By Tracy Stokes, BET.com Staff Writer & Wire Services


Posted April 20, 2007 – Snoop, 50 Cent and all other foul-mouthed, hip-hop artists, your air time is up at one Black-owned radio station.

Roberts Broadcasting Cos. LLC, which operates four TV stations and a hip-hop radio station, said violent, sexist and racist music is being ditched from its radio playlist, The Associated Press reports.

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Rappers On The Defensive

Rather than censoring the offensive words of the songs, the station, WRBJ-FM in Jackson, Miss., is banning them altogether.

"We take tremendous pride in being African-American and refuse to let anyone, White or Black, strip us of that pride," said Steven Roberts, president and chief operating officer of the company, adding that if it's offensive in any way toward women or Blacks, it's not going to be played.

The decision by brothers Michael and Steven Roberts, who run the company, comes less than a week after Don Imus was fired by CBS Radio for calling members of the Rutgers Women's Basketball Team "nappy-headed hos."

Many Black activists, community leaders and organizations, along with Imus defenders say “hip hop made him do it,” putting rappers on the defensive.

Drug-dealer-turned-rapper Snoop Dogg, who activists point to as one of the most egregious offenders -- has walked women out on stage with dog leashes around their necks and shoots pornographic videos -- was quick to try and draw a distinction between gangsta rappers and shock jock Don Imus.

Speaking to MTV following the Imus debacle, he said: “It's a completely different scenario. Rappers are not talking about no collegiate basketball girls who have made it to the next level in education and sports. ... We are rappers that have these songs coming from our minds and our souls that are relevant to what we feel. I will not let them mutha***** say we in the same league as him."

Terrill Weiss, general manager of WRBJ-FM, said there’s probably a higher incidence of derogatory language in general in hip-hop music because it's a language of the street.

"It reflects life, and their art involves a lot of language that could be deemed objectionable." Still, Weiss said of the ban by Roberts’ management, "I'm glad they made a decision to take a stand.”

Respecting Ourselves

In a letter to the staff of WRBJ-FM, Chairman and Chief Executive Michael Roberts wrote that the Imus case "has certainly put new fire under the need to respect ourselves first -- specifically the hip-hop nation and rap music's role in desensitizing our country to derogatory comments toward women and each other."

Last Friday, hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons called a meeting in New York with other hip-hop chiefs to respond to the growing criticism of rap. He said that hip hop is a worldwide, cultural phenomenon that transcends race and doesn't engage in racial slurs.

“Don Imus' racially motivated diatribe toward the Rutgers Women's Basketball Team was in no way connected to hip-hop culture," he said. " ... Don Imus is not a hip-hop artist or a poet. Hip-hop artists rap about what they see, hear and feel around them, their experience of the world. Like the artists throughout history, their messages are a mirror of what is right and wrong with society. Sometimes their observations or the way in which they choose to express their art may be uncomfortable for some to hear, but our job is not to silence or censor that expression. Our job is to be an inclusive voice for the hip-hop community and to help create an environment that encourages the positive growth of hip hop."

Meanwhile, the Rev. Al Sharpton, who was due to present the James Brown Memorial Culture Impact Award to former Arista and current Island Def Jam boss L.A. Reid during the National Action Network's annual conference in New York this week, has cancelled the presentation and instead said he intends to focus his energies in targeting corporations that support "gutter rap."

Several rappers under Reid's label frequently use racial and sexual epithets.

This is what seriously needed to happen. Im glad that it is a Black owned station that took the lead on this, but now the pressure has to be put on the Viacom/Clear Channel owned stations, they all need to be held accountable for what they put out there, then lets go after BET,MTV, and VH1.

the genre in and of itself should not be banned (there IS actually a lot of good, intelligent hip-hop...it just doesn't get radio play), though i think some quality control is certainly in order. i think this is a step in the right direction, but if it's too heavy-handed, it's just gonna come off as good ol' censorship and that always makes the censored material that much more cool to kids, which kinda defeats the purpose, doesn't it?
[Edited 4/20/07 10:37am]

Anx said:

i was thinking the same thing, but reading the article, i get the impression that not all rap is being banned, and it is the offensive that's not going to be played. that doesn't solve the problem you mentioned, but then, a station has the right to pick its own playlist, i guess.

Tessa said:

Well thats what the issue really is, since this is an independantly owned station they can pick the playlist. But its not like that in 90% of america, everything is owned by major corporations and most of stations and labels are owned by the same people, which honestly is Illegal, but the law is not applied. A station like HOT97 or Z100 could never do this, thats why the pressure has to be put on Clear Channel and Viacom, and until that happens, nothing will change.

lastdecember said:

Good point.

Could you imagine a radio station that played Talib Kweli, Common, Mos Def, Nas, K-Os, Lupe Fiaso, Gym Class Heroes, The Roots and other artists along with GOOD R&B ALL THE TIME?! That would Heaven

One step at a time.

bboy87 said:

I was in a store the other day and they were playing a Lupe Fiasco video. I couldn’t believe it. Then I realized it was probably one of those in-store vides that they have to play. But it was great to hear over the store speakers.

