How ‘Yo! MTV Raps’ helped mainstream hip-hop – NPR

JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:

For Jeffrey Allen Townes, the first half of 1988 was a whirlwind.

(SOUNDBITE OF DJ JAZZY JEFF & THE FRESH PRINCE SONG, “THE FRESH PRINCE OF BEL-AIR”)

SUMMERS: He was 23, and he and Will Smith had just released their second album as DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince. And now they were on tour with Run-D.M.C.

JEFFREY ALLEN TOWNES: We were so happy to go on stage in front of 20,000 people screaming and cheering and loving this music.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

TOWNES: A whole lot of superstars on this stage tonight.

SUMMERS: One day, a camera crew showed up to film them for this experimental new show on a cable channel dedicated to music – MTV.

TOWNES: I remember shooting that with Run-D.M.C. on Run-D.M.C.’s tour bus. We were more excited to hang with them than excited about this being MTV. You know, we had no idea. You know, this could have been the local newspaper.

SUMMERS: Producers prompted them to introduce music videos and voice some transitions.

TOWNES: There was absolutely no kind of a script. It was extremely raw.

SUMMERS: Then they went back to the tour and put it out of their minds. Months later, DJ Jazzy Jeff flipped on the TV.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

TOWNES: I’m DJ Jazzy Jeff.

WILL SMITH: And, yo, I’m the Prince.

CLARENCE HOLMES: And I’m Ready Rock C.

TOWNES: Hold up. Watch this. We want to let everybody know where it’s at. It’s right here.

CLARENCE HOLMES, WILL SMITH, AND JEFFREY ALLEN TOWNES: “Yo! MTV Raps.”

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

TOWNES: We almost had to be reminded that we shot the pilot of that. And you’re like, oh, man, that’s when we were on the bus with Run. You know, that was the actual first show. Like, that was a pivotal moment that we didn’t see at that time.

SUMMERS: “Yo! MTV Raps” was the first show on MTV dedicated solely to hip-hop. It came at a crucial time in the genre’s relatively young life. Born out of backstage concert footage, it would make national stars of rappers whose work had been largely ignored by mainstream media. And it was built by a scrappy team in the face of a skeptical corporation. This week, we’re celebrating 50 years of hip-hop and looking at some of the key moments that helped define it. Today, the story of “Yo! MTV Raps.”

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SUMMERS: In 1988, MTV had only been around for seven years. In its early days, rock music ruled. The very first words ever heard on MTV on August 1, 1981, were…

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

JOHN LACK: Ladies and gentlemen, rock ‘n’ roll.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

DAN CHARNAS: When it started, the programmers for MTV, the people who chose what music videos to play, were all veterans of rock radio from the 1970s. And rock radio in the 1970s had become a deliberately racially segregated affair.

SUMMERS: Dan Charnas is a hip-hop journalist and former record executive.

CHARNAS: This is the pattern for the first few years of MTV where they’re just not playing Black artists. And this is not just MTV not playing Black artists. Black artists had been essentially ejected from pop radio as well. Black artists, in order to get on pop radio, had to overperform on Black radio.

SUMMERS: 1984 saw a modest breakthrough when the first rap video aired on MTV.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “ROCK BOX”)

RUN-D.M.C.: (Rapping) The girls on the walls, some on the floor with the DJ named Jay with the cuts galore…

CHARNAS: And so that begins a pattern with MTV essentially programming one rap video per year for the next three, four years. So it was “Rock Box” by Run-D.M.C. in ’84. Then it was “King Of Rock” by Run-D.M.C. in 1985.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “KING OF ROCK”)

RUN-D.M.C.: (Rapping) They called us and said we’re getting iller. There’s no one chiller. It’s not Michael Jackson, and this is not “Thriller”…

CHARNAS: Then it was “Walk This Way” by Run-D.M.C. and Aerosmith in 1986. You see the pattern here, right? You have to do this overly performative rock guitar thing in order to be successful in MTV.

SUMMERS: By the late ’80s, hip-hop’s rise was harder to ignore, but MTV executives still hadn’t greenlit a hip-hop show.

JEN CHANEY: I think some of them viewed hip-hop as sort of a fad, something that was just a trend that was going to come and go. And obviously, they were dead wrong about that.

SUMMERS: Jen Chaney is a TV critic for Vulture. The lack of interest from MTV’s leadership didn’t mean hip-hop didn’t have champions at the network.

