The Lox Discuss Success Before the Social Media Age

by Soraya Joseph 3/6/2017

In the new episode of the web series Behind The Breaks Sway Calloway linked with hip hop group The Lox at their Yonkers based juice bar, Juices for Life. During a sit down with Jadakiss, Styles P and Sheek Louch, the media personality spoke with the iconic rap trio to discuss their early career and how the music industry has changed in the past two decades. Much like The Breaks, the guys broke down the importance of mixtapes and physical grinding when it came to success in the pre-social media age of hip hop.

“The 90’s for us, we came in when mixtapes was Bibles. Mixtapes was albums… These days, you [can] send your records to 100 DJ’s. Before, we had to wait outside and meet with the DJ We had to wait to get to the particular DJ to [try] and play that joint. There was no Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. So that verse being on that mixtape was a way to reach those cities that you can’t get to or afford to get to. We weren’t getting to Oakland but this [DJ] Clue mixtape could make it to Oakland. Before, you had to be good enough to make it by word of mouth alone.”

Sounds like there were definitely pros and cons to being put on back then. Even though publicity is much easier to attain with social media, it’s definitely harder to make an impression in a sea of people trying to do the same thing.

Check out the rest of the interview above!

Be sure to tune into The Breaks every Monday at 9/8c, only on VH1!