Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Popular Culture
Episode: John Klaess, "Breaks in the Air: The Birth of Rap Radio in New York City" (Duke UP, 2022)
Description: In Breaks in the Air: The Birth of Rap Radio in New York City (Duke UP, 2022), John Klaess tells the story of rap's emergence on New York City's airwaves by examining how artists and broadcasters adapted hip hop's performance culture to radio. Initially, artists and DJs brought their live practice to radio by buying time on low-bandwidth community stations and building new communities around their shows. Later, stations owned by New York's African American elite, such as WBLS, reluctantly began airing rap even as they pursued a sound rooted in respectability, urban sophistication, and polish. At the same time, la...