Tuma Basa on Hip-Hop 50 and Soulja Boy’s influence: “Let’s show him some respect”

nme.com:

YouTube’s Director of Black Music & Culture and the founder of Spotify’s Rap Caviar playlist, has spoken to NME about hip-hop’s 50th anniversary, YouTube’s new FIFTY DEEP programme and why Soulja Boy deserves his props as an innovator of “youth culture.”The Congolese-American’s career has been heavily intertwined with the genre.

Earlier in his life, he helped programme hip-hop music on BET – where shows like Rap City earned the network huge ratings, VJed on MTV in the early ‘00s, and even worked with rap mogul Diddy for three years at Bad Boy Records.One of his biggest feats, however, is creating the popular Rap Caviar playlist for Spotify: now the most-followed rap playlist on the streaming platform and meant to represent the creme de la creme of all things hip-hop.“I didn’t pitch it necessarily,” Basa said, explaining how Rap Caviar came about. “[Spotify] asked me, ‘Hey, we need a name for a flagship playlist.’ This lady called Molly sent me a text [of] a picture of Puff [Diddy], and then I thought of Rap Caviar.Basa also revealed that the title was inspired by the late music executive Andre Harrell, who founded Uptown Records and was a mentor to Diddy, another innovative spearhead in hip-hop. “He taught me a lot,” he said. “When he was young, he used to be a rapper [in a group called] Dr.

Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. They called themselves ‘The champagne of rap.’“So, Andre Harrell, [someone] who taught me so much [and] gave me so much time and wisdom, used to always talk about a concept that he created which is now commonly known as ‘Ghetto fabulous.’ The whole inspiration was very much influenced by Puff and Andre Harrell.”On August 11 – the day many hip-hop historians have agreed was when the genre started when DJ Kool Herc.