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throwback at noon · by Rafi Kam
Yes Virginia, golden age hip-hop still gets played on many of the major stations.
Here in New York this nostalgia-fest is confined to a 60 minute slot on Hot 97 and a 30 minute slot on Power 105…. both of which start at 12pm.
On a recent day I heard Dr. Dre debuting Snoop on “187 on an undercover cop”, some joint I’d never heard which was a rap collabo with Miles Davis, and “Let it all Hang Out” which long-time readers of this site may remember as a flash movie by our friend Kalel.
Clearly these shows are probably the best thing going in New York radio programming.
But why are these songs limited to the noon hour?
First of all, I picture Program Directors at radio stations all across the country coalescing on this decision. They’ve got this secondary audience pegged: true-blue rap fans in their 30s – teachers, construction workers, accountants, receptionists – each sneaking out to their car for a lonely lunch just so they can hear some Rob Bass over their tuna salad sandwich.
The other hours of the day, these rap stations won’t touch anything older than a few months. The sole exceptions in the New York market seem to be the Lost Boyz song “Renee” and the Mobb Deep f/ Lil Kim “Quiet Storm” remix.
I still hear these two songs once a month or so during prime hours on Hot 97 and Power 105 but never anything else that can possibly be considered a throwback. Why these two songs and nothing else? I mean, they’re classic songs and all, but why just these two songs??
My theory is that there is a forgotten stash of payola on these two joints. Maybe someone at Loud accidentally added an extra zero back in the day on the Quiet Storm check. Maybe Freaky Tah’s life insurance payout had provisions to create a special slush fund for Miss Jones.
Being something of a throwback myself I really want to hear the jams of yesteryear throughout the day.
I was on vacation a few years back and, driving through Amish country, I heard a Philadelphia rap station playing Eric B and Rakim right in the middle of drive-time. I remember feeling jealous that maybe Philly had it better than NY for radio. But in hindsight, I kind of doubt things are actually better over there. Maybe that station was still paying out on old extortion to Eric B or something.
Rap radio needs to get free. Songs from years back should be remembered and not ghettoized in the lunch-hour when no kids are listening.
Rock stations look back all the time, why shouldn’t rap stations when the music itself is constantly evoking older jams, lyrics, etc? Rap music is totally self-referential but much of today’s audience are empty vessels, illiterate to all the reference points.
Couldn’t the new Musiq Souldchild Buddy have even just a few times been played aside the original?
Instead of dj’s preserving what’s dope, we have corporations showcasing what’s new. Freshness in the hip-hop sense of the word has been replaced by freshness in the supermarket sense.
You tell me, is there a rap radio station in this country that doesn’t treat this music as being disposable? Not a radio show on public radio or college radio but an entire station? Are things being done the right way on internet or satellite radio? I wouldn’t know it, since I haven’t really plunged into either. But so far I’m still waiting to hear from a bunch of people who love hip-hop and get into radio to do it right.
Since Run DMC used it to place themselves over all earlier MC’s, the phrase “old-school” has been used in hip-hop to differentiate the hot shit from the stuff we no longer care about. We hear it in the discourse of today that old-school rap is the positive stuff, the safe stuff, the accepted fun or intelligent political stuff. The stuff for nostalgic grown-ups, not for these ignorant kids with their catchy, cancerous bullshit rap.
This divisiveness is the real bullshit. Hip-hop is supposed to be inclusive. It’s supposed to leap across space, time, demographics and any other boundary you throw at it. So I don’t want an oldies rap tour, an oldies rap station or the need for an oldies rap hour.
Give us dj’s who can connect the dots between the eras. Give us some elements of surprise instead of the same 5 songs playing for 3 months straight.
We used to say about Oh Word before we launched, “If we stick to our plan, we’re not going to have a huge audience but our small audience is going to fucking love us.” I’m still waiting for a radio station to go at this the right way. I don’t know how big their following will be, but I know I will fucking love them.
sirius shade 45 all out show plays tons of classics – lord sears drive time drunk mix (driv etime for me anyway I’m on mountain time) is dope as shit. I’ll never go back to terrestrial radio.
— wax Apr 13, 07:17 PM
Closest you can probably come is college radio. We have something like that at UCLA called Last Donut of the Night. 8-10p Fridays on uclaradio.com – last I checked.
— poetics Apr 13, 08:00 PM
Heads are always complaining about the radio dial being empty and boring but really there’s no excuse. You can start your own station. Get some friends take a community college course on electronics(or not it don’t matter) and play it smart and you’ll be rockin’ for years with out a bust from the FEDS.
Stop payin’ those fees ,listening to commercials and play what the hell you want. Shit only cost like two-hundred(thats less then a year of satellite radio) and you can get the whole hood bumpin’.
so pretty much what i’m sayin’ is fuck satellite and corporate radio and own your shit, go pirate.
keep real hip hop alive
more info:
www.freeradio.org
— Handsome Wonderful Apr 13, 08:03 PM
I think the best solution for you is to drop 10 dollars a month on XM. They have a couple of stations dedicated to classic rap. The XM radio interface came stock with my Accord and I had a free 3 month preview that was nice. No commercials and bullshit. Unfortunately I utilize most of my music through CDs and iPod so satellite radio seemed frivalous in the long run. But two of my friends swears by it.
