November 5, 2025 • 39 mins
How a dedicated group of DJs and radio programmers fought an uphill battle to get rap music played on the airwaves in ‘90s Atlanta, and how one of the city’s most famous homegrown stars went from playing the hits to making them.
HOSTED BY: Big Rube
STARRING: Ludacris, Chaka Zulu, Sleepy Brown, Ray Murray, Jerry Smokin’ B, Daron Fears, Mary Catherine Sneed
SPECIAL THANKS TO: Carol Blackmon, Dee Dee Hibbler, Sonia Murray
NARRATED BY: Jewel Wicker
SUBJECTS: Music, Atlanta history, Radio
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I was back there like making the dopest intro, and
that was kind of like the way for Atlanta to
start hearing me.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
The word was gangster grills and John turned.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
Into the Gates Grizilrazil.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Before World Star, before all of that.
Speaker 4 (00:15):
Nine As two Chains is walking in the door, He's
like this, two Chains fucking flaps that shit out in
his fucking hand, and I was like, what the fuck.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Nobody's rushing into relationships with you.
Speaker 5 (00:24):
Motherfuckers want to know who you are, who's your family,
Where are you from?
Speaker 6 (00:29):
And that's like how you know, Like, okay, oh you're
from Atlanta. For I ain't gotta say too much. I'm greater, baby,
shut up.
Speaker 7 (00:37):
In order to understand what Atlanta is, first, you got
to understand what it ain't. It ain't tall buildings and
neon lights. It ain't palm trees and low riders. It
ain't beaches and bikinis. Atlanta's playing football in the street
until the lights come on. It's hot summers, heavy traffic,
and the smell of pine and honeysuckle in the air.
(01:00):
It's black excellence born from grinding grace. Atlanta has all that,
But let's look a little deeper. Let's go behind the
big names and how they came up and tell the
stories about everyday people and how they made history. Stories
about hustling heart and what it means to get too crump.
Speaker 8 (01:19):
These are those stories. This is Atlanta is We.
Speaker 7 (01:24):
Start on the airwaves when Atlanta tuned into its first
all hip hop station. It's where a young DJ named
Chris Love a Lover you might know, I'm Miss Ludacris
turned a radio mic into a rap career. I'm Big
Rude and Atlanta is well rap moved a din.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
It's the year two thousand.
Speaker 5 (01:47):
Ludacris is about to go on air at Atlanta's sole
hip hop radio station, Hot ninety seventy five to co
host this evening show. In his hand is a contract
with Depth Jam for a lot of money.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Like if we're on the air here and I literally
had my contract here and secretly nobody knew what this was,
and I'm looking at it. You know, as soon as
I signed this, I'm going to get a seven figure check.
That was the best day of my life.
Speaker 5 (02:14):
His time on air was legendary to locals, but his
exit from the station was unceremonious, and I.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Told him I won't be working here in two weeks.
I appreciate everything that y'all have done for me. I'm
out this piece.
Speaker 5 (02:26):
By the time he was twenty two, Ludacris had already
spent five years as a radio jockey, becoming a charismatic
and popular voice in Atlanta radio. But off the air,
he was plotting a different kind of rise when that
would make him Atlanta's next rap star. Before he quit radio,
(02:46):
Luda had been playing a song for months that doubled
as an Atlanta travelogue, in an ode to the joys
of sex.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
Twist.
Speaker 5 (02:55):
What's Your Fantasy wasn't just any record, it was his own,
his first big hit.
Speaker 8 (03:01):
Yeah yeah, yeah Yeah, give it to me.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
But Your Fantasy was everywhere, on school buses, in clubs,
lasting from the radio.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
It was hyper local, and it pushed boundaries.
Speaker 5 (03:16):
As a kid, I loved the local references and repetitive hooks.
My mom loved it too, at least until she actually
caught the part about what he wanted to do on
the fifty yard line of the Georgia Do.
Speaker 8 (03:30):
To your toes and I won't up.
Speaker 5 (03:32):
When Ludacris signed his contract and walked away from Hot
ninety seven, it felt like something had shifted in Atlanta's
music ecosystem. For years, Southern rappers had been fighting to
be heard on their own airwaves. Our local radio stations
hesitated to embrace the sound coming from the streets and
in teen spaces, and back then, artists needed radio.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
You could have become a star without it.
Speaker 5 (03:57):
In nineteen ninety five, Ludacris's former employer, Hot ninety seven
changed the game in Atlanta as the first station to
play hip hop twenty.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
Four hours a day.
Speaker 8 (04:07):
Good.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
It was scrappy, hungry, and ready to battle the powerhouse
station that commanded the loyalty of black listeners.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
For decades, the people's station.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
From that point on, Atlanta's rap radio wars weren't just
about music. They were about the power to decide the
city's sound. I'm Jewel Wicker and this is Episode one
of Atlanta Is. I'm a third generation Atlanta and cultural reporter.
I've lived and documented the stories that have made Atlanta
(04:41):
one of the most important cultural capitals in the world
of reported on teen clubs that became training grounds for
hip hop, profiled icons from Gunna and Little Baby to Shack,
and covered the ysl Rico trial. That had the entire
music industry on edge. Now I'll be joined by two
friends and fellow music journalists, Christina Lee Angel.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
And Maurice Garland.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Hey, what's up.
Speaker 5 (05:05):
We'll tell the hidden stories behind Atlanta's most iconic cultural moments,
the ones that explain how the city's influence spreads from
local neighborhoods to the global stage.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
The legendary big.
Speaker 5 (05:17):
Group whose voice you've heard on albums, in movies and beyond,
will serve as our guide.
Speaker 7 (05:22):
Operating under the cork of American system too long, outcast,
renounced outcasts.
Speaker 5 (05:29):
It doesn't get more Atlanta than this First the origin
story of hip hop radio in Atlanta, How the city's
first twenty four hour station was born, it's battle to
win over the city's youth, and how it shaped one
of Atlanta's biggest stars. Before Hot ninety seven, Atlanta listeners
could only catch rap on mainstream radio on Fridays from
(05:53):
ten pm to midnight on V one oh three.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
So back then the term was fresh you know, we
go get fresh.
Speaker 5 (06:00):
Those two hours were a late night show called The
Fresh Party, launched around the mid eighties and hosted by
Darren Fears, a local teenager who got to start recording
the morning announcements at his high school. Ask anyone in
Atlanta radio and they'll tell you Darren's a pioneer, a
bit of an unsung hero. The Fresh Party was a
(06:20):
big deal for the city and brought in DJ greats
like Nabs, Jelly and Hero Banks, a.
Speaker 9 (06:26):
Lot of those artists you know that we've come to know,
like MC Hammer, Heavy d.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
NWA, Pull You Down.
Speaker 9 (06:34):
Possessions, Public Enemy, Cool Mode, Curtis Blow Being Rock Him,
all of those iconic artists that you would hear weekly
on The Fresh Party.
Speaker 5 (06:45):
When The Fresh Party launched, VW and No. Three had
only been around for about a decade. We started as
a country station, but in nineteen seventy six, it rebrands
it to an urban contemporary format aimed at Atlanta's expanding
black middle class. City officials and local business leaders were
intentional about advertising Atlanta as a black mecca where black
(07:06):
professionals could thrive, and in that vision, Atlanta needed strong
representation in its media. Just a year before v's rebrand,
the city's ABC affiliate hired its first black woman news.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
Anchor, Get Anything, I'm Monica Conference.
Speaker 5 (07:20):
For more than a decade, VW and O three was
Atlanta's only urban station, the sole place playing music black
locals wanted to hear. It was a channel the whole
family could enjoy. It became known as the People's station.
Speaker 10 (07:35):
Well trump all the music with at least forty minutes
of it got that bigot.
Speaker 5 (07:38):
The business motto said it all. We play the hits,
we don't make the hits. It was a clear message.
You'd hear the biggest R and B songs, no experiments,
no surprises, Atlanta.
Speaker 8 (07:53):
Three.
Speaker 5 (07:54):
By the late eighties and early nineties, VW and O
three dominated Atlanta radio, but its family friendly approach left
a blind spot. It wasn't reaching the young listeners who
were plugged into the sounds of hip hop bubbling from
the streets in teen spaces. I can't overstate how important
these youth spaces were.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
They were the city's incubators.
Speaker 5 (08:17):
This was the era of skating rinks, teen clubs, and
legendary talent shows. I'm talking big professional productions with cash
prizes for winners. Teams traveled from across metro Atlanta to
watch or perform.
Speaker 9 (08:31):
I put to you this way, everybody that did talent
shows ended up doing so.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Chris Tucker used to do the skip set Columbia right.
Speaker 11 (08:38):
Silk used to sing in the talent shows, so it
was a training ground for all of us.
Speaker 5 (08:43):
Sleepy Brown is one third of the production group organized Noise,
alongside Ray Murray and the late Rico Wade. Most people
know his smooth, soulful voice and its production bona fides
from his work with outcasts, Goodie Mob, TLC.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
The list goes on and on, but.
Speaker 5 (08:59):
He got his art on Atlanta's talent show circuit as
a dancer. To be precise, yeeking, a Southern dance style
known for its explosive finishing moves.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
To be true for what you bro It was all
about getting girls, period. Everybody had talent in some form
of fashion in their mind.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
This is Ray Murray.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Talent shows was fierce in the high schools.
Speaker 8 (09:19):
You know what I mean fierce.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
You had so much contained energy.
