EXCLUSIVES

Words by Erez Reuveni
December 2003

It was just another day in Los Angeles. The year was 1988, and Mike Nardone, a hip hop junkie attending Loyola Marymount University, bumped into Loyola's radio station manager, who offered him a slot as DJ. Nardone, having done a show in high school, jumped at the opportunity. Calling his show We Came From Beyond, Nardone embarked on a 15 year odyssey that has helped him become one of the most influential hip hop radio DJs in the country. Nardone's show, still playing on KXLU in Los Angeles, helped jumpstart the careers of such respected acts as Cypress Hill, Blackalicious, Dilated Peoples, and Jurassic Five.

Always the protector of the underground, Nardone recently released his second compilation, We Came From Beyond Volume 2, a showcase of underground talent. Featuring such hip hop stalwarts as Wildchild, J-Live, Medaphoar, and the People Under the Stairs, the album is a testament to the numerous performers Nardone provides exposure to on his show. For Nardone, the underground is anything that doesn't have mass appeal. "The underground is the thing that keeps everything moving," says Nardone. "Pop music is what it is, and it has its place, but the underground is where new ideas come from. Ideas that get built upon or stolen."

While the underground can be called hip hop's factory of innovation, it is the genre's mainstream counterpart that provides hip hop with its exposure. In 2002, hip hop and R&B surpassed rock as the top selling genre in the United States. Performers like Nelly, Ja-Rule, and Jay-Z provide the industry with album sales and a public face. But the hip hop mainstream, like any other musical mainstream, favors streamlined profits over quality. Introspective narratives and clever rhyme structures are replaced with misogynistic braggadocio and asinine references to platinum chains, expensive cars, and diamond rings. Hip hop's historical primacy as a medium for expressing frustration and conquests of adversity has turned into a mainstream orgy of hedonism, gratuitous excess, and non-stop "ice."

While Nardone may prefer the intelligence of the underground, he sees a place for mainstream hip hop. "I don't think it's hurting the culture of hip hop," he remarks. "It exposes it. I mean, it's still in its infancy. Whether the Nellys and Ja-Rules of the world are necessarily a bad thing will only be judged in 10 to 15 years. It takes time to see if something outlasts the test of time."

Perhaps the main reason mainstream hip hop is inundated with throw away hits is because of the amalgamation of the radio industry into a handful of corporations. Over the past decade, companies like Clear Channel Communications and Infinity Radio have increased their holdings of radio stations at an exponential rate. While the combined radio holdings of the largest corporations may not form a majority of all radio stations, the companies control key metropolitan markets, like New York and Los Angeles, thus dictating the diversity of music radio listeners in those markets are exposed to. These companies continue their grabs for market share, acquiring radio stations not just in coastal metropolitan areas, but on the American interior as well.

In terms of underground hip hop, already marginalized by the radio, the corporate radio titans minimize any exposure underground groups can get. Only top 40 hits from hip hop acts that sell well make it into a typical radio discography. "It squeezes out records that might have a chance," laments Nardone. "Airtime can make a difference for those groups. Even major label groups like Jurassic 5 of The Roots get squeezed out of the equation, because there's not enough room on the play list".

One alternative available to underground acts is self-promotion through the Internet. Hundreds of Internet-based radio stations now provide an alternative to corporate monopolization of the airwaves. And satellite radio companies like Sirius are diversifying the programming available to those who wish to pay a monthly subscription fee. But perhaps the best way for underground artists to market themselves is through online distribution of their music.

Many artists already sell their music on their own web sites. Industry heavyweights like Chuck D have run their own web sites for years, hoping to overthrow the corporate yoke. But according to Nardone, underground artists who distribute music online face a difficult choice: exposure at the cost of profits. "5000 downloads of a record that will sell 20000 really hurts," he says. "But 5000 of a 50 cent record doesn't matter much. Downloads have hurt a lot of independent artists, at least in the hip hop world, more than anyone's realized. You can argue that taking a song from a Universal or a Sony is justified because they rip off artists anyway, but at the end of the day, you're hurting the artists. I mean, come on, it's a dollar a song."

Nardone sees many of the recording industry's problems as a product of their own hubris. "It's short sightedness," he intones. "They didn't look into the future with what could happen with burning CDs and the Internet, especially now that so many people are going broadband. And, when corporations began buying record companies, it ceased to be about the artistry and the creativity. It became all about the bottom line and making quarterly profits, and that hurt. Now it's an accountant deciding an artist's future instead of someone in a creative position."

Despite his dislike of illegal downloads, Nardone has started using a computer. "I use it to edit my show, work on mix tapes, and make recordings," he says. "I'm very basic at this point. But it's funny. So many people I know are all about Macs and a Pro Tools system. Everyone from Evidence to Ripmatix has a Pro Tools system. All of a sudden all these people got rid of the PC shit and went Mac."

We Came From Beyond is in stores now. www.razorandtie.com