WHAT-AM (1310) was a pioneering radio station that provided a significant voice for the black community in Philadelphia. In 1945, it became the first radio station in the nation to hire a black announcer. Mary Dee became the first black woman with a regular radio program, and the station was among the first to hire black newscasters: Mumia Abu-Jamal spent some of his early broadcasting career at WHAT.[1] Its programming consisted largely of music by black performers, and ranged from jazz to R&B, and soul. It shifted in 1978 to a talk format before returning to music two years later. Around this time, the station helped to foster the growth of rap music in Philadelphia.
Most histories of rap music start with the “Founding Fathers” in the South Bronx in the early 1970s. A young Clive Campbell (a.k.a. DJ Kool Herc) and his sister were throwing a party to raise money to buy back-to-school clothes. The legendary party, held on August 11, 1973 at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, was where Herc uncovered the power of the breakbeat. Herc’s friend and MC, Coke La Rock, would encourage partygoers to dance, engage them in call-and-response, and include short rhyming verses. Parties lasted into the wee hours of the morning (Herc’s back-to-school party was scheduled from 9:00 p.m. until 4:00 a.m.) and comprised long, improvised DJ sets. In the early days of hip hop, the DJ was the focal point, and MCs were like accessories, picking up the slack when the DJ was otherwise occupied. It took about half a dozen years for the first rap records to appear, mainly because few who were involved in the South Bronx scene could comprehend how these hours-long improvised parties would translate to vinyl, much less earn radio airplay. In fact, the two earliest rap records—Fatback Band’s “King Tim III (Personality Jock)” and The Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight”—both released in 1979, were not at all representative of what Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, and Afrika Bambaataa were doing in the South Bronx. For starters, both used a live band, not a DJ: the Fatback Band’s sound more closely mirrored the funk records that the Bronx DJs were using, with elements of disco just beneath the surface. The Sugar Hill house band was tasked with repeating the riff from Chic’s popular disco hit “Good Times” for nearly 15 minutes. The rapping on “King Tim III” is closer in style to some of the rapping radio or club DJs, like Eddie Cheeba or DJ Hollywood than those of Melle Mel or Busy Bee. None of the members of The Sugar Hill Gang was a rapper before Sylvia Robinson, the owner of Sugar Hill Records, recruited them to record the song. Some of the rhymes on that song were stolen from Grandmaster Caz; others were written by Robinson and the group members.
The arrival of rap records enabled rap music to spread beyond its birthplace in New York City: Sugar Hill Records was, in fact, based in Englewood, New Jersey, and a radio station in St. Louis was one of the first to play “Rapper’s Delight” on the air. Tapes of live performances by Bronx DJs also began to circulate, exposing others to the original source of this new style of music. Kurtis Blow recalls that “by early 1979 we were all working bus rides to Philadelphia and Baltimore. The whole East Coast was rocking.”[2]
The first two rap records released in Philadelphia also appeared in 1979, recorded by two people affiliated with WHAT-AM. Jocko Henderson, released his song “Rhythm Talks” on Philadelphia International Records in 1979. Henderson’s career as a radio DJ started in 1952 at WSID in Baltimore, the city in which he was born and raised. In 1953, he moved to Philadelphia where he began broadcasting on WHAT-AM.
While the stories of rap’s founding fathers are well known and often repeated, William Jelani Cobb observes that the “mother of hip hop” post remains vacant.[3] Although she was not a rapper, Sugar Hill’s Sylvia Robinson could certainly vie for the title. MCs like Lisa Lee, Sha-Rock (the “plus 1” of the Funky Four + 1), and the Sequence, as well as graffiti artists like Sandra “Lady Pink” Fabara were important contributors to the early days of hip hop. But the first rap record by a woman artist came from Philadelphia’s Lady B. Wendy Clark was born in Wynnefield, PA in 1962: she started using her Muslim name, Bahiyyah in her teens. Not long after graduating from Overbrook High School in 1979, Clark adopted the moniker Lady B and started down the path to becoming a seminal figure in early hip hop with an internship at WHAT. That year, she released the first rap record by a female artist, “To The Beat Y’All” on the Philadelphia-based TEC Records. “To The Beat Y’All” was certified gold by the RIAA (500,000 units sold) and led to a brief contract with Sugar Hill Records.
Clark realized that being a rapper was not her calling, so she focused on broadcasting. She faced an uphill struggle as she tried to get air time for rap music: not only was the genre still very much in its infancy, but she was one of few women in a field largely dominated by men. “It was harder back then; we had to stand on our own to support the music and get it played. […] I had to take a lot of [grief] from my male counterparts; it was OK for them to play whatever they wanted, but I had to fight to play Public Enemy.”[4] She threatened to quit if the program director would not let her play PE’s music: “I had to fight for my right and that of Public Enemy, to say what they wanted—a strong message without profanity. Our community needed to hear that at the time.”[5]
Her promotion of up-and-coming rap acts through her radio show and concerts cemented her status as an important figure not just in Philadelphia, but around the country. She elevated local artists Schoolly D, and DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, and brought important new acts to town: she considers bringing Public Enemy to the Spectrum in 1987 one of her greatest accomplishments.[6] "She was the person to get us on the radio, period," said PE frontman Chuck D: “She was our champion. Philly was and is crucial to us.”[7]
In 1982, she moved to Power 99 FM, and launched “Street Beat,” a hip hop program that ran until 1990. Her birthday celebrations brought legends like Kurtis Blow, Kool Moe Dee, Run-D.M.C., and others to town. Will Smith surprised Lady B at her 30th anniversary celebration in 2011 (the 30th anniversary of her start in broadcasting), performing a few of his hits as well as “La Di Da Di” with Doug E. Fresh. Her broadcast career continued on WBLS in New York, then Philly 103.9, which emerged as a competitor to Power 99. She currently has a daytime show on R&B station Classix 107.9.
Lady B paved the way for a number of important women rappers in the City of Sisterly Love, including Malika Love, E-Vette Money, Bahamadia, and Tierra Whack, to name but a few.
NOTES
[1] Burr Van Atta, Obituary: DOLLY BANKS SHAPIRO, 71, Philadelphia Inquirer, 10/24/1985, U12
[2] Forman citing George, 74.
[3] William Jelani Cobb, To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 39.
[4] Damon C. Williams, “There’s No Holding Back This Lady,” Philadelphia Daily News 16 January 2003, 41.
[5] Amorosi, A. D., “A Double Dose of Chuck D, Epic and New,” Philadelphia Inquirer 11 August 2016.
[6] Frisby, Mister Mann, ”DJ Lady Set to Mark an Old-School Birthday,” Philadelphia Daily News 20 September 1997.
[7] Amorosi.