Speaker 5 (09:24):
Hip hop was ching into the mainstream, creeping up the
charts and starting to infiltrate Radio two. In nineteen eighty three,
Kiss FM and New York had already gone all.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
In with rap.
Speaker 8 (09:36):
I found my New Yark Now.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
V and O three wasn't quite there.
Speaker 5 (09:40):
The station had to strike a balance keeping its older
loyal listeners engaged while still making room for hip hop.
So in nineteen ninety one, Ve helped launch a local
TV show called Atlanta Jams. What j It was a
teen dance program, an urban spin on a show that
started in burn. The station saw it as a way
(10:02):
to create more content for teens without changing their radio programming.
One of its co hosts was The Fresh Party's Darren Fears.
It had already been MCing local talent shows and parties
at teen clubs like Sharon's Showcase.
Speaker 9 (10:15):
Okay, like you remember how Soul Train was for grown folks,
That's what Atlanta Jams was to teenagers.
Speaker 5 (10:23):
One of Darren's co hosts was Jerry smoking Bee, a
veteran DJ from Milwaukee by way of Houston. Jerry loved
hip hop and hosted the weekday slot right in the
middle of the day from two to six pm.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
But VW and O three was a family station. There
were rules.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
On Friday, I played a hip hop song at four
thirty and five thirty.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
I'll never forget that.
Speaker 5 (10:45):
Seriously, he got to play one rap song at four
thirty and another one an hour later.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
We wanted to stay mainstream to cater to everyone, So
I was a guy assigned to take the rap out
of songs.
Speaker 5 (10:58):
One of those songs was Ain't Too Proud to beg
by TLC Lefto's verse was little too raw for the station.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
I had to take that out at that time because
that was too vulgar for V one O three, because
it was a very black, conservative R and B radio station.
Speaker 5 (11:19):
Atlanta Jams, on the other hand, was built precisely to
capture and cater to the energy of Atlanta teens at
that time.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
The show hosted.
Speaker 5 (11:28):
Parties inside Atlanta nightclubs, but for high schoolers. Darren and
Jerry co hosted along with Carol Blackman, who's already a
familiar voice, is one half of you and O three's
hit morning show, Mike and Carroll in the Morning.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
That's crowded, Well, it's going to get hot up in here,
because I'd like to introduce.
Speaker 5 (11:47):
To you PROFI close your eyes and pict your teens.
In the nineties, the high top fades, the half fastened overalls,
hundreds of teens packed into local nightclubs, sweating and showing
off for the camera.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
It is like a sea of kids. It was humongous.
Speaker 5 (12:06):
Big artists showed up Sheila, E Joe, to Ce, TLC
and Criss Cross.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
Getting them on the show wasn't hard. I f you
and O three had leverage.
Speaker 5 (12:15):
If you wanted to be interviewed on Mike and Carroll
in the morning, you also had to appear on Atlanta
Jams and We'll be.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Right back with more Atlanta Jam.
Speaker 5 (12:23):
From a rating standpoint, Atlanta Jams nailed the formula. The
same teens who woke up to party on Friday nights
would wake up the next morning to watch themselves on TV.
And if you didn't go to the party or weren't allowed,
it was still super entertaining to watch all the hot
new artists and crazy dance moves. Atlanta Jams was only
(12:44):
on air for about a year. We spoke with several
people and no one can point to a clear reason
for this, but one thing is certain. The show was
a temporary solution to a growing problem. By nineteen ninety five,
Atlanta's hip hop scene was a deniable outcasts goodie mob.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
They weren't just local stars. There were national names.
Speaker 8 (13:06):
From that joint.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
One of the most incredible titles of.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
A record, I think ever let my man say.
Speaker 5 (13:10):
Sell the play a listic Cadillac music for Yo, but
You and O three remained cautious at the time. The
Atlanta Journal Constitution music reporter Sonya Murray interviewed frustrated executives
for the local newspaper. A person affiliated with Arrested Development
told her about a time when the station declined to.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
Play the group.
Speaker 5 (13:30):
They said, quote, a lot of these big time nationwide
hits are coming from Atlanta, and our own station won't
even get on them first. When Sonya asked VA's programming
director why they weren't playing more local acts, he gave
her the same line he'd been telling industry folks for years.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
We don't make kids, we play them.
Speaker 5 (13:50):
Top forty R and B was still the brand, but
change was coming fast, and soon enough, a new radio
DJ who came of age in the era of the
Fresh Party Atlanta jams and talent shows would graduate from
playing the hits to making them himself.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Our goal and plan was to try and get my
music heard by people at these radio stations. These are
so good for you. You really look up Brocolici spots
and what they actually do.
Speaker 5 (14:20):
When Ludacris arrived at our studio to talk about his
time on the radio. He came bearing a coconut and
broccoli sprokes will I searched the office for something sharp
to crack his coconut open with. I can't help but
think about how Luda's radio days and then his transition
into a bona fide global rap star, reinforced my childhood
(14:41):
beliefs that the world centered around Atlanta. This was the
guy I heard on the radio every day after school,
and then suddenly there he was on my TV in
music videos for number one hits like stand Up and Yeah,
then on movie screens Fast and the Furious.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Wait, Wait, Wait, Waiting, crash.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
This white woman sees two black guys who look like
UCLA students strolling down the sidewalk, and her reaction is
blind fear.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
Part of my back pun.
Speaker 5 (15:09):
But it really is such a ludicrous rise unless you
come from a city where it isn't. Ludacris graduated from
Benjamin Bannaker High School in nineteen ninety five. The same summer,
Hot ninety seven to five, Atlanta's first all hip hop
radio station made its debut.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
I remember listening to it when they first started, and
it was great because a lot of other radio stations
they never played rap twenty four to seven. It would
be like Saturday night or Friday night from six to
ten pm. So, you know, people like myself were extremely
happy and just joyous that we had twenty four seven
a radio station I was playing all rap.
Speaker 5 (15:47):
Hot ninety seven's arrivals set off a radio war before
the station even hit the air. In the lead up
to Hot's launch, VW and O three brought in a
fresh new voice to lead their next chapter.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Another VO three grat Street.
Speaker 5 (15:59):
Exclusive, Greg Street, came from Dallas, Texas, and was immediately
given the major weekday slot two to six pm. Listeners
would now hear hip hop every Monday through Friday on
their afternoon drive. Thirty years later, he still holds down
the coveted spot. It wasn't hard to get listeners to
(16:19):
love Greg Street. The name Street really embodies how community
oriented he is, and he had the grit that VW
and O three had been lacking. Greg was someone young
people could actually be excited to listen to. Meanwhile, Hot
ninety seven was making its own moves and recruited a
familiar voice from V one O three. There was also Chakazulu,
(16:46):
a New Yorker who cut his teeth as a radio
DJ in college at Clark Atlanta University, he hosted a
hip hop show on community radio. The idea of working
at a mainstream radio station felt like the big leagues
for him, but seeing the station's office for the first
time brought him back to reality.
Speaker 11 (17:05):
You would drive forty five minutes outside of the city.
You get off the exit. Now you're on a dirt
road or you're on a road. Then you turn into
a pasture, a cow pasture. You go into this fence.
You drive back maybe about a half a mile through trees,
winding road, dust and dirt, and then it opens up
and then you see there's a tower, and then you
see a trailer right next to the tower, and that
(17:27):
was the radio station.
Speaker 5 (17:28):
There was a porter party on site, but the guys
just used the woods instead. Listeners couldn't see any of that.
Oh they knew was Atlanta finally had a twenty four
hour wrap station. Most of the staff were in their
late teens and twenties, just like their audience.
Speaker 11 (17:44):
Wouldn't like the new rock stars, right. Everybody was trying
to get a job at that station. Everybody wanted to
be on the station, but still hot had to move fast.
Few and O three was the establishment and they had
just hired Greg Street, so our twenty four hours was
focused on his four hours. Street came in with Gangbusters.
He got all the personalized drops.
Speaker 5 (18:04):
Drops are the short clips you hear at the top
of a program or when a radio personality is transitioning
between Secondstreet.
Speaker 8 (18:11):
Did that's well, he'll be pulling in his ass. Drop
up at the.
Speaker 5 (18:15):
Station where often DJs with flex by getting rappers to
shout them out or even make short custom songs. V
and O three and its on air personalities had fun,
but there was still a station of poise polish.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
They had rules. Hot ninety seven didn't.
Speaker 5 (18:36):
They were scrappy, relentless, and willing to do whatever it
took to snag some of the's audience.
Speaker 11 (18:42):
That's where the leash was off in a lot of
ways because we had to beat the nine hundred pound gorilla.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
What were some of the things you were doing to
beat the nine hundred pounds?
Speaker 2 (18:51):
I mean, we would show up to their lives.
Speaker 11 (18:54):
My first car was the promotions van for the radio station,
So everywhere I went, whether I was creeping to a
girl house or going to get something to eat, you
saw a Hot ninety seven to five van and I
was everywhere and if they had a live I would
just go drive through the parking lot.
Speaker 5 (19:09):
Chaka is referencing when radio DJs record their show outside
of the radio station. It's a way for stations to
get out in front of the community, airing live from
a school or major event, for instance. The point is
Chaka knew Hot had to be disruptive if they wanted
a real shot against V and O three, He says.
