Turn your radio dial to Chicago’s commercial FM stations such as WGCI or B96, and you’ll hear bucketloads of slick, uber-commercial rap. Rap’s been big business for years, the tent pole of ratings powerhouse ‘GCI and top-rated broadcast behemoths across the country.
Hard to believe, then, that just two short decades ago, the only hip-hop music heard on local airwaves came from a low-power college station, the University of Chicago’s WHPK-FM 88.5. Broadcasting — well, narrowcasting, really — from its cramped 57th Street headquarters in Hyde Park, ‘HPK’s modest signal could be picked up solely on the South Side, and not always clearly even there. Yet the influence that ‘HPK’s continuous rap programming has exerted on Chicago’s homegrown hip-hop scene, since its 1984 debut, is immeasurable.
You’d be hard-pressed to find any current South Side MCs, producers or deejays who didn’t grow up obsessively taping WHPK’s weekly shows, including those of the legendary JP Chill, the Friday night deejay who in 2006 marks his 20th consecutive year at ‘HPK — certainly one of the longest-running (if not the longest-running, period) hip-hop radio shows in the country — or spend untold hours perfecting their skills in hopes of making their own debut on WHPK.
The station’s even been immortalized by Chicago native Common. Conscious rap’s noted leading light, then known as Common Sense, used to drop by the station — “to play tapes and freestyle on the air, before he released any records,” as JP Chill remembers. Later, Common paid tribute to WHPK on “Nuthin’ To Do,” a track from his classic album “Resurrection”: “Then ‘HPK was the only station that would [expletive] with rap.”
“‘HPK has had a much greater influence on this city than college radio usually does,” observes aspiring Chicago MC Anonymous. “WHPK has been monumental in raising the talent level on the scene, and in building Chicago hip-hop as a whole.”
“I’d listen to JP Chill at my grandparents’ when I was a kid — I remember moving the radio all over the apartment, attaching wire hangers to it, anything to strengthen the signal,” recalls Foster Garvin, who years later would go on to co-host “Time Travel,” a noted hip-hop show on Northwestern University’s WNUR-FM 89.3 that bowed in 1995.
Until now, WHPK’s low-power 100-watt signal has limited its broadcast reach to the South Side and environs, circumscribing most of its immediate influence within that geographical area. But that could be changing by this summer, when a long-delayed move to online streaming is expected to take place. Although some of this article’s interviewees were skeptical, taking a we’ll-believe-it-when-we-see-it stance, station manager Krista Christophe assures that “we’ve ordered the computers and the server. We’ll probably be streaming in late May or early June.”
`CTA Radio’
It’s another Wednesday night at WHPK central, a compact second-floor studio in the U. of C.’s Gothic-spired, century-old Mandel Hall, and another long-running and popular weekly hip-hop show is on the air. It’s gone by several names, but the current moniker, “CTA Radio,” has been in place since early in the millennium.
There are Wednesday nights at ‘HPK when you can’t get in the door during the show’s 9 p.m. to midnight run time. “CTA Radio” typically draws a sizable, lively contingent of local rappers, beatmakers and deejays, all come to seek airplay for a new song — which may be the only significant airtime they’ll ever receive — network with colleagues, or maybe join in an on-air freestyle session. And ‘HPK’s bite-size control room and attached music library — which, while hardly capacious itself, manages to house an estimated 30,000-plus vinyl LPs and CDs from floor to ceiling — can scarcely contain them all.
This particular Wednesday is comparatively quiet, but the handful of Chicago MCs, producers and indie-label entrepreneurs here are navigating the scene like seasoned mariners. “A peaceful social gathering,” pronounces Nick, a young graffiti writer and frequent visitor who lives nearby. As he speaks, local rapper Mose the Third’s latest self-released CD is being aired on “CTA Radio.”
Mose himself remarks that he’s been an ‘HPK listener since the mid-’90s.
Inside WHPK’s control room are “CTA Radio” hosts and prominent local hip-hop figures Pugs Atomz, Kevin Maxey and Thaione Davis. (Atomz and Davis are independent rappers, as is temporarily absent co-host Cos G, who’s lending support to local producers in a beat battle at a downtown club; he’s expected shortly). They periodically punctuate the flow of music with chat both humorous and topical — “We’re about hip-hop politics and culture,” says Davis — but spend most of the three hours spinning their signature, emphatically egalitarian blend of underground and mainstream rap.
“It’s about playing whatever we want, and having the freedom to be broad-based,” Cos will say later, offering as example, “We’ll do Mos Def and Three 6 Mafia in the same rotation.” (The former is a cerebral East Coast m.c., the latter a Southern crew who made their bones celebrating hardcore sex, drugs and violence before winning this year’s Academy Award for Best Original Song, “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.”)
No boundaries
“We play music without boundaries,” proclaims Maxey, a deejay for nine years. Those expecting a stereotypical college-radio approach — obscurity for obscurity’s sake — are, he warns, in for a shock: “For us, the music doesn’t have to be underground. If it’s a good commercial song, we’ll play it — that’s why we say our show is strong medicine.”
A major portion of the show’s playlist each Wednesday is, of course, devoted to undiscovered, up-and-coming homegrown artists. And virtually all of them — including the on-air hosts — were tuning in WHPK’s regularly scheduled hip-hop shows as soon as they were old enough to turn a radio dial.
One of these up-and-comers, this particular evening, is aforementioned MC Anonymous, who’s dropped in with fellow rapper Awdazcate. As Anonymous reflects on ‘HPK’s continuing legacy, his companion (whose name is pronounced “audacity”) has already made the acquaintance of Kel-el and L.A. Salle — enterprising Aurora-based rappers and beatmakers with a label called State St. Recordings — and is critiquing Chicago-bred superstar Kanye West’s freshly minted take on the “Mission: Impossible” theme, which is unspooling over “CTA Radio’s” airwaves. “Kanye needs new drums,” Awdazcate says flatly. “Quote me on that.”
