all the shows together myself and do the artwork and site design and whatnot, but the show really wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for all the music I get sent to me by artists or label people, or the suggestions I get from people that listen to the show. For example, if it wasn’t for the encouragement and feedback I’d gotten on the Soultronica series, I would have dropped it long ago. I’ve been lucky enough to make contacts with a lot of major and indie label people, so they listen a lot and will give me new and exclusive tracks. I also have a side series – The New Soul, which is produced in Hollywood by my man TK. I’m also looking at bringing some more people in.

But as for where it’s done, I’ve produced the show everywhere. I’ve done shows in the Bay Area, and Episodes 48-56 were produced in the Guangdong province of China. I do the majority of my post production at the studio in KUCR 88.3 FM in Riverside, Cali, though – we’ve got really good equipment there and the environment is just really comfortable and creative.

When and where can people check out your show?

Oh, well since it’s a podcast, they can get at it pretty much anywhere. The most direct place is at www.mixtapeshow.net, but you can also check it on iTunes, and there are a few other sites that carry my show. If you have an iPod or other mp3 player you can obviously use that, but lots of people just listen to the show right in the browser, or burn CDs. Also there are a few traditional radio stations that have been talking to me about carrying some of my (edited) episodes, and some virtual online worlds…

Define good vs. whack Hip-Hop?

Damn, that’s actually a really hard question. It’s hard for me to put a definition on it, or a qualifier, like “if you do this, you’re good, if you do that, then fuck you because you’re wack”. I guess I would say that “good” hip-hop would be something that pushes boundaries. Anything that’s weird.

Right now there’s nobody really doing anything outside the standard mold, or molds, because there are definitely different archetypes that MCs and beat makers are willing to fill in the underground, and they keep doing it – so doing something different takes a lot of creativity and hard work. So I would say that that – being original and genuine – would be “good”, in the simple sense of the word. Whether that is something that I am going to like personally comes down to personal preference. There are a lot of artists where I’ll respect their movement or whatever, but I don’t like their music.

Do you see Hip-Hop maintaining in today’s world of mainstream media where every video and track seems to be about the same bitches, ho’s and bling?

I mean, this isn’t necessarily all artists’ fault. I think a lot of society’s ills get blamed on hip-hop, and while yes some of us could be doing better, you have to realize whom you’re pointing the finger at. Hip-Hop at this point is largely cooned out. If you want to make money, you absolutely have to dumb down. And unlike, say, alternative rockers or whatever, who all they have to worry about is their own artistic integrity, when we do it-it comes at the expense of the Black community at large.

But don’t get it twisted. This is how the corporations like it. Mainstream hip-hop controlled by a small group of people whose best interests are served by making sure that hip-hop is apolitical, self-degrading, and non-dangerous. So people who are trying to make music that is counter to that paradigm simply aren’t signed, because they are a threat to the system.

So do I see the current system “maintaining”? Yeah, for a while. Modern mainstream rap is just a projection of mainstream American culture’s sexist, paranoid insecurities onto us. But people will eventually get tired of that – and for me, that’s where alternative mediums like podcasting come in. Once people on the whole realize that they don’t have to put up with other people telling them what they are supposed to like, it’s over, whether Clear Channel have prepared for that or not.

We were really stoked on the Emo Edition. Tell us how that came about?

Hahaha, that was a pretty crazy episode. A lot of my episodes are really thought out, but this one just sort of happened. I think for the most part it was just sort of a cut at these fake-ass thug rappers, and how that’s just become the paradigm for hip-hop period. Like I get demos from these straight up suburb kids trying to talk about how they carry guns or sell drugs. And it’s like yo, why do you have to lie?

And I mean really, I think there’s something in American culture that makes us just love the bad guys. Just look at Western movies. So sometimes if somebody wants to sit down, turn down the lights, have them some Lipton iced tea, and listen to a song about flipping coke and shooting people, that’s fine. I do that sometimes myself. But I mean, there’s other things’ going on in your life, right? So this MC Black On Black Violence was just that opposite extreme, this character that I made up that’s sort of a composite of a bunch of different people I’ve met or listened to, that have gotten so caught up in rapping about bullshit that they forgot there’s other shit happening in their lives. He’s just sort of an extreme, but I don’t think he’s all that unrealistic.

How do you decide what makes it on the show and what does not?

I actually have a really short attention span, so my selection process is pretty quick. I get maybe 60, 70 mp3s in my gmail inbox a week, plus CDs, vinyl, etc shipped to me. In general, if it can’t hold my interest past the first couple bars, I throw it out. Or if somebody pulls some shit like saying “ooh baby” or using them fake vinyl scratch sound effects, or those stupid R&B chimes, I delete that shit with a quickness, because otherwise I’d spend hours and hours a day just listening to garbage.

Beyond that, though, pretty much anything is fair game. I treat tracks by major artists and indie artists and basement producers the same – if I like it, then it’s on. After I get a track, I will hold onto it and try to find a place to put it – I’ll put it into a theme, or like what happened with shows like the First Impressions joint which is coming out soon, I’ll be so inspired by one individual track that I will create an entire theme show around that one track – which could take months. So at any one time I’ll have maybe 50-60 tracks waiting to get put on, but am just looking for the right home.

Who do you currently see as being relevant in Hip-Hop today?

Damn, you really hit me with these hard-ass questions! “Relevant” is a pretty subjective word, but I guess I would have to say the most relevant people right now are the ones that are just unapologetically weird, because they are the driving forces behind the shit that excites me personally as a listener.

Lil Jon would definitely be one, Rick Rock, E-40. Three 6 sometimes. People forget that hip-hop started out being a fucking weird-ass genre. Planet Rock? Listen to that shit. They sampled Kraftwerk. Rap music is supposed to be bizarre. That’s why I like Hyphy, that’s why I like Crunk music. And if you look at it, that’s what is really hot in the streets right now. It brought dancing back, it’s introduced some of that weird-ass fashion. So basically the people that are making hits, but you can tell are still on the fringe. Neptune’s, Diplo has a little buzz going. Just crazy people.

Of course, I’d like to hear more people talking about more socially responsible issues, but that’s not available in our current situation. Until the system that controls how we get and evaluate music changes, people that are actually making statements and working for change are going to continue to be irrelevant to the majority of people. And anyway we need to be looking to other people for leadership other than rappers.

Who are you listening too this week?

Justice, Daft Punk, Drop The Lime, Sweet Trip, Ogurusu Norihide, Ammon Contact, Squarepusher, Dilla, Madlib, Goldie, UGK, Suburb, Josh Ivey, ELO.