Jerry smoking Bee, Yes, the one who got fired by
(19:32):
V and O three and then hired by their new competitor,
masterminded one of the biggest dishes in Atlanta radio history.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
We started doing birthday bashes at Hot ninety seven.
Speaker 5 (19:42):
Right today, Birthday Bash packs out State Farm Arina with
more than sixteen thousand seats. But back in nineteen ninety six,
that first show was at Variety Playhouse with room for
just one thousand. The lineup was stacked Jermaine dupri and
Puff Daddy, the Brad Biggie, Total one, twelve eight Ball
and MJG and Outcast. Chaka says, VW and O three
(20:06):
was also throwing annual concerts around the same time as
birthday bash. But a couple of years in HoTT decided
to flip the competition into open warfare.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
And what happened was we got so competitive.
Speaker 11 (20:20):
It's radio war one on one, so we're listening like
I'm on the air.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
I turned today station and see what they're saying.
Speaker 11 (20:25):
Jerry smoking Bee, who was our production director, he came
and said, you all created this commercial.
Speaker 5 (20:29):
In the ad, Jerry read VW and O three's lineup,
but he broke an unwritten rule and mentioned the rival
station by name and suggested it was a lineup your
parents would listen to.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
Then they had hots Intern called V and O three.
Speaker 11 (20:43):
It's like, I want tickets to your show? Can you
tell me who's on the show.
Speaker 5 (20:48):
The receptionist at V listed off the names, but hots
Intern didn't sound impressed.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
It's like, that doesn't sound too hot.
Speaker 5 (20:55):
The receptionist, not realizing she was being recorded, agreed and
even admitted.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
She'd rather go to hot show.
Speaker 11 (21:03):
We edited that up, turned that into a promo, ran
it every thirty.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
Minutes, but Chaco wasn't finished.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
All of a sudden, I run down the hallways.
Speaker 11 (21:12):
I said, yo, won't we tell everybody that if you
got tickets to the V one O three show.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
You could trade them in for our tickets.
Speaker 5 (21:20):
It worked, Chaka says, Hot show sold out and just
like that, they sent a message loud and clear.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
They had the youth.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
On lock, killed them, murdered them. They we never we
never battled like that ever.
Speaker 8 (21:34):
Again.
Speaker 5 (21:36):
Chako wasn't just one of Hots on air personalities and
lead pranksters. He was also its musical director, and he
was looking to expand the channel's palette.
Speaker 11 (21:44):
The station basically played anything bad Boy, anything death ro
and it was so New York and West Coast it
was ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
It was a clear black Knight, a clear white moon.
Woma Ge was on the street.
Speaker 5 (21:56):
Chaco wanted to balance that out with local Dungeon family record,
but also my mystical and other Southern artists. Interestingly enough,
Hot already had an aspiring artist working at the station,
a recent high school graduate who would go on to
become an unlikely advocate for Broccoli Sprouts, among other things.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
I was doing all these different talent show contests and
stuff because I was rapping at that time all around Atlanta,
just trying to get known, and I had a manager
at the time, and this manager went to V one
O three and he got an internship, and Hot ninety
seven had just started on the airwaves, and I was like,
if you're going, if you want to three, I'm gonna
go to this other station because it's an all wrap
station and it's just open. I'm gonna try and get
(22:40):
an internship over there.
Speaker 5 (22:42):
The summer after high school graduation can be a stressful one,
filled with a lot of hopes and anxieties about the future.
Luda was already in its plotting season though. He was
going to be a rapper by any means necessary, and
he thought this new radio station could make it happen.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Our goal and plan was to try and get my
music heard by people at these radio stations.
Speaker 5 (23:02):
That's how Luda first ended up in Chaka's office. Chaka
wanted to break new artists and Luda wanted to be one.
Only problem, while Chaka thought he was talented, he didn't
like the song Luda played for him. He declined to
play it on air. Luda wasn't discouraged. He knew he
just needed another way in Lord Judge. It settled for
(23:23):
an internship with the Ryan Cameron Morning show. Brian had
been hired away from V and O three to host
Hot ninety seven's popular morning drive show from six to
ten AM. Luda was juggling a lot at this time.
He was trying to record a hit, attending Georgia State
University as a part time student, and working at Pizza Hud.
Ryan didn't give a damn. He was super strict and
(23:45):
required punctuality. Luda says he had to wake up at
four thirty am to make it to the show one time.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
If I look back, I don't realize exactly how I
did it, but by the grace of God.
Speaker 5 (23:56):
As an intern, Luda had to appear on air sometimes,
and the powers that be didn't like Ludacris as a
radio name.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Ryan was like, man, Ludacris is probably not a morning
show appropriate name. We need to get you a better name.
And so there was a woman by the name of
Felicia Love who would work with Ryan, and she was
kind of the person that had got me under her wing,
and I was interning for her, so I just said,
all right, I just be Chris Love of Love, based
off Felicia Love.
Speaker 5 (24:21):
The team quickly gained a reputation as hardworking and charming
on the mic. Even though he wasn't aiming to be
a DJA, he saw the value of being in the building.
Hot had upgraded and moved from their tiny trailer out
in the country to a real building in College Park.
By this point, I.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Didn't really have an interest in being on air.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
I kind of was up there to try and infiltrate
the building and the system and all the producers and
artists that come up there.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Then all of a sudden, I'm looking.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
At all the jockeys and they driving up in benzes
and all this other stuff. I'm like, huh, while I'm
waiting to get my music heard, why not make a complete,
cemented place for myself up here, because I can make
some money, and worst case, in there, I could pay
for my own damn music.
Speaker 5 (25:03):
One day, one of Hot's DJs was running late. Chris
Lovelova was asked to fill in just until she arrived.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
Here's Jerry smoking Bee.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
All of a sudden, he turns on the microphone and
he sound like he's been on the radio for years.
Speaker 5 (25:19):
He got the attention of Mary Catherine's me, the general
manager at HOT, and other leaders at the station.
Speaker 10 (25:25):
And I remember running out in the hall saying, man,
she better get her butt here, because if she's listening
that she has just started speeding down to this station.
Speaker 5 (25:37):
Soon he began appearing on Airmoor moved him into the
two to six am shift, the overnight zone where you
could mess up, experiment and grow.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Every single time you get on the air, you're getting
better and better.
Speaker 5 (25:49):
Luda eventually got paired with another radio Ricki, a guy
known as poon Daddy. Together, they hosted a Saturday night
show called Future Flavors.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Is Blowing Up Cats.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
You might not know Poondaddy if you're not from this
era of Atlanta, but you might have seen his teeth.
His mouth is transposed on a dog for Ludacris's two
thousand and one album Word of Mouth.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
So you know, when you think about gold Grills, he
was that original dude. Smokes like a chimney, Like he's
that guy that wakes up in the morning.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
First thing roller blunt.
Speaker 5 (26:21):
Well, Ludacris delivered suaveness. Poondaddy was the rawness that the
station needed.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Tonight. It's like Beavis and butt Head almost.
Speaker 8 (26:31):
It was kind of weird.
Speaker 10 (26:32):
It was magical. I mean, Poon would do the traffic.
He would paint the picture that he was on a bicycle.
Speaker 5 (26:39):
Mary's describing a bit Poon would do to make the
traffic report more interesting instead of just reading it off exactly.
He was reporting live, pedaling his bike through Atlanta traffic
and shouting what he saw back to Luda at the station,
but it.
Speaker 10 (26:53):
Sounded so much like he was pedaling a bike down
seventy five. You know, they did stuff like that all
the time.
Speaker 5 (27:01):
The stick was clever and showed that the pair could
reinvent even the most mundane radio segments. Hot's audience took notice.
Poon and Luda became so good and so popular that
the station moved them from Saturday nights to the coveded
weekday slot of six to ten pm. That meant one thing.
They were the guys Hot trusted to go toe to
(27:22):
toe with Greg Street, the V and O three heavyweight,
not a clock.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Cut up man.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
We up here doing it so makes y'all listen out
for that sound to two.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Somebody gonna get broken off.
Speaker 5 (27:31):
Evening radio was prime time, high traffic, high pressure, but
Poon and Luda knew how to stand out. That meant
playing music that listeners couldn't hear anywhere else station.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
War Blaze and hit popular.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
You know, what it's say, a lot of the cash
money records when it was big timers and when it
was you know, BG and Juvenile and Lil Wayne and
all these things, when they first started putting out records,
before the hits hits hits came.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
We were the first ones to play stuff like that.
Speaker 5 (27:57):
As soon as the mics were off at ten PM,
Luda hit clubs. He wasn't even old enough to be there,
but that didn't matter. He was already a local celebrity
with a lot of access. From Magic City to the five,
five to nine in southwest Atlanta. Luda was constantly partying
and performing at local clubs. Then the next day he'd
bring that culture back to the airwaves.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
You could just relate to us a lot easy, you
could tell.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
You could tell that literally was before we came on
the mic, and after we left, we were back in
the street.
Speaker 5 (28:27):
But the more successful he became, the more he started
to feel unappreciated.
Speaker 4 (28:32):
He says that he and Poon were never given a contract.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
I feel as if the people who kind of ran
the radio station wanted to downplay how much of an
influence that these two young guys really had for obvious reasons.
They're like, they don't want to tell us how great
our ratings are, because then we would be over there
asking for.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
The right amount of money.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
We young, and like we settling for whatever the hell
they'd given us.
