H2: An End Of An Era (Part 2 of 3)
June 07, 2017
My start on WNUR 89.3 FM in Chicago takes us back to Jello, whom I mentioned in Part 1. Jello eventually graduated from the University of Illinois and moved back to the Chicago suburbs. Not long after that, he started a Hip Hop show called In The AM on WNUR, which gave the station two rap shows. If memory serves, the show featured Jello and J-Bird on the mic with DJ 33 1/3 as their DJ, and it also featured Shawn "Boogie" Boyd, who was the station's program director, and he was also the one that brought the show to the station. I think I only went to In The AM a couple times at most, and I don't remember getting on the mic to help host there. I don't even recall how long they lasted before I was asked to fill in for a night. The fact that I remember so little about these early radio experiences helps to confirm the fact that it wasn't something I was thinking too much about.
In any event, when Shawn "Boogie" Boyd asked if I would do the show with him for one evening because Jello was unavailable, I was initially surprised, but at the same time, it did make sense. I had plenty of music and I was known by many people on the scene for actively pursuing the newest Hip Hop, from the popular to the most obscure, from coast to coast, as well as branching out to places like Canada and the U.K. to explore their scenes. And I loved to talk in great detail about the artists, the songs, and how those songs were made. Presenting that live on the radio seemed easy enough. So I went in and did that first night and had a great time. I remember being sad thinking that I wouldn't be able to do it again.
But, for some reason still unknown to me, Jello never came back, and I was able to do that radio show for seven years — eventually naming it Time Travel — until I moved to Minneapolis to work for Rhymesayers. It's amazing how much support that show got, from the listeners, local artists, international artists, the list goes on. To this day, 15 years after that show ended, I still semi-regularly get messages from people telling me how important or influential that show was to them. Additionally, the amount of people who tell me that Time Travel was either their entry point to Hip Hop or how they learned about another side to it beyond mainstream radio, or artists who tell me that they became inspired to MC based on what I played on that show, all blows my mind. That show did, and still does, have monumental meaning to me.
Of all the things about leaving the Chicago area, after being there for so long, three things stood out: Missing my family was certainly one of them. A second thing was the daunting idea of trying to restart my career in a whole new scene after finally just starting to really get fully embraced in Chicago — it was a hard scene to get people to accept you as a part of it, particularly with me being a "suburban outsider." And the third thing was giving up the Time Travel radio program. Right around the time I was asked to take a job at Rhymesayers and move to Minneapolis, I was going through one of the hardest times in my life up to that point, and that radio show was indeed my therapy. But I knew, or at least I believed, that the move to Minneapolis was the next logical evolution to really enhance my life, so I made the move.
It turned out I was 100 percent correct, and even better yet, my location-specific concern about moving here proved to be a non-issue. Immediately upon moving to Minneapolis, I was embraced. I was invited to start DJing at some of the key venues and functions of the time, such as The Dinkytowner, Loring Pasta Bar, King & I, Gastof's, 7th Street Entry, etc. And Siddiq invited me to help co-host RSE Radio on KFAI with him and Buck KAC. Additionally, I would DJ live on the air and was responsible for scheduling a rotation of local DJs to be a part of the show. And while I enjoyed doing all of that and appreciated the opportunity, it wasn't nearly the same as Time Travel.
Then, in 2005, someone I had crossed paths with in a few different aspects in town reached out to me with some information. It was Jan. 18, 2005, that Mandy Cox sent me an email telling me that there was going to be a new radio station debuting soon, and that they were looking to add a Hip Hop radio show to their programming. She told me that she had told the program and music directors about my history with Time Travel, as well as some of my other background in music, and they wanted to know if I would submit a demo. That was a very exciting email to get! Minneapolis had already enhanced my life so much in nearly every way possible, and now I had the chance to get my own radio show. Not only that, there was a particular part of her email that convinced me that getting this show was my destiny. She listed the station's frequency: 89.3 FM, the same exact dial number as WNUR. I thought there was no way I wasn't going to get that job.
However, I wasn't content to leave it up to fate. I read every detail of Mandy's short email over and over. I did what little research on the company that I could, and I used what I found to put together a demo that I thought was a homerun hit. I've always loved music for what it is. I don't care about labeling or limiting things, though I did get sucked into some of that mentality in the 1990s with the Underground vs Mainstream debates. But on Time Travel, I still played an extremely wide range of artists. My only real rule was to play what I didn't hear other radio shows and DJs playing, and that applied to artists as well as songs. So, I largely avoided what was popular and largely focused on album cuts, B-sides and demos. However, for my initial demo for The Current, I wanted to make them feel the show had potential to have a huge audience. I figured I could slowly sneak in more rare stuff over time if I got the job. So, I submitted a demo to Steve Nelson, The Current's program director at the time, with songs by Beastie Boys, Outkast, Cee-Lo, A Tribe Called Quest, Public Enemy, The Roots, Nas, Pharcyde, Run-DMC, The Fugees, Jay-Z, Digable Planets, De La Soul, Jurassic Five, and so on. And I threw in some less-popular or non-recent things, as well as some local music, all for good measure too, such as Eyedea & Abilities, Carnage, Mele Mel & The Furious Five, Saul Williams, Odd Jobs, Cold Crush Brothers, etc. As far as the more popular list of artists, it was all stuff that I enjoyed, but it was mostly songs that I usually avoided playing on the radio and in my DJ sets because everyone played them. I just knew I had the job and was already celebrating in my mind. So imagine my surprise when I got an email back saying they liked the demo but were hoping for something more adventurous and less obvious. It is likely the only time in my life I've been called too mainstream … I could only shake my head and laugh at myself. I suppose I should have guessed as much when in my first email exchange with Steve Nelson, he made a mention of Ultramagnetic MCs, as well as him being impressed with the Time Travel playlists I had sent him.