— Jay B Apr 13, 11:12 PM
Thanks for the heads up on UCLA radio, shit is pretty dope so far.
I agree with this whole article, it had great points. It would be dope if we could hear some 36 Chamers, some OB4CL, some old Gang Starr, mixed in with today’s radio. You brought up a good point on the DJ’s too. They really don’t get to show their profession, barring some like Kay Slay or Green Lantern who have their late night shows because they spin whatever they want. The daytime DJ’s basically serve no purpose, besides short phonecall interviews between the same 6 songs, the occasional “We bout to get into this new joint from Rich Boy..”, and to let us know they have free tickets to the Fabo show for the 97th caller. People really should write to the stations and let them know how it SHOULD be done, but they either have no spine, or have no brain cells (they like it as is).
I would get XM as well, but I’m in the same boat as dude above me. I have 15,000+ songs on my computer so I would seldom use it anyway.
— SK93 Apr 14, 01:22 AM
> Rock stations look back all the time, why shouldn’t rap stations when the music itself is constantly evoking older jams, lyrics, etc?
IMHO one of the greatest myths circulating in hip hop thinking is that rock fans cherish their older heroes more than hip hop fans do theirs. This is categorically inaccurate.
Young rock fans today know little more about the Beatles and the Stones than the hip hop ones do about Rakim and Run DMC. As an example, I dated a 23 year old girl for a while and she’d never even HEARD of The Who let alone know their music.
Turn on a rock station today and they’re banging Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, The Killers, My Chemical Romance and whatever else is new and hot, just like the hip hop stations. The odd Nirvana, U2 and Parl Jam track excepted (their Biggie, 2Pac and Nas’s) excepted, I’m not hearing a lot of the groups like Limp Bizkit that were KILLING the rock game 10 years ago.
Ultimately a lot of that stuff is treated as being just as disposable as hip hop is. The reality is that, for the most part, older rock fans and critics support the older rock acts but who’s the equivalent of Bob Dylan, the Stones and Rod Stewart in hip hop that’s gonna bring out the late 30 something-plus cat with the wife, kids and mortgage to go see a show? Tribe, Fugees? Veteran artists like Rakim, KRS-One, PE, Kane etc. are probably too niche and edgy sounding to generate the same level of interest in older hip hop fans as the Billy Joels and Elton Johns do on the pop/rock side.
— ian Apr 14, 12:34 PM
XM 65 The Rhyme is nothing but old school hip hop and XM 66 Raw which usually plays the newer stuff, occasionally will throw an old school gem out.
— ldc3000 Apr 14, 03:47 PM
Nice post! lol on “forgotten stash of payola” — as you suggest, the real culprit here is the radical corporatization of radio over the last 5 years. Give thanks for the web is all I can say, tho I look fwd to the day when we can wrestle the airwaves back.
btw, I think you must have heard “Doo Bop” — man, what an awful track, Easy Mo Bee assist notwithstanding.
http://www.discogs.com/release/366106
In an earlier moment of his career Miles might have done something amazing with hip-hop, no doubt, but in the late 80s, rachel z era, nah.
— w&w Apr 14, 04:53 PM
It may take two to make a thing go right, but I wish one would have zipped his jacket up.
— sankofa Apr 14, 05:36 PM
On the “Quiet Storm” Remix tip(which is vastly inferior to the original), a few months back when I dared to turn on the NYC radio because I got bored with the CDs in my car, I couldn’t listen for 30 minutes straight without hearing “If I Ruled The World.” It was spooky. I wasn’t complaining. It was spooky.
— DocZeus Apr 15, 08:58 PM
Good read.
I think (hope) soon enough there will be “classic hip hop” radio stations. look at how abundant classic rock stations are. and many of them are playing song that are much less than twenty years old.
it’s only a matter of time before the old white men that control radio right now become our generation.
— Lee Apr 15, 10:55 PM
Nice article. NY radio sucks severe ass.
I suggest you save up $$ for a plane ticket to London and you’ll be sorted. We got nothing but pirate stations out here. Without actually naming them, there are about 4 stations which play nothing but classic hip-hop,soul and rnb joints. The US is just slippin thats all.
Having said that our commercial radio is almost as bad as yours.
— EnglandRepresent Apr 15, 11:30 PM
i am that accountant fiending for 12 oclock to actually hear something…
i accidentally stumbled on to WNYU radio a month or so ago ..around 10 oclock @ nite..and they were killing it…miss those days
— GhostNYC Apr 17, 01:29 PM
Try XM 65. They’re not just limited to a one hour block, it’s all day classics AROUND the block.
— DJ Flash Apr 18, 05:29 AM