Breaks in the air : the birth of rap radio in New York City /

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Includes bibliographical references (pages 175-214) and index.Deregulating radio -- Sounding Black progress in the post-civil rights era -- Commercializing rap with Mr. Magic's rap attack -- Programming the street at WRKS -- Broadcasting the Zulu Nation -- Listening to the labor of the Awesome II Show."Breaks in the Air provides a social and cultural history of rap music on Black radio in New York City from the late 1970s to the late 1980s. Radio shows were crucial in the growth of hip hop in New York, and Klaess explores the intertwined histories of sounds, institutions, communities, and legal formations converging in that post-Civil Rights period. John Klaess offers a careful analysis of the city's three crucial commercial radio stations-WBLS-FM 107.5, WRKS-FM 98.7, and WHBI-FM 105.9-drawing on an archive of tape recordings of the stations' broadcasts. Klaess moves from a history of deregulation in the broadcasting industry to the ways that American racial politics inflected the broadcast of rap and looks at how these radio stations engaged with this unique historical situation, how technologies both aided and limited their broadcasts, how their broadcasts were received, and what the public broadcast of this music and culture meant to young people of color in New York"--