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With all due respect to WMUC’s Soul Controllers (“Air Waived”‘ 11/12), but here are two additional facts to add to this area’s FM radio lore; neither college nor commercial radio has claim on being the first or the longest. The area’s first weekly rap radio program was heard on now-defunct WDCU 90.1. It aired during the mid-’80s on Saturday afternoons for about a year, and was hosted by Frank-Ski. Though the music featured on Ski’s program was more commercially oriented, it was the first rap program to employ the use of DJ turntable skills.
Longest-running program honors go to WPFW 89.3, whose 50,000 watts of power aired The B-Side on Thursday nights from 1987 through 1995—a program that I had the pleasure of hosting. Airing during rap radio’s truest doldrums period, The B-Side, like an oasis in the desert, premiered a good five years before the Soul Controllers’ debut.
Takoma Park, Md.