landtuna said:
Question: did cheap channel ruin hiphop radio?
Answer: No, hip-hop ruined hiphop radio.
In many ways, this does make sense, but can be explained a bit further. To conserve time, I'll just do a brief summary and avoid getting into full complete step by step detail about how this happened.
Remember, over time, things change. The hip hop phase is coming to a close, just like what happened with Jazz, Disco, Rock N Roll...etc. so of course it will reflect on radio, as many stations continue to adjust to the "new direction" in which music is headed today.
How did hip hop begin to lose it's credibility (and I should also add in the word, sensibility)? Well.... Combine the fact that over time, things always change, with the amount of dumb songs with stupid lyrics that began to hit around 2007 or so. A lethal combination, and of course, some change would have to take place. Even though many are just transferring dumb lyrics over into electro-pop, I still see electro-pop and modernized dance hits of today having more meaningful songs than what started happening in 2007 right before the biggest changes started to happen. This is especially more true for those songs that consist entirely of vocal singing with limited or no rap verses. If I were a rapper and saw what was being done near 2007, I would've abandoned the genre too. There are a few rappers who waited until it was just too late to try to "repair" what has happened with hip hop by trying to bring back the real lyrics and true style of rhyming, metaphoirical art, and sensible topics too late, and it doesn't help that TI is presently not around at this point in his career....
So in other words, Hip Hop radio being everything that is was is now a thing of the past (unless of course you live in certain areas). Just like with rock, you will (or soon will) be able to get all your "real" or "pure" hip hop on classic hip hop stations. Notice how the same exact thing happened when reggaeton died. The stations that came into existence based on reggaeton, or evolved into reggaeton no longer sound as "reggaeton hip" as they used to be. Why? because times have changed. BUT, only one difference - you will not have classic reggaeton statrions. I should just make that clear, especially after using words like "the exact same thing happened.."
Many of those stations that were "#1 for hip hop & r&b" or "where hip hop lives" or "today's hottest music" or "the hip hop station" or "...is hip hop & r&b" are rhythmic, and now that people are actually making rhythmic hits, those stations are beginning to once again sound how a true rhythmic should be. Top 40 is also beginning to sound traditional again, even though it may never be as it was in the 90's... but in the 90's you could say the same about it when it came to the 80's...and so on. A "Party Station" playing only r&b and hip hop is pretty boring, yet this is what seemed to start happening around the mid 2000's up until 2008 or so.
Then on top of all this, there is ClearChannel, and believe it or not, this was just a brief summary of the entie situation.