Yo, there was no YouTube back then
Producer brought rap into mainstream with MTV show
If video killed the radio star, then in 1988 it also helped create the rap star.
That was the year an MTV producer named Peter Dougherty persuaded his higher-ups to put a show about hip hop onto the airwaves. That show, dubbed Yo! MTV Raps, would expose a mainstream American audience to urban music and make it possible for some of the iconic images of rap to be born.
From the Mad Max-inspired chaos of Tupac’s “California Love” to the Spike Lee-directed “Fight the Power” by Public Enemy to the puerile satire of Eminem’s “My Name Is,” the best rap videos have often been just as important as the music, and it all became possible thanks to Dougherty, who died on Oct. 12 at age 59.
“When I really started to embrace hip-hop music, there was Wu-Tang Clan,” said Montreal-based rapper Annakin Slayd. “They were all about the visuals and their music videos were so cool, with rappers on chess boards and kung fu and all that stuff. I think Wu-Tang would probably owe a lot of gratitude to people like Dougherty who put rap videos out there.”
Dougherty directed some videos himself, including the Beastie Boys’ “Hold It Now, Hit It” and the Pogues’ popular anti-Christmas song “Fairytale of New York.”
Tony Young, better known as Master T, is a former MuchMusic VJ who hosted the hip-hop-oriented show RapCity. He used to catch Yo! MTV Raps when he’d visit his father in New York. “It was like, ‘Wow, this is just the coolest thing,’ ” he said. “Every big-name rap artist was on there. You had to be. It’s where the whole video culture was born for hip-hop music. It was one thing to have a street-credible cassette tape, but the fact that you attached one single to a video, it made record labels take notice as well.”
The show’s first episode in 1988 started with an obscure rapper named the Fresh Prince (he would go on to some success in acting under his real name of Will Smith). It also included major acts such as Run DMC and Public Enemy. Over the years, the show would continue introducing rap stars to a national, largely white audience that hip hop hadn’t previously had access to.
“MTV was really all over everything that kids were talking about,” said Peter Rosenberg, a DJ at New York’s hip-hop radio station Hot 97. “They really figured out that kids of all demographics were into hip hop.”
For the past decade, MTV has been more concerned with keeping audiences caught up with the Kardashians and less with breaking new artists through music videos. Instead, curious music fans go to YouTube.
While that might be a good thing for artists who don’t have the backing of a major label, it does mean that the hip-hop scene has become more fractured, without someone like Yo! MTV Rapshost Fab 5 Freddy guiding them through the latest artists.
“One thing that really bothers me is that people really emphasize videos so much, but the video experience is so different (now),” said Rosenberg. “If you don’t seek out videos from an artist, then how often will you see videos from a random artist?
“That was the beauty of MTV. You trusted their brand and so you tuned in and then you got put onto this really great stuff. That doesn’t exist now.”