The 40-Year Legacy of Hip Hop at WKCR

by August Phillips, McKenna Roberts, Ted Schmiedeler, Heather Hayes, & Isabelle Fishbein

In summer 1983, Ovid Santoro arrived at Columbia and joined WKCR in his first semester as a student. As he began regularly hosting Transfigured Night on Tuesday and Thursday nights, he would often play hip hop records and host local rappers and DJs in the station. Forty years later, Santoro’s shows are the earliest instance of hip hop being played on WKCR, and made WKCR one of the earliest radio stations in the world to regularly air hip hop. Since then, hip hop has become a massively important cultural force and the most popular genre of music in the United States. The history of hip hop at WKCR is likewise long and complex, and parallels much of the music’s growth. In advance of WKCR’s November broadcast celebrating the 50th anniversary of the genre, this feature details four decades of hip hop at WKCR and the students, DJs, and musicians who made it all possible.

Santoro began playing hip hop on Transfigured Night largely due to the time he spent at New York City clubs, like Danceteria and Disco Fever, and the artists he met and interacted with in them. At the time, hip hop did not have a strong presence in the mainstream, and Santoro recalled that there was “no way that it was a foregone conclusion that this was gonna break out.” Early on, some members of the WKCR Board resisted having hip hop played on the station, and Santoro noted the racist undertones in that resistance. “It’s like, wait, we play jazz all the time. And he was just against the culture,” Santoro said about one Board member. But Santoro saw the emerging genre of hip hop as certainly fitting the description of “New Music" (Transfigured Night's department), and received support from other members of the Board.

During his 1-5 a.m. shows—a time slot central to the history of hip hop at WKCR— Santoro began including records from New York City artists he was familiar with. But although rappers and DJs were desperate for radio airtime, there were relatively few hip hop recordings available to play at time: “I had like 50 records, maybe, max,” Santoro said. Instead, Santoro’s shows were a free-form mix of hip hop, new music, spoken word, and a variety of guests in the station with him. While these were often other Columbia students, Santoro also consistently had some of the most important figures in early hip hop on his show, including the Cold Crush Brothers, Afrika Bambaataa, Whodini, and Grandmaster Melle

Mel, as well as Lyor Cohen, a friend of Santoro who led Def Jam and is now YouTube’s global head of music. These guests would come in on their way to or from clubs where they performed, and might play non-hip hop records they liked or talk on the mic. “It was just like, ‘We’re hanging out with Ovid at the station,'” Santoro said.

While Santoro’s show also brought artists like Run DMC and LL Cool J to the Columbia campus, he emphasized that his goal was never to try to place the genre on a pedestal, but rather to simply play good music and have a good time. “The beauty of this all is that it was authentic and natural and organic. The whole purpose of it was to be inclusive. [...] The idea was, this is good music, it deserves to be heard, and it’s not on the big radio stations.”

Although Santoro continued hosting Transfigured Night shows until he left the country in 1989, he never interacted with the next round of hosts to play hip hop on WKCR. In the summer of 1986, the We Could Do This Show first aired, hosted by Prime Minister Pete Nice and DJ Clark Kent. Pete Nice had been in several hip hop groups in high school and got involved in music again after a college career-ending basketball injury. DJ Clark Kent would play music in clubs and worked to get these records onto the major airwaves. The two of them created a show that set the tone for hip hop at WKCR with a focus on creating a platform for artists not played elsewhere. Their show was not renewed at the end of the summer, but both continued in the hip hop industry and were instrumental in hip hop continuing to be played at WKCR.

WKCR’s hip hop scene would be shaken up in

1990 with the introduction of The Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito Show. Stretch Armstrong grew up on the Upper East Side and became interested in hip hop as a teenager. He was a talented DJ when he joined WKCR as a freshman in Columbia College, and had previously been connected with DJ Clark Kent. Stretch sought to bring hip hop to New York’s airwaves with a dedicated show on WKCR by enlisting the help of his close friend Bobbito Garcia. The two were granted a show on Friday mornings from 1 to 5 a.m.—the same slot that Santoro had previously filled—that first aired on October 25, 1990.

