DJ Cassidy Bringing a Final ‘Pass the Mic’ Special to BET to Celebrate the Hip-Hop Stars of 1993-2003
variety.comChris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic After hundreds of passes, DJ Cassidy’s mic is about to be set down, at least as far as TV specials go.
His celebrated “Pass the Mic” series — which started online as a pandemic phenomenon bringing together classic R&B and rap stars, before moving to BET as a succession of post-awards specials — will have its final installment Oct.
4, directly following the BET Hip-Hop Awards. The half-hour grand finale on BET next week will feature rappers from what DJ Cassidy calls “the second golden age of hip-hop,” which he marks as taking place roughly between 1993 and 2003.
Although he typically keeps the lineup for the “Pass the Mic” specials under wraps so the guests are a surprise to the audience, Cassidy is giving Variety a representative sample of four of the 20 stars included in the finale: Swizz Beatz, Busta Rhymes, Method Man and Ice Cube. “Pass the Mic” was started up by the celebrity DJ in 2020 as a pandemic-era means of bringing together R&B and hip-hop stars, almost all of whose initial heydays date back to a specific three-decade period that is Cassidy’s sweet spot, from the early ’70s to the early 2000s.
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