In any event, I submitted a new demo and got the job, launching my show on March 19, 2005, naming it Redefinition Radio. I considered it a gift from the universe being that the show ran from 11 p.m. to midnight, so when that first show ended, it was March 20 — my birthday. As for the playlist for that first night, I played songs from Erule, Aceyalone, Busdriver, Insight, Edan, Uptown ("Dope On Plastic"), Cecil Otter, Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, Medusa, Spectrum City and more. That approach became the basic blueprint for what Redefinition Radio would be, which I envisioned as a remix version of Time Travel. In some ways, Redefinition Radio was more accessible, but in other ways it was more radical, if I may be so dramatic.
One thing is absolutely certain, and that is The Current gave me free reign to do whatever I wanted with Redefinition Radio. Admittedly, sometimes I came up with wild ideas that I thought for sure were going to warrant a concerned email from them — but nope, not once. In fact, it was generally my wildest ideas or more obscure artists that I would get positive emails from the program and music directors about, as well as what wound up sparking conversations with other on-air hosts on some occasions, such as Bill Deville, Mark Wheat, Barb Abney, and Maria Lucia, as they commented positively on the music I was playing. It was a constant reminder of how the people at the station were first and foremost music lovers. That in mind, every once in a while someone at the station would ask me if I would play a certain artist or song on my next show, and most often the requests were artists from the 1980s or early 1990s that weren't the obvious choices; a particular request for more Mantronix comes to mind, though I forgot who asked me.
However, some of the most memorable staff feedback on Redefinition Radio usually came from Derrick "Delite" Stevens, who is not only a long-time integral part of The Current, but also a pioneer of the local Hip Hop scene. Most often his feedback was when I played songs from the early 1980s, circa 1980-1982, a time where it unfortunately seems most Hip Hop fans, DJs, and even those who call themselves experts or historians, largely tend to forget about or highly neglect. I remember a few emails Derrick sent thanking me for playing Sweet Gee, Crash Crew, Lovebug Starski, Treacherous Three and a few others. While I always try to be conscious of playing artists from that era because it is so under-represented, sometimes because it is so sonically different than every era after it, at times I would start to neglect it myself, but occasionally Derrick's emails would remind me to keep those sounds in the mix. That in mind, perhaps a little-known fact, but Redefinition Radio was a pre-recorded program, so I would submit all the music and then record the vocal breaks in a studio at the station a few days before the show aired. From there, Derrick "Delite" Stevens would pull it all together for radio broadcast. He was also behind producing some of the show's promos, as well as encouraging me to produce some of my own, including the one attached to this story (at top), which I'm still pretty proud of creating. He was an important part of how the show sounded, but working in the background, so I'm not sure how many people are aware of that.
All of this said, I loved Time Travel* and Redefinition Radio for different reasons, some of which are very different, so it's hard to pick a favorite. But, undoubtedly, one of my absolute favorite things about both shows is the feedback I got, and still continue to get, from listeners of those shows who share the stories of what the shows meant to them. You have no idea how powerful those stories you share with me have been for me as I've tried to keep focused on doing this work in a world that continually gets more difficult to navigate in so many ways. Both shows are important milestones in my life, and they both led to my current radio show, H2. As for Redefinition Radio, in January of 2013, nearly exactly eight years to the day after the email that led to the show's inception, I started to have discussions with the station about the status of the show and what the future direction should be, which leads us to our final chapter…
Look for Part 3 of 3 from Kevin Beacham next week, right here at thecurrent.org.
*I started a Time Travel Soundcloud page a while back to share memories. I've only posted a few things, but I'm going to soon get more active, posting rare Freestyles, demos, exclusives songs and remixes made just for the show, and more! Tune In:
Stay connected with Kevin
A note from The Current's Program Director Jim McGuinn:
Like thousands of fans who have listened both to H2 and to Redefinition Radio over the past dozen years, we're sad that Kevin Beacham and Brent "Siddiq" Sayers have decided to stop hosting The Current's H2 radio show. Having Kevin and Siddiq on our airwaves every week has been a thrill and an honor. Their knowledge of hip hop (and funk, soul and a whole lotta other music) is deep and encyclopedic, and listening to H2 was like dropping in on two passionate, funny, smart musicheads sharing a conversation and musical discoveries across the radio dial. We will miss them and their show(s), but they will always be part of The Current family.
So what does this mean for The Current and hip hop? We don't exactly know yet, but we hope it's an opportunity to look at what we do and try to figure out the best way to incorporate the music into the station, and the station into the music. With that in mind, if you've got thoughts on it, from what we should play (or shouldn't), to how we can best serve the music and audience, we'd love to hear from you — let us know via the form below.
Thanks again to Kevin and Siddiq for letting The Current host one of the best hip hop shows on the planet, and together let's celebrate the next month of H2 episodes, Wednesdays, 10 to 11 p.m.
Hip Hop on The Current: Your Input
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