Word: hops
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...closely by its chief rival 'N Sync, another quintet of clean--but not too clean--cut guys with great dimples and abs whose eponymous debut was the year's fifth best seller. Both records, with their similar mixes of pop dance music spiked with just a touch of hip-hop edge, are still holding strong in the Top 40, as is 'N Sync's Christmas album...
...explain. I grew up in a suburb of Baltimore, listening to "urban contemporary"--a mix of soul, rhythm and blues, go go and hip hop. When I picked Harvard over Yale, Brown and Princeton, I thought that I had lucked out musically because it also meant I was choosing Boston over New Haven, Providence and Princeton. Boston was an urban center, I figured, and how could there be an urban center without "urban contemporary...
Instead I found Jam'n. Jam'n is the only powerful local station that is even tangentially devoted to R&B and hip hop. But Jam'n is listed as "Top 40", and it takes this classification literally. Each day, without fail, the station plays about 42 songs--Billboard's top 40 and two Bob Marley songs to add a little variety...
...predominantly black city, hip hop and soul music, when played over the radio, can have the effect of taking the difficulties of urban life and depersonalizing them, making them a communal problem rather than an individual failure. As Ulf Hannerz points out in his 1969 ethnography of Washington, D.C., Soulside, "the ghetto cultural apparatus also assures the members of the audience that their personal troubles are only reflections of the public issues of the community...
...meaningless pop and Baltazar's endless scams may appeal to the pre-teen and adolescent crowd, the continued existence of WILD (now in its 50th year) and the success of black-oriented programming on local college radio stations-such as this weekend's "history of hip hop" orgy on WHRB--indicate that there is a Boston market for serious urban music...