Speaker 5 (28:55):
The lack of paperwork was about to come in handy
very soon. Luda never stopped plotting. Even as he worked
at Hot, he was recording music, and while Hot wouldn't
play his early songs, he found another way in. He
convinced several of his colleagues to let him create personalized
drops for their shows.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
It's not like they had to do it, but that
was my goal. I was back there like making the
dopest intros, and that was kind of like the way
for Atlanta to start hearing me.
Speaker 10 (29:21):
Question take us out in your blab.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
Yeah, I'm rotten to the core, like an apple rejuice,
like a snaffle blessed from my head to my feet.
Speaker 5 (29:30):
He was hoping one of the city's music execs, the
same folks he partied with and interviewed on a error,
would hear these drops and take notice. He often joked
to Jermaine Duprix that he was the embodiment of the
Socio Deaf mascot you know, the one with the afro.
Jermaine listened, but he never signed him. By the late nineties,
Luda had been working at the station for a few years,
(29:51):
and he'd also convinced Chakazulu to manage him. One day,
Chaka got a call from Timbaland, the legendary producer was
flying into Atlanta picked him up from the airport.
Speaker 11 (30:01):
I called the radio, so I said, YO, play at
Ludacris promo.
Speaker 5 (30:06):
Chako was also working as the station's music director, so
he had some pull Me.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
And Timblin vibbing.
Speaker 11 (30:11):
I turned the radio up and we just riding in
my truck and so Ludacris starts rapping and Timberlin is like, yo,
who is that.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
I was like, oh, that's my artist. So I was
like yo, I said, wen, he's at the radio station.
We can go there right now.
Speaker 5 (30:24):
Timblin goes into the production room and Shako plays him
the demo and Tim was like.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
Yo, I love this kid, Like whoa.
Speaker 5 (30:31):
The producer didn't know much about Luda at the time,
but he knew talent when he heard it. He invited
the rapper to attend one of his studio sessions in Virginia.
Luda would have to take a day off work, but
he was scared to ask for one. He says not
having a contract made him feel like he could be
fired at any moment. Maybe the station would listen if
it was something super serious.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
I had to make up an excuse that my grandmother
had died and my grandmama was still living. But I
was like, in my mind, my grandmama will not blame
me for telling this damn station that you are gone,
just so I can go to the Vizia and work
with him. I took that forty eight hours where I
told him I had to go to my grandmother's funeral,
(31:13):
and the rest is history.
Speaker 5 (31:16):
Luda and Timbland recorded the song Fat Rabbit. It featured
a signature Timbaland beat in those sensual, braggadocious lyrics that
Luda would eventually become famous for, and right at the
beginning of the song, he spells out his radio moniker,
I'll bet that.
Speaker 6 (31:31):
Nigga ain't Luda aka llov hey ylov a buck that
nigga what you winna fa one.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Time sut left fire.
Speaker 5 (31:38):
This was Luda's first time working with a producer, he idolized.
It was also his first big commercial release, Fat Rabbit
was a raunchy deep cut, not a single, but they
played it on Hot ninety seven because it was a
big deal for one of their radio personalities to be
on a Timbland album. The song became so popular that
even Luda's direct competitor began to play it.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Somebody text me and was like, Yo, Greg Street is
playing your song, and this is while I'm on the air,
because we're competitive.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
So during commercial break, I went and listened and I
was like, showing up, he was playing my record. That's
when I was like, Okay, something's about to happen.
Speaker 5 (32:23):
Fat Rabbit was a win, but to most of Hot's
listeners it probably felt like a cool one off, like
a popular radio personality made a good rap song, and
technically it wasn't even Luda's.
Speaker 4 (32:35):
He was a feature on Timbaland song.
Speaker 5 (32:38):
Unless you'd seen Luda in the club performing night after night,
you probably didn't realize what was coming next. About a
year later, in two thousand, Luda finally dropped his debut single,
What's Your Fantasy NAT. He signed with def Jam and
from there his career took off fast. He went from
(32:59):
Interviewinglanta's music stars to collaborating with them.
Speaker 8 (33:05):
Send the Club Looking So Cutch, Big You louss.
Speaker 5 (33:09):
Atlanta finally had an ecosystem to develop and support its rappers.
The city already had college radio, it had producers, and now,
thanks to Hot, it had commercial radio in the mixed too.
The station transitioned from ninety seven point five to one
oh seven point nine in two thousand and one. Station
(33:30):
it's still around today, still delivering hip hop to the city,
alongside its longtime competitor of U one O three dep
Jam South, an offshoot of the larger label, set up
shop in Atlanta. Shakazulu served as vice president. By then,
he'd been fired from Hot. He says he never got
a reason why other labels like Bad Boy's Southern Division
(33:53):
had a major presence here too. The face so So
Deaf and rowdy records. They'd spent the nineties proving to
the world what locals had been seeing at talent shows.
It felt like nationally, decision makers were finally listening, like
the South wasn't just an afterthought to what was going
on on the East and West coast at the nineteen
ninety five Source Awards. When Andre three thousand proclaimed the
(34:16):
South got something to say to booze, it was a
timely word for folks here too.
Speaker 9 (34:20):
Did the South got something to say?
Speaker 2 (34:21):
That's all I got to say.
Speaker 5 (34:23):
It's crazy to think about it in hindsight, but Atlanta
had only had Hot, the city's first all rap station,
for one month at that point, and according to Chaka,
Hot was all in on East and West Coast rap
out the gate. In just five years, Atlanta went from
a city where local rappers struggled to be heard and
hip hop only got a few hours on the radio
(34:45):
to a rising rap mecca where young artists could hear
themselves becoming superstars on the cities airwaves. Here's Jerry Smoking Bee,
the DJ originally hired to spend just two rap songs
during his set on VU.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
And O three, Ludacris was, It's a blessing and a
curse at the same time.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
And I'm gonna break it down to you.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
It's a blessing that a young guy can start as
an intern, fulfill his dream in broadcasting, and then really
get to his major dream through the same portal.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
That's the celebration.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
And it's somebody that you know that's receiving a Grammy
an award. It's like it's almost like your child is
receiving that award. And so the curse is every intern
that comes through the radio station now wants to take
this huge leap in a couple of weeks and be
a superstar for all the.
Speaker 4 (35:39):
Young dreamers tuning in.
Speaker 5 (35:41):
Back then, Ludacris wasn't just a voice on the radio.
He was a proof that Atlanta could make its own stars.
In the years that followed, the city's sound would stretch
far beyond its ear waves, shaping with hip hop and
pop culture would become because once Atlanta found its voice
on the radio, the rest of the world starts listening.
Speaker 7 (36:08):
Coming up on Atlanta is Maurice Garland brings us to
the West Side into the Locals Only club where Crunk
was born.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
I was stop at the Little Xon right across the
street from there.
Speaker 11 (36:19):
Man, give me a couple of double duces, give me
some black and Biles.
Speaker 7 (36:23):
Hey, bro, you get your simp a little bit, and
then you get in line, one of.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
The barstools hit the mirror and crack the mirror. So
that's why they were gonna take us to jail.
Speaker 7 (36:31):
Later Christina Lee takes us to the yard of Morris
Brown's legendary drum line as the HBCU fights to keep
his doors open.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
How do you get people to believe in something that's dead?
Speaker 8 (36:43):
And there's more.
Speaker 7 (36:43):
After that, we meet the dreamers who turned Atlanta into
the new Hollywood of the South.
Speaker 4 (36:48):
My agent started calling me and they were like, Hey,
I'm flying down.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
I'm gonna go see your client. Hey, this place isn't
so bad after all.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
We like fanaggled our way into a meeting with Jermaine Duprix,
and we faggled our way into a meeting with Awesome, like.
Speaker 7 (37:00):
We were hustlers and post up on the street where
black entrepreneurs compete for their own slice of peach cobbler.
Speaker 4 (37:06):
Let me be real fucking clear, nobody walked around with
a piece of paper and told motherfuckers like pay them rent, Like.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
This is not how that happened.
Speaker 8 (37:13):
We meet the preachers who go viral.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
I've had to live my life out loud.
Speaker 8 (37:18):
And explore the past and future of Atlanta hip hop.
Speaker 9 (37:21):
I never forget Missy Elliott was there and I was like,
why is Missy Yllio from this environment?
Speaker 5 (37:25):
I believe Andre three thousand came for like Weeks on
End You.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Really the first lady to have a guest.
Speaker 6 (37:31):
The girls take and then left Jeordiana like Oh what
is your wife?
Speaker 7 (37:39):
Atlanta is a Well pack of Media production in partnership
with Idea Generation and Complex. This episode was written, reported,
and produced by Jul Wicker, with additional production from Maurice
Garland and Christina Lean. Our Supervising producer and editor is
Shiva Bayat. Our managing producers are Rose through Lini Bacon,
(38:00):
Omari Graham, and Shamara Rochester. Editorial support from Sean Setero
and Jack Irwin. Original theme music by Aman Solta. Sound
designed by Shiva Bayat and Amn Solter, mixed and master
by a mind Sota.
Speaker 8 (38:17):
Fact checking done by Sean Setero.
Speaker 7 (38:20):
Clearance counsel Donison Khalif, Perez, Lisa Khalif and Jacqueline Sweat.
Executive producers for will Packer Media are Will Packer and
Alex Bauder. Co producer for will Packer Media is Nimy Mohun.
Executive producers for Complex are Jack Irwin and Noah Callahan.