CHANEY: There were two guys who worked at MTV, Peter Doherty and Ted Demme. They were huge hip-hop fans, and they kept saying, we need to have a show that’s just about hip-hop. And they just kept beating the drum about it until finally someone’s like, OK, make an episode. Let’s see how it goes.

SUMMERS: That episode would be unlike anything MTV had ever aired before.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “YO! MTV RAPS”)

JASON WILLIAM MIZELL: Yo, what’s up? I’m Jam Master Jay. This is Run-D.M.C., and welcome to “Yo! MTV Raps” show.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Yo, we getting ready…

SUMMERS: There was no host and no studio. Run-D.M.C. introduced the first video on stage in front of thousands of fans.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “YO! MTV RAPS”)

MIZELL: We going to start the show off with Eric B. & Rakim. “Follow The Leader.”

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Word.

MIZELL: Make some noise.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “FOLLOW THE LEADER”)

ERIC B & RAKIM: (Rapping) Rakim’ll say…

SUMMERS: From the tour bus, DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince introduced their own video. Public Enemy made an appearance later on.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

FLAVOR FLAV: My name is Flavor Flav.

CHUCK D: And I’m Chuck D, and we want you to check out some of the new up-and-coming rappers that’s ready to rock the house.

FLAVOR FLAV: That’s right. Check this out, boy.

(SOUNDBITE OF SALT-N-PEPA SONG, “PUSH IT! (TMW REMIX)”)

SUMMERS: The pilot finally aired on August 6, 1988, and the ratings were decisive.

CHANEY: The ratings point was, like, a nine or a 10. And to put that into context, a network thing at that time would have been, like, a 2.0. Like, it was off-the-charts immediate high interest.

SUMMERS: The producers didn’t look back. They got a host, the graffiti artist and renaissance man Fab 5 Freddy, and made it a weekly show. But they didn’t lose the experimental style.

MOSES EDINBOROUGH: We had a saying – [expletive] continuity and break all the rules. That was the attitude.

SUMMERS: Moses Edinborough was a director and producer on the show.

EDINBOROUGH: Fab 5 Freddy was the host. He didn’t want to be in the studio like the regular MTV DJs. He wanted to be on the ground where it’s happening, and that was unique at the time for television.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “YO! MTV RAPS”)

FAB 5 FREDDY: Yeah. Welcome back to “Yo! MTV Raps.” I’m still cold cooling (ph) in Cali with N.W.A. and my man Eazy-E, and we still in Compton at a – at the…

EDINBOROUGH: We would try our best to be just, like, a fly on the wall. If we went out to the West Coast and hung out with N.W.A., we weren’t trying to change them or have them do anything that they wouldn’t have already done. We just wanted to be a part of their environment.

SUMMERS: Eventually, “Yo! MTV Raps” did become a daily show in a studio, airing in the afternoons right as kids got off school – a televised artery into national teen culture.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “YO! MTV RAPS”)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: On “Yo! MTV Raps” live. You know what I’m saying? You know what I’m saying? We don’t do this nowhere else but here. You know what I’m saying? So check me out though.

TOWNES: When “Yo! MTV” came out and I went to my family reunion, there was somebody with a haircut just like mine. There was somebody with sneakers just like mine.

SUMMERS: That’s DJ Jazzy Jeff again.

TOWNES: Like, this is making the playing field completely even now because you didn’t have something special in New York that you couldn’t have in Virginia now. And to me, all of that started with MTV.

SUMMERS: “Yo! MTV Raps” would be on the air for the next seven years until August 1995 after the network had started to deemphasize music videos. For DJ Jazzy Jeff, those years were crucial for the legitimization of hip-hop, the future of which had felt so uncertain when he’d helped shoot that pilot episode in 1988.

TOWNES: I always feel like that time was a very pivotal moment in hip-hop that – it could have fell on either side of the coin. And companies were trying to figure out, do I need to get into the hip-hop business, you know? Is this something that’s even going to be here in the next three, four years? And then I remember when you started to say – you know what? – I think we’re OK. I think we’re going to be here.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SUMMERS: Tomorrow, we’ll continue our series celebrating 50 years of hip-hop. We’re headed to Atlanta circa 2003 to see the birth of trap music.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

Copyright © 2023 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.