The Media Drop

Following the great lead set by Leonard Witt, I’m attempting my first Instant Message-based interview. Today I’m speaking with Jay Smooth of hiphopmusic.com and host of the Underground Railroad radio program on WBAI in New York. I came to find Jay and hiphopmusic.com after seeing a link on Cal Ulmann’s site. Jay brings to life two major interests I have - hip-hop music discussion and a perspective based in reality, not puffery. I definitely recommend reading up on his site just to get some interesting insights and see things 180 degrees away from what you might read in your favorite music publication.

TMD: First off - thanks for taking the time to answer a few of my questions on IM… For the folks out there who aren’t familiar with hiphopmusic.com, your show on WBAI, or Jay Smooth the guy - tell us a little bit about yourself…

JS: Well I was born and raised in NYC, sharing time between my dad’s apt in Harlem and my mom’s on the upper west side.. both were very artistic/musical households, my dad was a poet who worked a lot with Gylan Kain of the original Last Poets (of the Right On! Album, Kain also did a solo album Blue Guerrila that is sampled a lot), and my mom studied jazz piano under John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet and has spent most of her life around jazz musicians, because her dad (my granddad) was a music critic for the NY Times among other papers. So music was always a big part of my life, the center of it really.. I was a shy nerdy kid who spent a lot of time alone, especially when my mother was working nights, so music did more than anything to fill that void.

TMD: So early on you were obviously into music…. and using some really tough mathematical formulas, I’ve determined from your profile on orkut that you were about 18 years old when you got started with the Underground Railroad radio program. How did you put that together?

JS: Yeah, I came to WBAI when I was 16, after I got turned down for a job at McDonalds, and my mom was looking constructive I could do.. I started interning there under a guy named Anthony Sloan, learned how to engineer working with him for Amy Goodman who ran the local news then (now she does Democracy Now), and after a couple of years i was on the air here and there, performing on a comedy sketch show named Creative Unity. The station wanted to get a rap show to seek a younger audience, so I put in a proposal and the rest is history.. Started the show in Feb. of 1991 when I was still a senior in high school.

TMD: Tell me a little bit about how the show has evolved since 1991, and what the focus of it is?

JS: Well the focus when I started out, as indicated in the oh so clever name, was to try to take all of the amazing hip-hop music I was listening to, that wasnt played in mainstream media, and smuggle that music out to freedom so to speak, showcase it to people who might not otherwise have a chance to be exposed to it, and to share my love of the music with others who feel the same.. Over the years as hip-hop has become more mainstream I guess the show has shifted more towards showcasing newer, indie label acts. Ten years ago we had major label guests on almost every week, but nowadays they have 24 hour rap stations like Hot 97 to go to so we hardly ever see them.

So our job has become to provide an alternative to that.. Not because i think Jay-Z or 50 is wack, but because for us to play them would be redundant. Also, since I am on a station that strives to represent on a different level politically and intellectually, I have always tried to set a different example for what a hip-hop radio show can be.. to show that you can have a totally different demeanor than most other hip-hop jocks have, be a nerd who likes to talk about politics and hardly ever uses any slang, and still be just as “down”, just as legitimate as a representative and member of the culture. Which is not to look down on anyone else’s show but when everyone sounds the same its easy for kids to think you have to be that way to be down. When really, anyone can be themselves and be respected if they have the love and knowledge of the music. Lemme stress again im not saying my show is better than anyone else’s, just trying to be a different flavor in that sense.

TMD: Absolutely….so you led me right up to what I wanted to talk about next - the “other” stations in New York City - namely Hot 97 and Power 105… As rap and hip-hop have become more mainstream over the last 5-7 years (or even 10), those stations have broadened their audiences by default. A lot of people don’t consider them as “true” to the rap / hip-hop community as they could be… Do you think this is partially just a function of the popularity of rap music, or that the stations have made an intentional move to become ultra-popular and not “groundbreaking”, as it were?

JS: Well, that’s a tough question.. These stations are easy targets for hate.. As commercial stations that need to make a profit, they have a lot of limitations that I for example don’t have.. Like it’s easy to complain about how they play the same 10 or 15 songs over and over again all day, but I can’t knock them for that, because only a small percentage of radio listeners listen to a station for more than 1 or 2 hours a day, most people are more casual listeners than us music nerds, they want to be able to tune in for that one hour and hear the hottest songs out right now, and you need to program the station to serve that need. So within those constraints that they have, I think they they could do better and could do worse…certainly sticking with that format greatly narrows the range of what gets exposed to most hip-hop listeners.

TMD: Okay, that makes perfect sense - so, hypothetical - if you were program director at one of those stations, and couldn’t just flip the format, so to say, what is *one* change you would make?

JS: Well, first of all eliminate payola, which has been well known to heavily influence the playlist of certain shows, that happen to be some of the ones with the most power and freedom to play whatever they want..the nighttime mixshows are where new stuff can really get broken - so i’d focus on those as a place to broaden horizons and make sure a diverse array of sounds were represented in those slots.

TMD: So let’s talk a little more about “underground” music….obviously there are tons of fans of what people call “underground” music - I’m guilty of calling it that sometimes, but know that what’s “underground” sometimes has just as many fans as what’s on the radio every fifteen minutes. Do you think artists are starting to try and step out of the shadow and become stars, as opposed to a few years ago? Not everyone wants to take a chance of being a “one hit wonder” and fade away, we know.

JS: I’m not sure the word “underground” has much value anymore.. it was a very different landscape in 1991 when I named my show.. since then the word has become a way to pigeonhole artists and confine them to a particular corner of the industry, tie them in with a certain subset of the hip-hop audience, because splitting the audience up into different groups and marketing different specialized products to each group is better business strategy than having all your label’s albums competing for the same dollar.. Q-Tip broke this down in our interview..

So i see our purpose now as to simply promote good music, and to challenge underground heads who eschew all “commercial” stuff just as much as we challenge those who only listen to the pop hits.

TMD: I agree with you about the terminology - especially with relation to the Internet’s growth, someone can “blow up”, to use a cliche, overnight - just based on some people blogging about it or posting some tracks online or whatever. Do you think there is a segment of artists out there with absolutely no interest in getting big play?

JS: hmm.. I think any artist hopes for their creation to touch as many people as possible.. but I think there are many artists who are able to recognize that only a minority of listeners will be able to follow them down the path that they’ve chosen, and are more than content to maintain their relationship with those who do “get it,” rather than making changes to reach those who don’t.

TMD: So then it’s a function more on the listener side, where the folks who don’t “get it” might be in that category because of the bulk of other music they’re listening to? I think Talib Kweli and Common are perfect examples of people with really great followings, and they’ve made a way into the so-called “mainstream” world… But I can’t tell if they will choose to “stay” or not. Not that they’ll stop making their music, but they may just take a different tact at attracting listeners.

JS: Well, I’d never consider anyone’s taste or listening habits to be a flaw, people have different tastes and that’s how it should be.. but that’s a good point, there are a lot of artists that fail to blow not cuz the masses would be unable to get it, but cuz they never even get a chance to hear it, that’s always a factor too.. and the masses’ tastes are certainly influenced by what the major labels (how long will be be able to use the plural of that word) choose to propagate.. so it’s always a tough call for artists, how to navigate that.

That’s it for the first portion of the interview. The remainder of the discussion will cover some discussions about the hiphopmusic.com website, Jay’s 5 “desert island” albums, among other things.