Here’s a pair of videos spotlighting WPRB’s vibrant hip-hop culture circa 1992. Just in time for the holidays with the Raw Deal / Club Krush / Vibes & Vapors completist in mind! Great shots of WPRB’s old studios in Holder Hall, the vinyl library, and audio consoles of yore. Thanks to Jon Solomon for the tip on these vids!
Pictured: WPRB’s trophy wax Naughty by Nature 12″s
With thanks to WPRB History’s newest digital archivist Joan Hsiao, we present two recently digitized drop-ins from the station’s storied era of Thursday night hip-hop shows (The Raw Deal, Vibes & Vapors, Club Krush, etc.)
First up, this drop from Jeru the Damaja from the Vibes & Vapors era.
And then from the Raw Deal, we present Treach from Naughty by Nature.
And finally, just because it’s an easy excuse to post a great song, here’s the late, great Tony D, who was a contributor to all of the above mentioned shows, as well as a WPRB DJ in his own right. “Check the Elevation” is a critical slice of local hip-hop history.
Here’s a station ID from the Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA (aka Prince Rakeem) recorded for WPRB’s “The Raw Deal” sometime in the early 1990s.
By Sean Murphy ’94 [photo: Nicole Scheller]
I’m definitely not the first, and I hope I’m not the last, to be able to say that I majored in WPRB. Officially, I graduated with a degree in Politics, but my independent work and thesis focused on regulatory processes at the Federal Communications Commission. And that work resulted from many long and late nights spent playing and talking about records and bands and radio and what it meant to be non-profit, commercial, and independent all at the same time. From the music to the management lessons to the friendships, my WPRB experiences still reverberate nearly 25 years later.
I arrived at the basement of Holder Hall’s 11th entry in September 1990. I had some idea of what I might be getting into, as I’d spent the previous spring and summer interning at WMBR, 88.1 Cambridge, MA (MIT’s radio station). WPRB was different, from the rigidity of the program logs and actual paid 30- and 60-second ads to the presence of the main record library right in the control room. But the most important similarity was that WPRB saw and understood itself as an institution at, but not of, the university.
