ericj
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2005
- Posts
- 8,270
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- 170
It's popular in my generation (gen-x) to say that good hip-hop died in the 90's.
And yeah, once upon a time i was a white boy in the burbs listening to Run DMC.
Commercial hip-hop really has gone some pretty horrible places over the last 30 years, but i discovered a couple-three years ago that there is still good hip-hop.
It's just not generally on the radio or TV.
For me in my adult life it arguably started with Run the Jewels 3 - Legend Has It, and Nobody Speak (with DJ Shadow).
Imagine my surprise that I'm exactly the same age as Killer Mike and El-P.
I started working from home a few years ago and started listening to internet radio and youtube music streams most of the day. A friend who was going through a 70's rock phase had introduced me to WFMU, an independent listener-supported radio station in jersey city that has 4 continual live streams and an extensive online searchable backlog.
What they broadcast over the air and their main online stream is what they refer to as "free-form" radio. It ranges from brilliant to awful with everything in between.
Specific to this subject, they have a weekly hour long hip-hop show, Put The Needle on the Record with Billy Jam.
Billy Jam turns out to not just be white but an irish immigrant. The deal is that his dad was a rock & country DJ in ireland in the 70's and got a gig at a radio station in Oakland.
So, Billy Jam was probably the whitest kid at a whole lot of early west-coast hip-hop shows. He's been a hip-hop radio DJ since 1984.
PTNOTR leans heavily on new hip-hop and new artists. Most shows are strictly hip-hop released in the last year.
Even as someone who has been listening to the show and listening to the backlog of shows since 2005, most of the artists on his playlists are people i never heard of before.
So i discovered acts like Mr. Lif, Aesop Rock, Mr. MFing Exquire, DJ Qbert, Misterman Cheers aka RAST, and Danny Brown. And branched out from there on youtube and discovered artists like Bambu de Pistola who billy jam really needs to give a listen.
If you ever liked hip-hop, i recommend it. He's on 7-8pm eastern time on fridays. Tonight's show is part 2 of his best of 2020 so far.
https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/BJ
And yeah, once upon a time i was a white boy in the burbs listening to Run DMC.
Commercial hip-hop really has gone some pretty horrible places over the last 30 years, but i discovered a couple-three years ago that there is still good hip-hop.
It's just not generally on the radio or TV.
For me in my adult life it arguably started with Run the Jewels 3 - Legend Has It, and Nobody Speak (with DJ Shadow).
Imagine my surprise that I'm exactly the same age as Killer Mike and El-P.
I started working from home a few years ago and started listening to internet radio and youtube music streams most of the day. A friend who was going through a 70's rock phase had introduced me to WFMU, an independent listener-supported radio station in jersey city that has 4 continual live streams and an extensive online searchable backlog.
What they broadcast over the air and their main online stream is what they refer to as "free-form" radio. It ranges from brilliant to awful with everything in between.
Specific to this subject, they have a weekly hour long hip-hop show, Put The Needle on the Record with Billy Jam.
Billy Jam turns out to not just be white but an irish immigrant. The deal is that his dad was a rock & country DJ in ireland in the 70's and got a gig at a radio station in Oakland.
So, Billy Jam was probably the whitest kid at a whole lot of early west-coast hip-hop shows. He's been a hip-hop radio DJ since 1984.
PTNOTR leans heavily on new hip-hop and new artists. Most shows are strictly hip-hop released in the last year.
Even as someone who has been listening to the show and listening to the backlog of shows since 2005, most of the artists on his playlists are people i never heard of before.
So i discovered acts like Mr. Lif, Aesop Rock, Mr. MFing Exquire, DJ Qbert, Misterman Cheers aka RAST, and Danny Brown. And branched out from there on youtube and discovered artists like Bambu de Pistola who billy jam really needs to give a listen.
If you ever liked hip-hop, i recommend it. He's on 7-8pm eastern time on fridays. Tonight's show is part 2 of his best of 2020 so far.
https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/BJ
