Back when I was in high school, I used to watch a lot of music videos on TV. Those were the times that MTV was on fire and my cable provider had a channel called BET. Stand for Black Entertainment Television, one of my favorite shows was Rap City and later Rap City the basement. It was, as you guessed it. Rap, not R&B, Rap!
Back then we had a definition between Rap and Hiphop that might be different now. But at the time, Rap was it, only rhymes, no singing no R&B with a rapper at the cameo, no rock with the rapper as a cameo. It was straight bars and DJ. And Rap City was a show that was grounded on that. It covered most of my teen years, all the way into college and then some.
Right now BET is more like a syndicate TV show full of old series like Martin, House of Payne, The Jennifer Hudson Show and such. Long gone are the music video shows like 106&Park, Video Soul, BET Jazz and Caribbean vibes. You can check out their scheduled programming here.
BET used to do some original shows and movies, although the catalog was sold to Paramount so the site shows the shows and forward you to Paramount+ streaming service. But enough of that, the magic was coming to a live show for the most part, and watching hosts interview your favorite artist. Withing the show there were countdowns, old school days like Wednesday where you get to listen to the 80s rappers, and later the 90s one, and there was also days where it was freestyle Fridays. Rap City was definitely a Vibe, and even though the format change, it was always very Urban.
So digging on youtube, I cam across with collectors of these shows and you get the time to watch full shows and re-live that era and something I noticed was, how so many good songs and artists slip my mind completely. Like, oh yeah, I used to love that song when it came out, but even now I can't remember the name of it. Or how could I possibly forgot about this group, or song.
It seems we have a filter on our mind that will pick the top 3 songs from that time and leave the others 18 songs. The rotation was just too much, so catching up with editions from different years was something quite interesting to see. Is true, some groups were a one hit wonder, but many other groups were more than that, yet we give them, the one hit wonder treatment. We all had that smash hit where we knew the artist, but they also had a quite good second, third and even sixth hit that we loved, but we didn't remember anymore and stick with the top 1.
So I want to thanks the channels that have made this possible and also show some of the eras that I am watching currently.
The Creative Arts of Mr. Skip
Gustle Media
Linwood85
Kevin Usih
Look for them on youtube and you will get more of their clips. Then there were the eras. This was fun, as there could be more and more coming up. Rap City 1989, Rap City 1995, Rap City 1999, 106&Park 2000, 106&Park 2003, Rap City 2003, Rap City 2002, Rap City 2002.
Of course there are way more on their channels, and something I wish I could see is having this showed restored by AI and have them looked more modern. Perhaps is something that we can get the channel owner to do and even raise some funds to pay for the AI work.
However, that said, I have been having a blast remembering those days that I was able to watch videos after videos and even remember some cool hiphop commercials. I wonder if this was something that you also lived through your teens. Which other shows were you watching. I remember there was The Box, or Music Box, MTV Grind, and Yo MTV Raps!.
Even some exclusive VH1 shows and other shows that had specials with artists of the time. I also wonder if there is any podcast style that can mimic that same dynamic. Veevo did it for a while but then they gave up and became more of an automated music videos playing digital stream.
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