Speaker 8 (38:38):
Bever Head of Talent Relations for Complex.
Speaker 7 (38:41):
It's Anthony Alred Special thanks to Tyler Klin, Tarre Harrison Chris,
Senator Nolams Griffin, and Candace Howard.
Speaker 8 (38:51):
I'm big rude Beeace
I was back there like making the dopest intro, and
that was kind of like the way for Atlanta to
start hearing me.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
The word was gangster grills and John turned.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
Into the Gates Grizilrazil.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Before World Star, before all of that.
Speaker 4 (00:15):
Nine As two Chains is walking in the door, He's
like this, two Chains fucking flaps that shit out in
his fucking hand, and I was like, what the fuck.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Nobody's rushing into relationships with you.
Speaker 5 (00:24):
Motherfuckers want to know who you are, who's your family,
Where are you from?
Speaker 6 (00:29):
And that's like how you know, Like, okay, oh you're
from Atlanta. For I ain't gotta say too much. I'm greater, baby,
shut up.
Speaker 7 (00:37):
In order to understand what Atlanta is, first, you got
to understand what it ain't. It ain't tall buildings and
neon lights. It ain't palm trees and low riders. It
ain't beaches and bikinis. Atlanta's playing football in the street
until the lights come on. It's hot summers, heavy traffic,
and the smell of pine and honeysuckle in the air.
(01:00):
It's black excellence born from grinding grace. Atlanta has all that,
But let's look a little deeper. Let's go behind the
big names and how they came up and tell the
stories about everyday people and how they made history. Stories
about hustling heart and what it means to get too crump.
Speaker 8 (01:19):
These are those stories. This is Atlanta is We.
Speaker 7 (01:24):
Start on the airwaves when Atlanta tuned into its first
all hip hop station. It's where a young DJ named
Chris Love a Lover you might know, I'm Miss Ludacris
turned a radio mic into a rap career. I'm Big
Rude and Atlanta is well rap moved a din.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
It's the year two thousand.
Speaker 5 (01:47):
Ludacris is about to go on air at Atlanta's sole
hip hop radio station, Hot ninety seventy five to co
host this evening show. In his hand is a contract
with Depth Jam for a lot of money.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Like if we're on the air here and I literally
had my contract here and secretly nobody knew what this was,
and I'm looking at it. You know, as soon as
I signed this, I'm going to get a seven figure check.
That was the best day of my life.
Speaker 5 (02:14):
His time on air was legendary to locals, but his
exit from the station was unceremonious, and I.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Told him I won't be working here in two weeks.
I appreciate everything that y'all have done for me. I'm
out this piece.
Speaker 5 (02:26):
By the time he was twenty two, Ludacris had already
spent five years as a radio jockey, becoming a charismatic
and popular voice in Atlanta radio. But off the air,
he was plotting a different kind of rise when that
would make him Atlanta's next rap star. Before he quit radio,
(02:46):
Luda had been playing a song for months that doubled
as an Atlanta travelogue, in an ode to the joys
of sex.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
Twist.
Speaker 5 (02:55):
What's Your Fantasy wasn't just any record, it was his own,
his first big hit.
Speaker 8 (03:01):
Yeah yeah, yeah Yeah, give it to me.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
But Your Fantasy was everywhere, on school buses, in clubs,
lasting from the radio.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
It was hyper local, and it pushed boundaries.
Speaker 5 (03:16):
As a kid, I loved the local references and repetitive hooks.
My mom loved it too, at least until she actually
caught the part about what he wanted to do on
the fifty yard line of the Georgia Do.
Speaker 8 (03:30):
To your toes and I won't up.
Speaker 5 (03:32):
When Ludacris signed his contract and walked away from Hot
ninety seven, it felt like something had shifted in Atlanta's
music ecosystem. For years, Southern rappers had been fighting to
be heard on their own airwaves. Our local radio stations
hesitated to embrace the sound coming from the streets and
in teen spaces, and back then, artists needed radio.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
You could have become a star without it.
Speaker 5 (03:57):
In nineteen ninety five, Ludacris's former employer, Hot ninety seven
changed the game in Atlanta as the first station to
play hip hop twenty.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
Four hours a day.
Speaker 8 (04:07):
Good.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
It was scrappy, hungry, and ready to battle the powerhouse
station that commanded the loyalty of black listeners.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
For decades, the people's station.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
From that point on, Atlanta's rap radio wars weren't just
about music. They were about the power to decide the
city's sound. I'm Jewel Wicker and this is Episode one
of Atlanta Is. I'm a third generation Atlanta and cultural reporter.
I've lived and documented the stories that have made Atlanta
(04:41):
one of the most important cultural capitals in the world
of reported on teen clubs that became training grounds for
hip hop, profiled icons from Gunna and Little Baby to Shack,
and covered the ysl Rico trial. That had the entire
music industry on edge. Now I'll be joined by two
friends and fellow music journalists, Christina Lee Angel.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
And Maurice Garland.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Hey, what's up.
Speaker 5 (05:05):
We'll tell the hidden stories behind Atlanta's most iconic cultural moments,
the ones that explain how the city's influence spreads from
local neighborhoods to the global stage.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
The legendary big.
Speaker 5 (05:17):
Group whose voice you've heard on albums, in movies and beyond,
will serve as our guide.
Speaker 7 (05:22):
Operating under the cork of American system too long, outcast,
renounced outcasts.
Speaker 5 (05:29):
It doesn't get more Atlanta than this First the origin
story of hip hop radio in Atlanta, How the city's
first twenty four hour station was born, it's battle to
win over the city's youth, and how it shaped one
of Atlanta's biggest stars. Before Hot ninety seven, Atlanta listeners
could only catch rap on mainstream radio on Fridays from
(05:53):
ten pm to midnight on V one oh three.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
So back then the term was fresh you know, we
go get fresh.
Speaker 5 (06:00):
Those two hours were a late night show called The
Fresh Party, launched around the mid eighties and hosted by
Darren Fears, a local teenager who got to start recording
the morning announcements at his high school. Ask anyone in
Atlanta radio and they'll tell you Darren's a pioneer, a
bit of an unsung hero. The Fresh Party was a
(06:20):
big deal for the city and brought in DJ greats
like Nabs, Jelly and Hero Banks, a.
Speaker 9 (06:26):
Lot of those artists you know that we've come to know,
like MC Hammer, Heavy d.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
NWA, Pull You Down.
Speaker 9 (06:34):
Possessions, Public Enemy, Cool Mode, Curtis Blow Being Rock Him,
all of those iconic artists that you would hear weekly
on The Fresh Party.
Speaker 5 (06:45):
When The Fresh Party launched, VW and No. Three had
only been around for about a decade. We started as
a country station, but in nineteen seventy six, it rebrands
it to an urban contemporary format aimed at Atlanta's expanding
black middle class. City officials and local business leaders were
intentional about advertising Atlanta as a black mecca where black
(07:06):
professionals could thrive, and in that vision, Atlanta needed strong
representation in its media. Just a year before v's rebrand,
the city's ABC affiliate hired its first black woman news.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
Anchor, Get Anything, I'm Monica Conference.
Speaker 5 (07:20):
For more than a decade, VW and O three was
Atlanta's only urban station, the sole place playing music black
locals wanted to hear. It was a channel the whole
family could enjoy. It became known as the People's station.
Speaker 10 (07:35):
Well trump all the music with at least forty minutes
of it got that bigot.
Speaker 5 (07:38):
The business motto said it all. We play the hits,
we don't make the hits. It was a clear message.
You'd hear the biggest R and B songs, no experiments,
no surprises, Atlanta.
Speaker 8 (07:53):
Three.
Speaker 5 (07:54):
By the late eighties and early nineties, VW and O
three dominated Atlanta radio, but its family friendly approach left
a blind spot. It wasn't reaching the young listeners who
were plugged into the sounds of hip hop bubbling from
the streets in teen spaces. I can't overstate how important
these youth spaces were.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
They were the city's incubators.
Speaker 5 (08:17):
This was the era of skating rinks, teen clubs, and
legendary talent shows. I'm talking big professional productions with cash
prizes for winners. Teams traveled from across metro Atlanta to
watch or perform.
Speaker 9 (08:31):
I put to you this way, everybody that did talent
shows ended up doing so.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Chris Tucker used to do the skip set Columbia right.
Speaker 11 (08:38):
Silk used to sing in the talent shows, so it
was a training ground for all of us.
Speaker 5 (08:43):
Sleepy Brown is one third of the production group organized Noise,
alongside Ray Murray and the late Rico Wade. Most people
know his smooth, soulful voice and its production bona fides
from his work with outcasts, Goodie Mob, TLC.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
The list goes on and on, but.
Speaker 5 (08:59):
He got his art on Atlanta's talent show circuit as
a dancer. To be precise, yeeking, a Southern dance style
known for its explosive finishing moves.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
To be true for what you bro It was all
about getting girls, period. Everybody had talent in some form
of fashion in their mind.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
This is Ray Murray.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Talent shows was fierce in the high schools.
Speaker 8 (09:19):
You know what I mean fierce.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
You had so much contained energy.
Speaker 5 (09:24):
Hip hop was ching into the mainstream, creeping up the
charts and starting to infiltrate Radio two. In nineteen eighty three,
Kiss FM and New York had already gone all.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
In with rap.
Speaker 8 (09:36):
I found my New Yark Now.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
V and O three wasn't quite there.
