To look at the Classic Hits and AC charts now, you’d never know what a force R&B, dance, and early Hip-Hop had been in pop music from the mid-’80s to the early ’90s. From the moment KPWR (Power 106) Los Angeles signed on in 1986 with R&B and an increasing quotient of dance music, Top 40 sounded sterile by comparison. Within a few years, most CHR stations in any market with a significant Hispanic population was leaning “rhythmic.”
In the early ’90s, CHR became more driven by Hip-Hop than dance. Power 106, in particular, had picked up the mantle of influential, and now defunct AM, KDAY. Stations like Power and KMEL San Francisco shifted further to Hip-Hop as that music both became harder and more front-and-center in pop culture. The stations that stayed behind in CHR found it harder to compete with the real thing.
When Mainstream Top 40 imploded a few years later, being “too rhythmic” was an oft-identified culprit, but really, with both Michael Bolton and hair metal in the format’s recent DNA, there had been something to offend anybody. Quickly, many of the rhythmic hits of the late ’80s and early ’90s disappeared from the radio far more thoroughly than their counterparts before and after. And, yet, in the early ’00s, those CHRs that leaned rhythmic again quickly demolished some of their poppier-leaning competitors.
Today, a mainstream Classic Hits station in a heavily Hispanic market might be KONO San Antonio, where mid-to-late-’80s crossover hits like “Oh Sheila,” “Head to Toe,” or “Point of No Return” rotate as part of a broad mix, but it might also be KRTH (K-Earth 101) Los Angeles, where those particular titles play mostly as ’80s feature songs and the rhythmic component is negligible.
Even on WMIA (Magic 93.9) Miami, the station that first successfully brought bilingual AC to American airwaves, the English-language titles that separate it from other Classic Hits and Mainstream AC outlets are relatively few: Will to Power’s “Baby I Love Your Way/Free Bird” among the most-played titles; more Gloria Estefan & Miami Sound Machine than most markets.
For anybody wondering where that era of rhythmic crossover went, there are three recent format changes and modifications that will be of interest:
- Meruelo Media’s KDAY Los Angeles is leaning more on the ’80s and early ’90s, particularly as co-owned Power 106 leans more heavily on ’90s/early-’00s Hip-Hop.
- Co-owned KLLI (Cali 93.9) Los Angeles changed from Latin Urban on July 2 to a bilingual AC format, but with a more rhythmic focus than WMIA.
- WEPN (La Exitosa 98.7) New York recently modified its own bilingual AC to include more R&B, dance, and even freestyle — the dance subgenre loved intensely by those who remember its heyday, but less known to other generations. (La Exitosa’s programming braintrust includes Meruelo’s Pio Ferro.)
We spotlighted La Exitosa’s first year in January. WEPN still plays “Iris” and “Don’t Stop Believin’,” but it’s more influenced by the legacies of WQHT (Hot 97) as both a dance and early Hip-Hop outlet, and WKTU when that station brought dance music back to New York in the mid-’90s. At the same time, La Exitosa’s Spanish-language music evolved from Spanish AC titles to include more salsa and bachata.
Here is La Exitosa at 2:40 p.m., July 1:
- Lisa-Lisa & Cult Jam f/Full Force, “I Wonder if I Take You Home”
- Belinda Carlisle, “Heaven Is a Place on Earth”
- Blackout All Stars, “I Like It Like That”
- Tony! Toni! Tone!, “Feels Good”
- Michael Jackson, “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough”
- Kim Wilde, “You Keep Me Hangin’ On”
- Bruno Mars, “That’s What I Like”
- Jennifer Lopez, “Waiting for Tonight”
- Fruko y Sus Tesos, “El Preso” — 2000 salsa hit that still receives about 60 spins a week at Latin radio
- Whitney Houston, “How Will I Know”
- Roxette, “It Must Have Been Love”
- Rick Astley, “Never Gonna Give You Up”
- La India, “Dicen Que Soy”
- TKA, “You Are the One”
- Survivor, “Eye of the Tiger”
- Aaliyah, “Are You That Somebody”
- Noel, “Silent Morning”
In the 1980s, KDAY was an already great-sounding Urban AM that evolved over the decade to become the first showcase for West Coast Hip-Hop. When the brand returned on FM in the early ’00s, not that much of KDAY’s ’80s music resurfaced with it, in part because many of those songs never reached a truly broad audience. The throwback Hip-Hop library that took hold was more influenced by Power’s Hip-Hop era.
Currently, though, with Hip-Hop in flux, Power 106 is heavily reliant on library material from its dominant years, which could have given Meruelo two relatively similar stations. Now, the two stations have some early-’90s overlap, but KDAY is also drawing a lot more on Hip-Hop’s first radio decade (and thus its own legacy). Here’s KDAY July 2 just before 4 p.m., with “Afternoon Ride” host Cici Valencia:
- Apollonia 6, “Sex Shooter”
- Roger, “So Ruff, So Tuff”
- Adina Howard, “Freak Like Me”
- Sir Mix-a-Lot, “Baby Got Back”
- Stevie B, “Party Your Body”
- Kid ’N’ Play, “Gettin’ Funky”
- Tony! Toni! Tone!, “Feels Good”
- Cypress Hill, “Insane in the Brain”
- Run-D.M.C., “You Be Illin’”
- Technotronic, “Pump Up the Jam”
- Dr. Dre, “Keep Their Heads Ringin’”
- En Vogue, “My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It)”
- Eazy-E, “Boyz-n-the-Hood”
- Ronnie Hudson, “West Coast Pop Lock” — the track powering 2pac’s “California Love”
- Mista Grimm, “Indo Smoke”
- Heavy D, “Nuttin’ but Love”
Cali 93.9 is about halfway between WMIA and WEPN or KDAY; it’s poppier than those stations but informed by them. (It is, for instance, playing “When I Hear Music” by Debbie Deb.) The Spanish-language titles are different from other versions of the format for including some early- ’00s reggaeton. Here’s Cali 93.9 on July 3, its second day, at 2 p.m.:
- Madonna, “Into the Groove”
- Ini Kamoze, “Here Comes the Hotstepper”
- Beyoncé, “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)”
- Baby Ranks & Daddy Yankee, “Mayor Que Yo” — 2005 hit from reggaeton’s first moment of dominance
- New Edition, “Cool It Now”
- Corona, “The Rhythm of the Night”
- Prince, “Kiss”
- Elvis Crespo, “Suavamente”
- En Vogue, “My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It)”
- Paula Abdul, “Straight Up”
- Goo Goo Dolls, “Iris”
- Blackstreet, “No Diggity” — with the Queen Pen rap
- Survivor, “Eye of the Tiger”
