Professor Josh Ehrig, Professor James B. Peterson - Hustle Hard - Week Four lyrics

Readings for this week: The Big Payback (Charnas) - Album Five: Where Hip Hop Lives (A only) & Album Seven: Keeping it Real (A only) Where Hip-Hop Lives: Side A (Charnas) In the early 90s, radio stations were still resistant to rap music. Stations like KDAY in Los Angeles were changing formats or being shut down. Shortly after, a "pop" station in New York City called Hot 97 started picking up traction. Hip-Hop was now being marketed as "teen music" and not just "Black music." As rap music increased in popularity, there was push back from many white run stations. Sayings such as "no rap, no crap" started to circulate radio stations. Program Director, Keith Naftaly and San Francisco's KMEL really pushes the boundaries and becomes "America's first multicultural pop radio station." After winning a station sponsored DJ & MC contest, KMEL highed a duo of disc jockeys named, Sway and King Tech and they begin their show, "The Wake-Up Show". This becomes the "first rap show on a pop station in the United States". At the same time, Davey D is operating a Hip-Hop radio show, but with a focus on activism and social justice. Hip-Hop is being used as a platform for politics and social change on a larger scale than ever before. With the success of KMEL, radio stations everywhere understood that Hip-Hop was expanding into popular culture. Keeping It Real: Side A (Charnas) Robert "Rakeem" Diggs (RZA) gathered relatives and friends together, after serving a jail sentence, to create the Wu-Tang Clan. Diggs comes up with the idea of signing the group to a major label, but allowing individual members to sign to who ever they pleased. This type of deal had never been done before. During this time, The Source Magazine was really the only major Hip-Hop culture magazine, until Quincy Jones starts Vibe. Charnas says that instead of crushing The Source, the creation of Vibe actually validated them and helped propel the magazine to new heights. A young businessman working for executive Andre Harrell, quits to start his own company, Bad Boy Records in 1994. Unfortunately, The two Hip-Hop culture magazines would find themselves escalating a "beef" between rappers The Notorious B.I.G. and 2pac. Both men would be slain by gun violence in 1996 and 1997. Week Four's Playlist