Speaker 5 (09:40):
The station had to strike a balance keeping its older
loyal listeners engaged while still making room for hip hop.
So in nineteen ninety one, Ve helped launch a local
TV show called Atlanta Jams. What j It was a
teen dance program, an urban spin on a show that
started in burn. The station saw it as a way
(10:02):
to create more content for teens without changing their radio programming.
One of its co hosts was The Fresh Party's Darren Fears.
It had already been MCing local talent shows and parties
at teen clubs like Sharon's Showcase.
Speaker 9 (10:15):
Okay, like you remember how Soul Train was for grown folks,
That's what Atlanta Jams was to teenagers.
Speaker 5 (10:23):
One of Darren's co hosts was Jerry smoking Bee, a
veteran DJ from Milwaukee by way of Houston. Jerry loved
hip hop and hosted the weekday slot right in the
middle of the day from two to six pm.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
But VW and O three was a family station. There
were rules.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
On Friday, I played a hip hop song at four
thirty and five thirty.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
I'll never forget that.
Speaker 5 (10:45):
Seriously, he got to play one rap song at four
thirty and another one an hour later.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
We wanted to stay mainstream to cater to everyone, So
I was a guy assigned to take the rap out
of songs.
Speaker 5 (10:58):
One of those songs was Ain't Too Proud to beg
by TLC Lefto's verse was little too raw for the station.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
I had to take that out at that time because
that was too vulgar for V one O three, because
it was a very black, conservative R and B radio station.
Speaker 5 (11:19):
Atlanta Jams, on the other hand, was built precisely to
capture and cater to the energy of Atlanta teens at
that time.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
The show hosted.
Speaker 5 (11:28):
Parties inside Atlanta nightclubs, but for high schoolers. Darren and
Jerry co hosted along with Carol Blackman, who's already a
familiar voice, is one half of you and O three's
hit morning show, Mike and Carroll in the Morning.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
That's crowded, Well, it's going to get hot up in here,
because I'd like to introduce.
Speaker 5 (11:47):
To you PROFI close your eyes and pict your teens.
In the nineties, the high top fades, the half fastened overalls,
hundreds of teens packed into local nightclubs, sweating and showing
off for the camera.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
It is like a sea of kids. It was humongous.
Speaker 5 (12:06):
Big artists showed up Sheila, E Joe, to Ce, TLC
and Criss Cross.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
Getting them on the show wasn't hard. I f you
and O three had leverage.
Speaker 5 (12:15):
If you wanted to be interviewed on Mike and Carroll
in the morning, you also had to appear on Atlanta
Jams and We'll be.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Right back with more Atlanta Jam.
Speaker 5 (12:23):
From a rating standpoint, Atlanta Jams nailed the formula. The
same teens who woke up to party on Friday nights
would wake up the next morning to watch themselves on TV.
And if you didn't go to the party or weren't allowed,
it was still super entertaining to watch all the hot
new artists and crazy dance moves. Atlanta Jams was only
(12:44):
on air for about a year. We spoke with several
people and no one can point to a clear reason
for this, but one thing is certain. The show was
a temporary solution to a growing problem. By nineteen ninety five,
Atlanta's hip hop scene was a deniable outcasts goodie mob.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
They weren't just local stars. There were national names.
Speaker 8 (13:06):
From that joint.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
One of the most incredible titles of.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
A record, I think ever let my man say.
Speaker 5 (13:10):
Sell the play a listic Cadillac music for Yo, but
You and O three remained cautious at the time. The
Atlanta Journal Constitution music reporter Sonya Murray interviewed frustrated executives
for the local newspaper. A person affiliated with Arrested Development
told her about a time when the station declined to.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
Play the group.
Speaker 5 (13:30):
They said, quote, a lot of these big time nationwide
hits are coming from Atlanta, and our own station won't
even get on them first. When Sonya asked VA's programming
director why they weren't playing more local acts, he gave
her the same line he'd been telling industry folks for years.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
We don't make kids, we play them.
Speaker 5 (13:50):
Top forty R and B was still the brand, but
change was coming fast, and soon enough, a new radio
DJ who came of age in the era of the
Fresh Party Atlanta jams and talent shows would graduate from
playing the hits to making them himself.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Our goal and plan was to try and get my
music heard by people at these radio stations. These are
so good for you. You really look up Brocolici spots
and what they actually do.
Speaker 5 (14:20):
When Ludacris arrived at our studio to talk about his
time on the radio. He came bearing a coconut and
broccoli sprokes will I searched the office for something sharp
to crack his coconut open with. I can't help but
think about how Luda's radio days and then his transition
into a bona fide global rap star, reinforced my childhood
(14:41):
beliefs that the world centered around Atlanta. This was the
guy I heard on the radio every day after school,
and then suddenly there he was on my TV in
music videos for number one hits like stand Up and Yeah,
then on movie screens Fast and the Furious.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Wait, Wait, Wait, Waiting, crash.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
This white woman sees two black guys who look like
UCLA students strolling down the sidewalk, and her reaction is
blind fear.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
Part of my back pun.
Speaker 5 (15:09):
But it really is such a ludicrous rise unless you
come from a city where it isn't. Ludacris graduated from
Benjamin Bannaker High School in nineteen ninety five. The same summer,
Hot ninety seven to five, Atlanta's first all hip hop
radio station made its debut.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
I remember listening to it when they first started, and
it was great because a lot of other radio stations
they never played rap twenty four to seven. It would
be like Saturday night or Friday night from six to
ten pm. So, you know, people like myself were extremely
happy and just joyous that we had twenty four seven
a radio station I was playing all rap.
Speaker 5 (15:47):
Hot ninety seven's arrivals set off a radio war before
the station even hit the air. In the lead up
to Hot's launch, VW and O three brought in a
fresh new voice to lead their next chapter.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Another VO three grat Street.
Speaker 5 (15:59):
Exclusive, Greg Street, came from Dallas, Texas, and was immediately
given the major weekday slot two to six pm. Listeners
would now hear hip hop every Monday through Friday on
their afternoon drive. Thirty years later, he still holds down
the coveted spot. It wasn't hard to get listeners to
(16:19):
love Greg Street. The name Street really embodies how community
oriented he is, and he had the grit that VW
and O three had been lacking. Greg was someone young
people could actually be excited to listen to. Meanwhile, Hot
ninety seven was making its own moves and recruited a
familiar voice from V one O three. There was also Chakazulu,
(16:46):
a New Yorker who cut his teeth as a radio
DJ in college at Clark Atlanta University, he hosted a
hip hop show on community radio. The idea of working
at a mainstream radio station felt like the big leagues
for him, but seeing the station's office for the first
time brought him back to reality.
Speaker 11 (17:05):
You would drive forty five minutes outside of the city.
You get off the exit. Now you're on a dirt
road or you're on a road. Then you turn into
a pasture, a cow pasture. You go into this fence.
You drive back maybe about a half a mile through trees,
winding road, dust and dirt, and then it opens up
and then you see there's a tower, and then you
see a trailer right next to the tower, and that
(17:27):
was the radio station.
Speaker 5 (17:28):
There was a porter party on site, but the guys
just used the woods instead. Listeners couldn't see any of that.
Oh they knew was Atlanta finally had a twenty four
hour wrap station. Most of the staff were in their
late teens and twenties, just like their audience.
Speaker 11 (17:44):
Wouldn't like the new rock stars, right. Everybody was trying
to get a job at that station. Everybody wanted to
be on the station, but still hot had to move fast.
Few and O three was the establishment and they had
just hired Greg Street, so our twenty four hours was
focused on his four hours. Street came in with Gangbusters.
He got all the personalized drops.
Speaker 5 (18:04):
Drops are the short clips you hear at the top
of a program or when a radio personality is transitioning
between Secondstreet.
Speaker 8 (18:11):
Did that's well, he'll be pulling in his ass. Drop
up at the.
Speaker 5 (18:15):
Station where often DJs with flex by getting rappers to
shout them out or even make short custom songs. V
and O three and its on air personalities had fun,
but there was still a station of poise polish.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
They had rules. Hot ninety seven didn't.
Speaker 5 (18:36):
They were scrappy, relentless, and willing to do whatever it
took to snag some of the's audience.
Speaker 11 (18:42):
That's where the leash was off in a lot of
ways because we had to beat the nine hundred pound gorilla.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
What were some of the things you were doing to
beat the nine hundred pounds?
Speaker 2 (18:51):
I mean, we would show up to their lives.
Speaker 11 (18:54):
My first car was the promotions van for the radio station,
So everywhere I went, whether I was creeping to a
girl house or going to get something to eat, you
saw a Hot ninety seven to five van and I
was everywhere and if they had a live I would
just go drive through the parking lot.
Speaker 5 (19:09):
Chaka is referencing when radio DJs record their show outside
of the radio station. It's a way for stations to
get out in front of the community, airing live from
a school or major event, for instance. The point is
Chaka knew Hot had to be disruptive if they wanted
a real shot against V and O three, He says.
Jerry smoking Bee, Yes, the one who got fired by
(19:32):
V and O three and then hired by their new competitor,
masterminded one of the biggest dishes in Atlanta radio history.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
We started doing birthday bashes at Hot ninety seven.
