50 Years of Hip-Hop Mixtape

If you love any era of hip-hop, this is the definitive video mix of 50 years of hip-hop with nearly 500 tracks in under an hour, featuring every key artist and track from 1973 to 2023, mixed by DJ Beat A Maxx for BBC 1Xtra.

Featuring everything from the first samples of Babe Ruth, to Grandmaster Flash, Sugarhill Gang and Afrika Bambaataa, all the way through Run DMC, Beastie Boys, NWA, Queen Latifah, Jay Z and Lil Kim, to today’s titans like Nicki Minaj, Drake, Cardi B, Lil Nas X and absolutely everyone in between.

The mix comes from video DJ and turntablist Beat A Maxx, who recently DJ’d at Beyonce’s 2023 Renaissance World Tour in London, and the show is introduced by our hip-hop officianados of Kenny Allstar and Snoochie Shy, 'For the Love of Hip-Hop' host Romesh Ranganathan, DJ Dee from Panjabi Hit Squad and resident Fun Lovin' Criminal New Yorker Huey Morgan.

The mix took 3 months, and nearly 500 hours of work and research to produce and uses live scratching on turntables throughout. Check out the double, triple and quadruple layers of the mix, and some special stuff in the mix linking the cultural hip-hop history together, including the two 1980s MCs Roxanne, plus a 'South Bronx' and 'The Bridge' scratch, referencing 'The Bridge Wars' on where hip-hop began.

Whichever hip-hop decade, artist or track you love, it will be in there, mixed sublimely with all your other favourite tunes, and taking you back to those videos of the moment.