THE PEOPLES STATION 89.9 FM

When I moved to the Twins Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul in 1993-4, there was only one black radio station serving a metropolitan area of about 2.5 million people, a 100,000 of whom were black. In the subsequent 10 years, the black population doubled and the black music genre has gone even more main stream. Today, there are two black format radio stations serving the Twin Cities market. One is black owned and operated and the other is white owned with a mixture of black and white DJ’s.

The Black owned station is KMOJ, broadcast frequency 89.9 FM, is a community based radio station that gets little revenue from traditional advertisers with deep pockets. It calls itself “The Peoples Station”. This station caters to primarily the African American community, but also the Twin cities large African population with news and programming. This is the station to turn to when you want to hear local news affecting the black community, as well as the station that provides a strong and unfiltered black commentary and perspective. However, this station FM broadcast power is only 1 kilowatts.

The new kid on the block is B96, FM frequency 96.3; with broadcast power 100 times that of its rival KMOJ. Its broadcast kilowatts allow it to transmit its signal to the entire Twin cities and beyond. KMOJ cannot be heard clearly outside a 15 mile radius centered at its location on the grounds of a North Minneapolis (heart of the black community in the twin cities) housing project. B96 thus captures and benefits from large numbers of white listeners to Hip Hop and R&B. Consequently, it pulls in large advertising revenue and thus the station generates more revenue from a much larger market share than KMOJ. In fact, not only has B96 captured part of KMOJ base black audience, it has siphoned off some of their DJ’s as well as they can afford to pay them much better than a community (black community at that) based radio can.

One of my major problems with this is that B96, lead by its popular morning DJ, Tony Fly, is promoting the negativities of Hip Hop culture. I am not saying that Hip Hop culture is negative, as a whole, rather, that it has its negative side and this Tony Fly exacerbates it. Tony fly, by the way, is a white guy who speaks in a black vernacular and slang on his radio show. This guy is always talking about Boes and Hitches (switch the first letters) and pimping. He even has had promotions and events entitled as such. He must feel that this type of rhetoric is simply Hip Hop or what black music is all about. In my opinion, his behavior is totally irresponsible, but then again, controversy sells in media and he may be striving to be a “shock Jock”. B96 is also notorious for doing a poor job of beeping out curse words in lyrics.

KMOJ is much more responsible in its broadcasting and it also gives the community a voice and commentary. You do not hear DJs promoting the misogynistic and thuggish negative side of rap music, by parroting the behavior, like you find at the white owned station. The Black owned station also devotes air time to community activist, who speak on issue affecting the black community, such as police brutality, gangs, racism, poverty and the gamut of the black experience. Needless to say, more than a few white folks like their black radio minus any black social commentary..."thank you very much...but no thanks". They like and promote the music produced from the conditions of blackness, but they do not want to hear black people talk about the conditions of blacks. All they seem to want to hear are the lyrics about blacks killing each other and pimping dem plack boes, with a strong base in the background so they can dance to it too.

This is how I believe that smut of Hip Hop gets propagated into mainstream; it gets distributed on the backs of white ownership and interest. In the beginning of Hip Hop, many artists complained that black stations would not play their music and that they were censuring them, so they went underground. Black owned stations initially did not play overtly negative lyrics as they do now. The change came when Hip Hop crossed over and whites seen the lucrative dollars in this explosion into popular culture. Thus, the phenomenon of white owned radio stations, with white DJs who use black vernacular and slang, started to push the envelope of the type of lyrics that got air time. They gained market share from this strategy, forcing black owned stations to follow suit, in an attempt to compete for market share.

Indeed, white owned radio is pimping the genre of black music for profit. It is also the white listening consumer market who dominates Hip Hop consumption. Thus, it is white Demand that is shaping what is being supplied in the capitalistic free market. The entertainment industry is about pushing the moral envelope to gain attention and hence market shares, which begets increased advertising, which begets increased revenue and profits. In the Twin Cities, it is obvious to see that the more capitalistic station is the station making the most money, as well as, doing the most moral damage in the community. The community funded and supported KMOJ, while not perfect, does give something positive back to the community in terms of a voice that reflects the causes and conditions that give birth to the Hip Hop phenomenon. Black owned radio is being brought out nationally, which means that the moral envelope will pushed out even further.