Speaker 5 (19:42):
Right today, Birthday Bash packs out State Farm Arina with
more than sixteen thousand seats. But back in nineteen ninety six,
that first show was at Variety Playhouse with room for
just one thousand. The lineup was stacked Jermaine dupri and
Puff Daddy, the Brad Biggie, Total one, twelve eight Ball
and MJG and Outcast. Chaka says, VW and O three
(20:06):
was also throwing annual concerts around the same time as
birthday bash. But a couple of years in HoTT decided
to flip the competition into open warfare.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
And what happened was we got so competitive.
Speaker 11 (20:20):
It's radio war one on one, so we're listening like
I'm on the air.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
I turned today station and see what they're saying.
Speaker 11 (20:25):
Jerry smoking Bee, who was our production director, he came
and said, you all created this commercial.
Speaker 5 (20:29):
In the ad, Jerry read VW and O three's lineup,
but he broke an unwritten rule and mentioned the rival
station by name and suggested it was a lineup your
parents would listen to.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
Then they had hots Intern called V and O three.
Speaker 11 (20:43):
It's like, I want tickets to your show? Can you
tell me who's on the show.
Speaker 5 (20:48):
The receptionist at V listed off the names, but hots
Intern didn't sound impressed.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
It's like, that doesn't sound too hot.
Speaker 5 (20:55):
The receptionist, not realizing she was being recorded, agreed and
even admitted.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
She'd rather go to hot show.
Speaker 11 (21:03):
We edited that up, turned that into a promo, ran
it every thirty.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
Minutes, but Chaco wasn't finished.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
All of a sudden, I run down the hallways.
Speaker 11 (21:12):
I said, yo, won't we tell everybody that if you
got tickets to the V one O three show.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
You could trade them in for our tickets.
Speaker 5 (21:20):
It worked, Chaka says, Hot show sold out and just
like that, they sent a message loud and clear.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
They had the youth.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
On lock, killed them, murdered them. They we never we
never battled like that ever.
Speaker 8 (21:34):
Again.
Speaker 5 (21:36):
Chako wasn't just one of Hots on air personalities and
lead pranksters. He was also its musical director, and he
was looking to expand the channel's palette.
Speaker 11 (21:44):
The station basically played anything bad Boy, anything death ro
and it was so New York and West Coast it
was ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
It was a clear black Knight, a clear white moon.
Woma Ge was on the street.
Speaker 5 (21:56):
Chaco wanted to balance that out with local Dungeon family record,
but also my mystical and other Southern artists. Interestingly enough,
Hot already had an aspiring artist working at the station,
a recent high school graduate who would go on to
become an unlikely advocate for Broccoli Sprouts, among other things.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
I was doing all these different talent show contests and
stuff because I was rapping at that time all around Atlanta,
just trying to get known, and I had a manager
at the time, and this manager went to V one
O three and he got an internship, and Hot ninety
seven had just started on the airwaves, and I was like,
if you're going, if you want to three, I'm gonna
go to this other station because it's an all wrap
station and it's just open. I'm gonna try and get
(22:40):
an internship over there.
Speaker 5 (22:42):
The summer after high school graduation can be a stressful one,
filled with a lot of hopes and anxieties about the future.
Luda was already in its plotting season though. He was
going to be a rapper by any means necessary, and
he thought this new radio station could make it happen.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Our goal and plan was to try and get my
music heard by people at these radio stations.
Speaker 5 (23:02):
That's how Luda first ended up in Chaka's office. Chaka
wanted to break new artists and Luda wanted to be one.
Only problem, while Chaka thought he was talented, he didn't
like the song Luda played for him. He declined to
play it on air. Luda wasn't discouraged. He knew he
just needed another way in Lord Judge. It settled for
(23:23):
an internship with the Ryan Cameron Morning show. Brian had
been hired away from V and O three to host
Hot ninety seven's popular morning drive show from six to
ten AM. Luda was juggling a lot at this time.
He was trying to record a hit, attending Georgia State
University as a part time student, and working at Pizza Hud.
Ryan didn't give a damn. He was super strict and
(23:45):
required punctuality. Luda says he had to wake up at
four thirty am to make it to the show one time.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
If I look back, I don't realize exactly how I
did it, but by the grace of God.
Speaker 5 (23:56):
As an intern, Luda had to appear on air sometimes,
and the powers that be didn't like Ludacris as a
radio name.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Ryan was like, man, Ludacris is probably not a morning
show appropriate name. We need to get you a better name.
And so there was a woman by the name of
Felicia Love who would work with Ryan, and she was
kind of the person that had got me under her wing,
and I was interning for her, so I just said,
all right, I just be Chris Love of Love, based
off Felicia Love.
Speaker 5 (24:21):
The team quickly gained a reputation as hardworking and charming
on the mic. Even though he wasn't aiming to be
a DJA, he saw the value of being in the building.
Hot had upgraded and moved from their tiny trailer out
in the country to a real building in College Park.
By this point, I.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Didn't really have an interest in being on air.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
I kind of was up there to try and infiltrate
the building and the system and all the producers and
artists that come up there.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Then all of a sudden, I'm looking.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
At all the jockeys and they driving up in benzes
and all this other stuff. I'm like, huh, while I'm
waiting to get my music heard, why not make a complete,
cemented place for myself up here, because I can make
some money, and worst case, in there, I could pay
for my own damn music.
Speaker 5 (25:03):
One day, one of Hot's DJs was running late. Chris
Lovelova was asked to fill in just until she arrived.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
Here's Jerry smoking Bee.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
All of a sudden, he turns on the microphone and
he sound like he's been on the radio for years.
Speaker 5 (25:19):
He got the attention of Mary Catherine's me, the general
manager at HOT, and other leaders at the station.
Speaker 10 (25:25):
And I remember running out in the hall saying, man,
she better get her butt here, because if she's listening
that she has just started speeding down to this station.
Speaker 5 (25:37):
Soon he began appearing on Airmoor moved him into the
two to six am shift, the overnight zone where you
could mess up, experiment and grow.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Every single time you get on the air, you're getting
better and better.
Speaker 5 (25:49):
Luda eventually got paired with another radio Ricki, a guy
known as poon Daddy. Together, they hosted a Saturday night
show called Future Flavors.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Is Blowing Up Cats.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
You might not know Poondaddy if you're not from this
era of Atlanta, but you might have seen his teeth.
His mouth is transposed on a dog for Ludacris's two
thousand and one album Word of Mouth.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
So you know, when you think about gold Grills, he
was that original dude. Smokes like a chimney, Like he's
that guy that wakes up in the morning.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
First thing roller blunt.
Speaker 5 (26:21):
Well, Ludacris delivered suaveness. Poondaddy was the rawness that the
station needed.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Tonight. It's like Beavis and butt Head almost.
Speaker 8 (26:31):
It was kind of weird.
Speaker 10 (26:32):
It was magical. I mean, Poon would do the traffic.
He would paint the picture that he was on a bicycle.
Speaker 5 (26:39):
Mary's describing a bit Poon would do to make the
traffic report more interesting instead of just reading it off exactly.
He was reporting live, pedaling his bike through Atlanta traffic
and shouting what he saw back to Luda at the station,
but it.
Speaker 10 (26:53):
Sounded so much like he was pedaling a bike down
seventy five. You know, they did stuff like that all
the time.
Speaker 5 (27:01):
The stick was clever and showed that the pair could
reinvent even the most mundane radio segments. Hot's audience took notice.
Poon and Luda became so good and so popular that
the station moved them from Saturday nights to the coveded
weekday slot of six to ten pm. That meant one thing.
They were the guys Hot trusted to go toe to
(27:22):
toe with Greg Street, the V and O three heavyweight,
not a clock.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Cut up man.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
We up here doing it so makes y'all listen out
for that sound to two.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Somebody gonna get broken off.
Speaker 5 (27:31):
Evening radio was prime time, high traffic, high pressure, but
Poon and Luda knew how to stand out. That meant
playing music that listeners couldn't hear anywhere else station.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
War Blaze and hit popular.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
You know, what it's say, a lot of the cash
money records when it was big timers and when it
was you know, BG and Juvenile and Lil Wayne and
all these things, when they first started putting out records,
before the hits hits hits came.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
We were the first ones to play stuff like that.
Speaker 5 (27:57):
As soon as the mics were off at ten PM,
Luda hit clubs. He wasn't even old enough to be there,
but that didn't matter. He was already a local celebrity
with a lot of access. From Magic City to the five,
five to nine in southwest Atlanta. Luda was constantly partying
and performing at local clubs. Then the next day he'd
bring that culture back to the airwaves.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
You could just relate to us a lot easy, you
could tell.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
You could tell that literally was before we came on
the mic, and after we left, we were back in
the street.
Speaker 5 (28:27):
But the more successful he became, the more he started
to feel unappreciated.
Speaker 4 (28:32):
He says that he and Poon were never given a contract.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
I feel as if the people who kind of ran
the radio station wanted to downplay how much of an
influence that these two young guys really had for obvious reasons.
They're like, they don't want to tell us how great
our ratings are, because then we would be over there
asking for.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
The right amount of money.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
We young, and like we settling for whatever the hell
they'd given us.
Speaker 5 (28:55):
The lack of paperwork was about to come in handy
very soon. Luda never stopped plotting. Even as he worked
at Hot, he was recording music, and while Hot wouldn't
play his early songs, he found another way in. He
convinced several of his colleagues to let him create personalized
drops for their shows.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
It's not like they had to do it, but that
was my goal. I was back there like making the
dopest intros, and that was kind of like the way
for Atlanta to start hearing me.
