Urban/R&B leaning CHRs in Detroit are indeed nothing new. Don't forget that Detroit was also the birthplace of the Motown sound, after all, and the Motor City's top 40 stations in the 60s always played tons of R&B. The "Big 8," CKLW, was in fact once referred to as the "blackest white station in America." Especially in the late 1960s before Canadian Content regulations went into effect, CK's playlist was very soul-heavy. Music director Rosalie Trombley was a big fan of R&B music and was excellent at picking those soul records to play on the Big 8 that she believed would be huge with both white and black listeners. The fact that CKLW played so much soul music is credited by many to helping to heal the racial hurts that plagued the metro Detroit area in the wake of the 1967 riots. Watch the documentary "Radio Revolution: The Rise and Fall of the Big 8" and you'll see what I mean.
The way WKQI sounds now is not unlike what WHYT was doing in the early '90s when it was known as "96.3 Jamz" and played mostly hip-hop, R&B, and (often extended) dance remixes of CHR/pop hits. Although "96.3 Jamz" was the favorite station of the younger crowd, my understanding is that it was a nightmare to sell, and I think that's why they eventually changed format to Alternative in '94. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong about that.)
What's funny is that, at the time WHYT was "96.3 Jamz," WKQI was "Q95" and a very vanilla, white-bread Hot AC which played very little rhythmic music. Nowadays, the roles seem to be reversed: WKQI is "Channel 955" and more rhythmic than it's ever been, and 96.3, now WDVD, is the Hot AC which plays the pop/rock songs that WKQI ignores. Until a few years ago WKQI always seemed much more whitebread and mainstream than the competition, whether that competition was WHYT in the early '90s or WDRQ in the late '90s and early '00s. There was a time when WKQI was very heavy on Hot AC stiffs from artists like the Cranberries and Leona Naess; DRQ actually played the hits - and was very heavy on the rhythmic side - and was the more popular station at the time. Of course, this was also during the era of the boy bands when CHR was enjoying a surge in popularity anyway.
The way WKQI sounds now is not unlike what WHYT was doing in the early '90s when it was known as "96.3 Jamz" and played mostly hip-hop, R&B, and (often extended) dance remixes of CHR/pop hits. Although "96.3 Jamz" was the favorite station of the younger crowd, my understanding is that it was a nightmare to sell, and I think that's why they eventually changed format to Alternative in '94. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong about that.)
What's funny is that, at the time WHYT was "96.3 Jamz," WKQI was "Q95" and a very vanilla, white-bread Hot AC which played very little rhythmic music. Nowadays, the roles seem to be reversed: WKQI is "Channel 955" and more rhythmic than it's ever been, and 96.3, now WDVD, is the Hot AC which plays the pop/rock songs that WKQI ignores. Until a few years ago WKQI always seemed much more whitebread and mainstream than the competition, whether that competition was WHYT in the early '90s or WDRQ in the late '90s and early '00s. There was a time when WKQI was very heavy on Hot AC stiffs from artists like the Cranberries and Leona Naess; DRQ actually played the hits - and was very heavy on the rhythmic side - and was the more popular station at the time. Of course, this was also during the era of the boy bands when CHR was enjoying a surge in popularity anyway.