From the birth of the show, the duo emphasized live performances from unsigned artists in New York City and beyond. Stretch would DJ, Bobbito would host, and when they had guests on, freestyles and pre-prepared verses would be performed. The late hours cultivated a dedicated fanbase. A new culture was brewing at WKCR with the introduction of the show on 89.9 FM—or, as Stretch and Bobbito called it, “89tec9.”

Perhaps the biggest name Stretch and Bobbito had on the show was also one of the earliest. Biggie Smalls visited WKCR in 1991 as part of a series Stretch and Bobbito called “Demo Battles.” Two unsigned artists would bring in a demo tape to be played on air and a winner would be decided. Biggie Smalls took on the group The Bronx Zu in the battle, and The Bronx Zu actually won. This was so early into the show that Stretch and Bobbito never recorded the performance because they did not realize the significance of what they were doing. Luckily, fans taped it themselves while listening at home and it has circulated since.

Biggie would not be the only New York legend to appear on the show. Nas would become a somewhat regular on the show in his early career. He first came on in January 1991 and would again stop by leading up to his debut album Illmatic, with two notable freestyles in 1993. One of these freestyles, was even released as part of the 20th anniversary deluxe release of Illmatic, titled Illmatic XX. Nas’ visit on October 28, 1993 was a busy night for Stretch and Bobbito. Tyesh Harris, a rap promo director for Columbia Records, wanted to get the Fugees on the show to build their credibility with a rap audience. Originally, Stretch was not interested in bringing the group on due to their R&B artistic leanings. However, Harris was able to schedule Nas and Big L the same night, so the Fugees were brought on as well. Lauryn Hill (who was enrolled at Columbia for about a year before dropping out to pursue music) and Wyclef Jean killed their performance, and Harris declared afterward that “the Fugees are on the map.”

The Stretch & Bobbito Show was also the first radio station in the world to play music from the Wu-Tang Clan. One night in December 1992, WuTang showed up at the studio unannounced and rang the doorbell, demanding to see the host of the show. Stretch was out of town, so Bobbito answered and was given a record to play on air from the group, but the record was unmarked and unlabeled, a sign it had been completely independently produced. Bobbito played it on air, bringing “Protect Ya Neck” to the airwaves for the first time. Wu-Tang would continue to appear on the show throughout the 1990s, with notable freestyles being delivered by Ghostface Killah and Method Man (March 31, 1994), GZA (October

13, 1994), Ol’ Dirty Bastard (March 2, 1995), and RZA and Ol’ Dirty Bastard (July 23, 1998).

However, the most famous freestyle ever aired on the show is undoubtedly the Big L and Jay-Z freestyle on February 23, 1995. The duo got on the mic and traded verses for just over 9 minutes, and fans debate who had a better verse to this day. Uploads of the freestyle online have garnered millions of views. Some consider it to be the best song Big L ever recorded—officially released or not.

By the mid 1990s, both Stretch and Bobbito were established and respected members of the industry. Stretch would do some A&R work for Mobb Deep, who appeared on the show on July 7, 1994. Bobbito founded Fondle ’Em Records in 1995, which signed MF DOOM and MF Grimm. Grimm appeared on the show multiple times throughout the early 90s and DOOM would deliver a beautiful freestyle on April 24, 1997, before the release of his debut record Operation: Doomsday, which was released on Fondle ’Em Records. Stretch and Bobbito’s reputation made WKCR a destination for artists seeking to kick-start their careers and attracted many other big names to the station, such as Q-Tip, Eminem, KRS-One, DMX, Large Professor, Fat Joe, Talib Kweli, Redman, Busta Rhymes, Big Pun, Mos Def, Black Thought, Royce Da 5’9”. As the duo continued to program, the show would be named the greatest hip hop show in the world by The Source magazine in 1998.

Following its success and partial transition to mainstream hip hop programming, The Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito Show would undergo significant changes. The duo had differing visions on what music to play and which direction to take the show. After hosting on alternating weeks for a period, the duo decided to call it quits in 1999, and programmed their last show on WKCR on January 10th. Despite the show’s end, The Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito Show was a cornerstone in hip hop throughout the 1990s, leaving a lasting impact on a generation of artists and listeners that would affect the genre forever.