JackieBlue said:

But it was great to hear over the store speakers. A radio station would be great. I wouldn't have to turn the dial every other song.
[Edited 4/20/07 12:35pm]

praise the lord !

What are they going to play? lol

so they knew it was bad cuz when imus said it, but didn't before him, folks kill me, i give this stupid ban a month, once the lets jump on hip hop for all thje problems of the world train passess

That's stupid. It's just as bad as when they tried to say rock & roll was the devil's music.

I've heard positive hip hop. I've heard Christian hip hop. The problem isn't the genre, it's the terrible superstars of the genre, and the horrible trends.

Don't show booty videos, don't glamorize thugging & drugs, but don't ban entire genres of music.

NDRU said:

i agree. though it sounds like they're not banning with quite that broad of a brush.

Funny thing is these songs already have radio edit versions where the language is cleaned up.

bboy87 said:

that would be heavan. I'm sorry but even the R&B stations of today play the same ole tired shit over and over. If I hear another Freddie Jackson song played I'm gonna implode.

The other day I almost crashed my car because for once the radio took a side step and played Love Is the Message (not the original version but the club hit version with the Spanish countdown break in it) followed by an extended version of the Bottle. Then it dawned on me, in the history of R&B and hip hop, there are sooooo many kick as jams, both old and new, but they play the same shit over and over and over.

Finally some justice!

2freaky4church1 said:

Emimem?

Disco sucks!

This is good news!!!

CinisterCee said:

True but sometimes they just omit the bad words so the song plays like

"And I f_ d her in the a_s/ and dumped the b___ch on the curb"

To me that's not much better.

Just like the girls gone wild commercials, they don't show nipples but you get the message and probably wouldn't want your young kids watching just the same.

Hey, I'm from Jackson, Mississippi!!!!!

Hot damn, this dead ass city finally did something to make me proud!!!!!

Hell, I feel like I'm having an orgasm.


I'm not familiar with that station's call letters. Of course, I don't listen to shit hop so I wouldn't be familiar with it. It must to be that station that is 97 on the dial because the other station that plays shit hop is WJMI (which used to be the baddest funk station in Jackson in the 1980s and has now become an embarassment like Soul Train became).

I can't believe it! I can't wait to get off work tonight. This calls for a celebration!

Cel-e-brate good times come on!!!

Lemme hear ya say..."ooh wah, ooh wah"

Let's form a line y'all.

There's gonna be some ass shakin' tonight!
.
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[Edited 4/20/07 17:09pm]

They said it was devil's music because it had that fast rhythm that they considered sinful. Since shit hop has no rhythm, the people that opposed rock and roll back then should love it. Since the people making the real money off shit hop is old white men in business suits, it looks like they got their revenge after all by taking rhythm back out of music.

If this station is the one I'm thinking it is, they are only banning the shit hop they consider offensive because shit hop is their entire format and they haven't changed their format.....yet.

Anx said:

very true

vainandy said:[quote]

Since shit hop has no rhythm, the people that opposed rock and roll back then should love it. quote]

but you know full well that's not the case

NDRU said:

Sometimes the lyrics are rewritten.. sorta like putting clothes on the girls gone wild to the point where no blurring is needed

[quote]

NDRU said:

It might as well be the case. Those old buzzards back then didn't have any rhythm and didn't want any on the radio. Shit hop artists have even less rhythm than those old buzzards had back then and are making today's old buzzards rich that probably listen to classical music themselves. The whole rhythmless group deserve each other.
.
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[Edited 4/20/07 18:05pm]

Yep, it's the station I was thinking of....HOT 97.7. Here's what was on our local television news about it:

Local Radio Station Banning Offensive Music
By David Kenney
david@wlbt.net

After the firing of Don Imus for comments he made about the Rutgers basketball team, there's been a conscious effort by radio stations to take a closer look at their programming. One radio station in Jackson is looking to make big changes to songs on their playlists that may contain offensive lyrics.

WRBJ-FM "Hot 97.7," a hip-hop station, is taking a closer look at what they put out over the airwaves. Their goal is to eliminate anything that would be offensive to listeners, whether it's violent, sexist, or racist.

"I understand it's art," said the station's general manager, Terrill Weiss, "but the message sometimes is so negative that young people listening to that music get the impression that it's acceptable to use that kind of language. And to have those kinds of attributes... we don't want to perpetrate that."

The station's entire playlists will have to be re-vamped and every song's lyrics examined to deterimine if it's acceptable to hit the air. Anything deemed too hard or offensive will be banned.

That goes for syndicated programming, too.

"We're looking at that right now -- whether or not we can continue with Russ Parr, because he tends to use some of that shock value on air, and we don't want him to represent us that way," Weiss said.

The changes at the radio station are being handed down from its owners, the Roberts brothers, who are African American. They plan to have their playlists edited by next week.

Listeners probably won't notice a drastic change in what they hear because the music is censored for offensive words, but now content is an issue.

"We want people to be confortable if they turn on the radio station, and not worry if their children are in the car, mom's in the car, grandma," Weiss said. "It's good music, but some of the lyrics are disturbing."

http://www.wlbt.com/Globa...7&nav=2CSf