From Power 99 DJ, Cosmic Kev … (jacked from 215hiphop.com)

215: Mentioning how hip hop has such a huge generation gap now when do you think old school hip hop will have its on dial on FM radio? Now it’s either very young (Power 99) to very old (WDAS.)

Kev: Well it’s already on satellite but as far as Urban AC (Adult Contemporary) stations go they feel like rap is a young audience, which it is. They feel that old school rap is also still for the younger generation. They gotta understand that the average 35-40yr old was brought up on rap. They may have been exposed to the Temptations & Barry White but they were brought up on Kurtis Blow, the Melly Mels, and even the EPMDs. Urban AC’s are afraid to touch it because to them it’s still just rap. Where the problem is that when they hear of old school rap and an audience of 30-40yr olds, they don’t think that exists. They think that age demographic doesn’t want to hear rap anymore. I personally don’t think that’s true. I think it could happen on FM, someday, we’ll see.

That’s pretty much exactly what I think. While I would argue that rap is still a young man’s game, there is a growing body of people who came of age listening to it, who are now in the neighborhood of 40 years old. While I’m not exactly sure whether there could be an FM radio station that plays strictly classic hip-hop, I don’t think that Adult Contemporary stations should stay away from it. But there are whole sounds and movements that, as far as you might know from listening to the radio, never existed. 21 years ago, LL spoke for many of us when he said he couldn’t live without his radio. Seems that if we had to depend on the broadcast stations to hear that song, we’d have to.