DJ Cassidy explains how he picked the songs for his mic-drop moment at the DNC

nypost.com:

Who knew? But apparently, DJ Cassidy — was born to run the DNC.Indeed, it was a state roll call to remember at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Monday night, as the NYC DJ — the spinner to the stars, from Jennifer Lopez to Beyonce to Barack (as in Obama) — turned his “Pass the Mic” franchise into a state-to-state bop-along for 75 epic, invigorating minutes.All 50 US states and territories were represented in a hands-in-the-air-across-America throwdown that was as unprecedented as, um, say, President Joe Biden dropping out of the race a month ago.Cassidy — who had previously campaigned for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris even before she became Biden’s VP pick in 2020 — had been working for a month on putting together this seamless mix of music that was literally across the map.“This is the democratic process,” Cassidy told The Post. “I learned a lot about this over the past month.

I knew a little bit about it, but not nearly what I know now. And to have the privilege of curating 75 minutes of music — 57 songs for essentially 57 states, the 50 states and the territories — was an honor.

And I think that the key to this all is emotion. People felt emotion because music creates emotion, and for the first time, people connected to this process in an emotional way.”But while some state song choices were more obvious — Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” for New Jersey, Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ “Empire State of Mind” for New York and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” for Alabama — others were more, let’s say, curious.“I did not want to create this playlist by myself on a deserted island,” said Cassidy.