Following the end of the show, the late-night slot was renamed The CM Famalam Radio Program. Bobbito continued to program alongside another DJ named Lord Sear. Like its predecessors, the show played many up-andcoming artists in the New York City area, such as Cannibal Ox, a duo from Harlem, and Yak Ballz, an independent hip hop artist based out of Queens. They also brought in rappers and freestyle artists such as Rahzel, a former member of the Roots, and Supernatural and Megahertz.

The intern for The CM Famalam Radio Program was named Suce, who at the time went by Jer2 and later adopted the name DJ Sucio Smash. Around 2000, Suce met Timmhotep Aku, who went by Timm See at the time and had also interned for Bobbito near the end of The Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito Show. The two quickly bonded over Big Pun at a Nike event organized by Bobbito, and when Bobbito took a break from radio in 2001, they took over the show for about a month and called it CM Famalam Kids. “We’re kinda like their young understudies,” Timm said. “Almost like you have Muppets and then you have Muppet babies, we’d be the Muppet babies.”

Bobbito retired from the show not long after, and Lord Sear took over until 2003, when Suce and Timm said WKCR removed him from the air. In March 2003, Suce and Timm officially inherited the 1-5 a.m. time slot and it was renamed to Squeeze Radio. Suce was the primary voice and DJ for the show, while Timm, given his background as a journalist, often interviewed artists who visited. Both hosts were intimately connected to the hip hop scene in New York City and were constantly looking for underground artists and new music to feature. While this was a direct extension of the legacy of Stretch and Bobbito, Timm noted that he and Suce were operating in a unique moment in relation to the rise of the internet, and that shaped the music they often chose to play. “[My tastes] were very much influenced by the new things that were coming up via the internet,” Timm said. “That wasn’t hyperlocal. It was more like ‘What does this person sound like they’re from? They sound like they’re from the internet,’ as opposed to ‘They sound like they’re from the Bronx.”

This awareness of both the local and emerging internet scene led to Squeeze Radio featuring and playing a number of significant artists early on in their careers. “I was probably the first person to play Kanye on New York radio,” Timm said. “I was the first person to play Madvillain on the radio. There’s an original demo version that never came out, I played that in its entirety … We got in trouble for it.” The duo also played Lupe Fiasco, Jay Electronica, Little Brother, Blu & Exile, and others before they gained mainstream notoriety. Roc Marciano, who Suce helped get a first record deal, made his radio debut and performed a rare freestyle on Squeeze Radio in August 2004. Due to the exits of Stretch and Bobbito and WKCR’s extremely limited broadcast range post-9/11, “We basically started from ground zero,” Suce said. But over time and due to its intense attention to local and underground acts, “Squeeze Radio” built up a dedicated audience by word-of-mouth and through the internet.

But despite the success of the show, the relationship between Squeeze Radio and WKCR was not as collaborative or harmonious as Suce and Timm believe it could have been. Timm observed that “we were more tolerated than anything” and Suce said there was very little communication between them and the WKCR Board. That tension came to an abrupt head in October 2010, when WKCR announced it was canceling Squeeze Radio and handing the show over to students. The board issued a statement saying, “Unfortunately, Sucio Smash is not a student, he is a wellestablished professional DJ. We feel that we must uphold the WKCR constitution and give students the opportunity to create a hip hop radio show.”

According to Suce and Timm, they were given no notice that this change was going to be made until two weeks beforehand, when student members were at the station before their show and notified them of the pending cancellation. “Super sudden, super abrupt. We weren’t even prepared, we had no idea,” Suce said. “Yeah, it wasn’t nice, but it’s okay.” When reflecting on this moment and the historical relationship between WKCR and hip hop programming, both Suce and

Timm expressed that WKCR as an institution has often failed to embrace hip hop and the people playing it, and the removal of hosts closely tied to the culture outside of Columbia limited both the station and its programmers. “The people who get to go to WKCR, that get to go to Columbia, aren’t necessarily the people who are directly in touch, in tune with hip hop,” Suce said. Both he and Timm expressed that it could benefit both students and the broadcasting if there was collaboration with DJs with more connections to and knowledge of hip hop in New York City. “Hip hop is a music of people, it is a music of subculture, it is a music of experience,” Timm said. “If the goal of the institution is to broaden the perspectives of the kids who are in attendance at said institution, I think you don’t necessarily do that by having it completely be homogenous.”