Speaker 10 (29:21):
Question take us out in your blab.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
Yeah, I'm rotten to the core, like an apple rejuice,
like a snaffle blessed from my head to my feet.
Speaker 5 (29:30):
He was hoping one of the city's music execs, the
same folks he partied with and interviewed on a error,
would hear these drops and take notice. He often joked
to Jermaine Duprix that he was the embodiment of the
Socio Deaf mascot you know, the one with the afro.
Jermaine listened, but he never signed him. By the late nineties,
Luda had been working at the station for a few years,
(29:51):
and he'd also convinced Chakazulu to manage him. One day,
Chaka got a call from Timbaland, the legendary producer was
flying into Atlanta picked him up from the airport.
Speaker 11 (30:01):
I called the radio, so I said, YO, play at
Ludacris promo.
Speaker 5 (30:06):
Chako was also working as the station's music director, so
he had some pull Me.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
And Timblin vibbing.
Speaker 11 (30:11):
I turned the radio up and we just riding in
my truck and so Ludacris starts rapping and Timberlin is like, yo,
who is that.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
I was like, oh, that's my artist. So I was
like yo, I said, wen, he's at the radio station.
We can go there right now.
Speaker 5 (30:24):
Timblin goes into the production room and Shako plays him
the demo and Tim was like.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
Yo, I love this kid, Like whoa.
Speaker 5 (30:31):
The producer didn't know much about Luda at the time,
but he knew talent when he heard it. He invited
the rapper to attend one of his studio sessions in Virginia.
Luda would have to take a day off work, but
he was scared to ask for one. He says not
having a contract made him feel like he could be
fired at any moment. Maybe the station would listen if
it was something super serious.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
I had to make up an excuse that my grandmother
had died and my grandmama was still living. But I
was like, in my mind, my grandmama will not blame
me for telling this damn station that you are gone,
just so I can go to the Vizia and work
with him. I took that forty eight hours where I
told him I had to go to my grandmother's funeral,
(31:13):
and the rest is history.
Speaker 5 (31:16):
Luda and Timbland recorded the song Fat Rabbit. It featured
a signature Timbaland beat in those sensual, braggadocious lyrics that
Luda would eventually become famous for, and right at the
beginning of the song, he spells out his radio moniker,
I'll bet that.
Speaker 6 (31:31):
Nigga ain't Luda aka llov hey ylov a buck that
nigga what you winna fa one.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Time sut left fire.
Speaker 5 (31:38):
This was Luda's first time working with a producer, he idolized.
It was also his first big commercial release, Fat Rabbit
was a raunchy deep cut, not a single, but they
played it on Hot ninety seven because it was a
big deal for one of their radio personalities to be
on a Timbland album. The song became so popular that
even Luda's direct competitor began to play it.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Somebody text me and was like, Yo, Greg Street is
playing your song, and this is while I'm on the air,
because we're competitive.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
So during commercial break, I went and listened and I
was like, showing up, he was playing my record. That's
when I was like, Okay, something's about to happen.
Speaker 5 (32:23):
Fat Rabbit was a win, but to most of Hot's
listeners it probably felt like a cool one off, like
a popular radio personality made a good rap song, and
technically it wasn't even Luda's.
Speaker 4 (32:35):
He was a feature on Timbaland song.
Speaker 5 (32:38):
Unless you'd seen Luda in the club performing night after night,
you probably didn't realize what was coming next. About a
year later, in two thousand, Luda finally dropped his debut single,
What's Your Fantasy NAT. He signed with def Jam and
from there his career took off fast. He went from
(32:59):
Interviewinglanta's music stars to collaborating with them.
Speaker 8 (33:05):
Send the Club Looking So Cutch, Big You louss.
Speaker 5 (33:09):
Atlanta finally had an ecosystem to develop and support its rappers.
The city already had college radio, it had producers, and now,
thanks to Hot, it had commercial radio in the mixed too.
The station transitioned from ninety seven point five to one
oh seven point nine in two thousand and one. Station
(33:30):
it's still around today, still delivering hip hop to the city,
alongside its longtime competitor of U one O three dep
Jam South, an offshoot of the larger label, set up
shop in Atlanta. Shakazulu served as vice president. By then,
he'd been fired from Hot. He says he never got
a reason why other labels like Bad Boy's Southern Division
(33:53):
had a major presence here too. The face so So
Deaf and rowdy records. They'd spent the nineties proving to
the world what locals had been seeing at talent shows.
It felt like nationally, decision makers were finally listening, like
the South wasn't just an afterthought to what was going
on on the East and West coast at the nineteen
ninety five Source Awards. When Andre three thousand proclaimed the
(34:16):
South got something to say to booze, it was a
timely word for folks here too.
Speaker 9 (34:20):
Did the South got something to say?
Speaker 2 (34:21):
That's all I got to say.
Speaker 5 (34:23):
It's crazy to think about it in hindsight, but Atlanta
had only had Hot, the city's first all rap station,
for one month at that point, and according to Chaka,
Hot was all in on East and West Coast rap
out the gate. In just five years, Atlanta went from
a city where local rappers struggled to be heard and
hip hop only got a few hours on the radio
(34:45):
to a rising rap mecca where young artists could hear
themselves becoming superstars on the cities airwaves. Here's Jerry Smoking Bee,
the DJ originally hired to spend just two rap songs
during his set on VU.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
And O three, Ludacris was, It's a blessing and a
curse at the same time.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
And I'm gonna break it down to you.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
It's a blessing that a young guy can start as
an intern, fulfill his dream in broadcasting, and then really
get to his major dream through the same portal.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
That's the celebration.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
And it's somebody that you know that's receiving a Grammy
an award. It's like it's almost like your child is
receiving that award. And so the curse is every intern
that comes through the radio station now wants to take
this huge leap in a couple of weeks and be
a superstar for all the.
Speaker 4 (35:39):
Young dreamers tuning in.
Speaker 5 (35:41):
Back then, Ludacris wasn't just a voice on the radio.
He was a proof that Atlanta could make its own stars.
In the years that followed, the city's sound would stretch
far beyond its ear waves, shaping with hip hop and
pop culture would become because once Atlanta found its voice
on the radio, the rest of the world starts listening.
Speaker 7 (36:08):
Coming up on Atlanta is Maurice Garland brings us to
the West Side into the Locals Only club where Crunk
was born.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
I was stop at the Little Xon right across the
street from there.
Speaker 11 (36:19):
Man, give me a couple of double duces, give me
some black and Biles.
Speaker 7 (36:23):
Hey, bro, you get your simp a little bit, and
then you get in line, one of.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
The barstools hit the mirror and crack the mirror. So
that's why they were gonna take us to jail.
Speaker 7 (36:31):
Later Christina Lee takes us to the yard of Morris
Brown's legendary drum line as the HBCU fights to keep
his doors open.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
How do you get people to believe in something that's dead?
Speaker 8 (36:43):
And there's more.
Speaker 7 (36:43):
After that, we meet the dreamers who turned Atlanta into
the new Hollywood of the South.
Speaker 4 (36:48):
My agent started calling me and they were like, Hey,
I'm flying down.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
I'm gonna go see your client. Hey, this place isn't
so bad after all.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
We like fanaggled our way into a meeting with Jermaine Duprix,
and we faggled our way into a meeting with Awesome, like.
Speaker 7 (37:00):
We were hustlers and post up on the street where
black entrepreneurs compete for their own slice of peach cobbler.
Speaker 4 (37:06):
Let me be real fucking clear, nobody walked around with
a piece of paper and told motherfuckers like pay them rent, Like.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
This is not how that happened.
Speaker 8 (37:13):
We meet the preachers who go viral.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
I've had to live my life out loud.
Speaker 8 (37:18):
And explore the past and future of Atlanta hip hop.
Speaker 9 (37:21):
I never forget Missy Elliott was there and I was like,
why is Missy Yllio from this environment?
Speaker 5 (37:25):
I believe Andre three thousand came for like Weeks on
End You.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Really the first lady to have a guest.
Speaker 6 (37:31):
The girls take and then left Jeordiana like Oh what
is your wife?
Speaker 7 (37:39):
Atlanta is a Well pack of Media production in partnership
with Idea Generation and Complex. This episode was written, reported,
and produced by Jul Wicker, with additional production from Maurice
Garland and Christina Lean. Our Supervising producer and editor is
Shiva Bayat. Our managing producers are Rose through Lini Bacon,
(38:00):
Omari Graham, and Shamara Rochester. Editorial support from Sean Setero
and Jack Irwin. Original theme music by Aman Solta. Sound
designed by Shiva Bayat and Amn Solter, mixed and master
by a mind Sota.
Speaker 8 (38:17):
Fact checking done by Sean Setero.
Speaker 7 (38:20):
Clearance counsel Donison Khalif, Perez, Lisa Khalif and Jacqueline Sweat.
Executive producers for will Packer Media are Will Packer and
Alex Bauder. Co producer for will Packer Media is Nimy Mohun.
Executive producers for Complex are Jack Irwin and Noah Callahan.
Speaker 8 (38:38):
Bever Head of Talent Relations for Complex.
Speaker 7 (38:41):
It's Anthony Alred Special thanks to Tyler Klin, Tarre Harrison Chris,
Senator Nolams Griffin, and Candace Howard.
Speaker 8 (38:51):
I'm big rude Beeace
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