Over the years, the reach of ‘HPK’s hip-hop programs (which have also included a Saturday programming block, sometimes hosted at present by producer Memo of renowned local hip-hop collective Molemen) has at times exceeded its limited broadcast area. MC Fatnice, a transplanted Chicago native who now raps for a Philadelphia crew known as 84, says he not only was raised, like his peers, on JP Chill’s broadcast, he continued to listen to and talk up the show even after moving to Philly, thanks to tapes regularly sent by his rapper cousin Infinito 2017, a respected independent Chicago-raised MC and visual artist.
“Chicago hip-hop wouldn’t be anything without ‘HPK,” declares Fatnice. Infinito concurs, noting, “JP Chill was the first person who looked out for me in Chicago.”
On a recent Friday night, Chill is in his customary spot, manning the WHPK control room from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. The music, though, is being patched in from the library, where a guest turntablist, Chicago’s DJ 3rd Rail, has set up his equipment and is mixing live on the air; later, Chill will turn the mic over to a procession of freestyling local MCs, including Pugs Atomz, Mass Hysteria’s Gee Field and Mike Treese, LaDee Flipside, Booda Blaou and Race.
Former statistics major
Chill, who was born John Preston Schauer and hails from Milwaukee, came to the U. of C. in 1982 as a freshman statistics major. The future deejay had been a fan of “bad pop radio,” he acknowledges with a grin, until his younger brothers converted him to such pioneering hip-hop artists as Run-DMC and Grandmaster Flash. But because the early-’80s urban airwaves were dominated by Chicago’s indigenous dance style, house music, he fed his nascent rap jones listening to WHPK’s first hip-hop deejay, K-ill (Ken Wissoker).
Wissoker, now the editorial director of Duke University Press, says his seminal radio show began as a post-punk showcase, then segued to hip-hop via dance-leaning artists such as New Order, who had techno elements in common with intriguing early electro-rap acts such as Soul Sonic Force. “Hip-hop was new for everyone then,” says Wissoker, whose air slot, which he co-hosted with future music-industry executive Patrick Moxey, went all-rap in 1984. “You couldn’t buy it in Chicago; I had to go to a deejay store in New York to get the singles.”
Concurrently, JP was purchasing his own hip-hop records on trips back to Milwaukee, and, once home in Chicago again, would call K-ill’s program to request his favorite new tracks. “The people at WHPK began to know me as someone who was knowledgeable about the music,” JP recalls. So much so, in fact, that JP began regularly filling in hip-hop air shifts, landing his own midweek show in 1986.
And JP Chill has never looked back — not for long, anyway. He says he’d considered quitting in the mid-’90s, “when gangsta rap took over from [the socio-politically relevant likes of] A Tribe Called Quest, Public Enemy, De La Soul and Ultramagnetic MC’s. [Gangsta acts such as] Compton’s Most Wanted and other throwaway groups just took themselves too seriously, unlike early N.W.A., which while violent and profane, was pretty funny.”
Unique, fresh
But the music kept evolving, Chill stayed on, and he continues to hold down Friday nights at ‘HPK. “I play stuff you won’t hear everywhere else,” he says, “about 80 percent of it new.” Chill’s especially keen on fresh tracks by under-the-radar Chicago artists Primeridian, Psalm One, Longshot, the Pacifics, Ang 13, and the enigmatic Thigahmahjiggee.
Providing exposure for unknown hometown acts remains a continuing, driving force for the hosts of “CTA Radio” as well.
“The whole thing with our show is to give everybody a chance,” says Atomz. “You hear your track played on the air, and you get some feedback. We may not play it every week after that, but at least you get that one shot.”
“There’s a generation behind us, listening to us,” stresses Davis. “We have an obligation to give them something that’s not typical mainstream radio.”
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JP Chill’s WHPK playlists then and now
April 8, 1987
Eric B & Rakim: “Eric B Is President”
Schooly D: “PSK, What Does It Mean”
Skinny Boys: “Rock Box”
Ill Chief Rockers: “I Gotta Rock”
DFC vs South Side Crew: “Unreleased”
Mantronix: “Needle To the Groove”
Glamor Girls: “Oh Veronica”
MC Dollar Bill: “Almighty 7”
Jungle Bros: “Jimbrowski”
LL Cool J: “I’m Bad”
Steady B: “Yo Mutha”
MC Breeze: “Discombobulatorbubulator”
Royal Ron & Pimp Pretty: “PSK Rock the B-boy Stance”
Stetsasonic: “Go Stetsa I”
Fresh Force: “All Hail the Drums”
Run-DMC: “Proud To Be Black”
Ramellzee vs K-Rob: “Beat bop”
May 5, 2006
Longshot & Psalm One: “MoveOmni”
Smoke With MeKaze & 9th Wonder: “Blood Thicker Than Oil”
Raydar Ellis: “Graffiti Rock”
Eric B & Rakim: “Juice”
Jin: “Top 5”
Ghostface Killah: “Jellyfish”
Redman, Ghostface Killah, Ludacris: “Future Thugs”
Lupe Fiasco: “Pens & Needles”
Rhymefest: “The Stick”
Ken Brown featuring Ken Starr: “Hennessey Pt I”
Mass Hysteria featuring Juice: “Fall Out”
Iomos Marad: “The Illusion”
Roxanne Shante: “Biz Beat”
Nicolay: “Fantastic”
Ugly Duckling: “Smack”
Akbar: “Too Divine”
Gilead 7: “Art Institute”