But the removal of Squeeze Radio was certainly part of an effort by WKCR to have all programming be hosted by Columbia affiliates. Following the removal of the show from the programming schedule, the 1 to 5 a.m. slot was filled with hip hop programming on the show Rap Cat’s Radio, later titled Offbeat. The show featured solely student programmers for the first time since 1998, as well as broadcasts highlighting various corners of the underground hip hop scene in New York and beyond. For the next nine years, Offbeat remained a focal point of hip hop programming at WKCR, building off of the legacy left by Stretch and Bobbito. Many students, however, felt that only one hip hop show was not sufficient to capture the expansive nature of the genre. Additionally, students expressed that with only a single show to explore a genre rooted in Black liberation, creative expression, and storytelling, WKCR felt like a radio station that had little space for Black student programmers and other students of color.

This changed in September 2019 when, after a small coalition of students organized to propose a new show, WKCR added Notes from Underground to the programming schedule. Spearheaded by Angelo Hernandez-Sias, the group of student programmers included Amiri Tulloch, Payton Johnson, Mati Kassaye, Sam Fleming, Vanessa Chadehumbe, and Nicholas Rubertone. On Saturdays from 12:30-2:00 a.m., the second hip hop show on WKCR primarily focused on highlighting emerging and experimental artists. In WKCR’s announcement of the addition, the show was described as being “hosted by a variety of student programmers, each with their own eclectic taste in hip hop, so that its sound evolves alongside the genre. The program also hosts local and visiting artists for interviews, freestyles, and guest curation.” Not only were student programmers successful in creating space for entirely student-centered programming on air, but they were also committed to returning to WKCR’s legacy of unfiltered and authentic hip hop programming. Tulloch, a sophomore at Columbia at the time Notes was created and one of the student programmers who was instrumental in its creation, described the magic of Notes as being rooted in the inherent collective and collaborative nature of the show, stating that on nights when they were programming, the station was frequently filled with friends and voices from across Columbia’s campus—voices that continue to shape and mold the sound of Notes from Underground today. Furthermore, in describing the personal attachment that Amiri held to Notes, he described that while hip hop was heightened to unimaginable levels by student programmers in the 1990s, student-centered hip hop also was the centerpiece of the station for him as a Black student and connected him to WKCR in a much more palpable way.

After the students involved in the creation of the show graduated and became alumni, the baton was passed to Dylan Farley, who is currently the most regular programmer of Notes From Underground. Today, Notes regularly features interviews and performances from emerging artists on campus and across New York City, album reviews, and other facets that make the show unique from anything else played on WKCR while continuing to build off and expand the legacy of hip hop programming at the station.

Even in 2023, his push to expand hip hop programming is ongoing, and while the addition of Notes From Underground cemented the space for free-form, unfettered creativity at the station, student programmers have continued to search for new paths to reconnect WKCR with the larger hip hop community, one of which is featuring hip hop artists on WKCR’s show dedicated to live performances, Live Constructions. The most recent performance took place on May 21, 2023, when WKCR hosted the rapper MAVI on air for a live interview and performance.

To celebrate the last fifty years of hip hop, as well as WKCR’s influential and storied history with the genre, WKCR will be hosting an 80hour celebration of the genre’s 50th anniversary from Wednesday, November 15 to the morning of Saturday, November 18, 2023. With our broadcast ranging from explorations of hip hop pioneers and sample breakdowns to today’s most abstract and experimental works, listeners are guaranteed an in-depth experience of the genre. Not only will the festival serve as a testament to hip hop as a whole, but it will also offer the space to reflect on WKCR’s captivating relationship to and influence on the genre. As the years continue, we seeks to further explore our station's complex relationship with the larger hip hop community while remaining cognizant of its institutional position and power.

WKCR will be celebrating 50 years of hip hop with an 80-hour marathonic broadcast from Wednesday, November 15 to the morning of Saturday, November 18.