As 20-somethings in the early '90s, when Angela Watson and Wayne Benjamin joined New Orleans’ contemporary hip-hop and R&B station WQUE 93.3FM, both figured they'd stay a couple of years and move on.
But more than two decades later, "Uptown Angela" and "Wild Wayne" are still on the air here.
As a senior vice president, Watson manages operations and programming for the New Orleans stations owned by iHeartMedia, (formerly Clear Channel) the largest operator of radio stations in America. Benjamin, who’s been called “the voice of a generation of New Orleanians,” has introduced local audiences to a laundry list of stars, from Mystikal to Lil Wayne.
A feature film about the life of No Limit Records founder Master P is currently in the works; producers are on the lookout for actors to play both radio personalities. But that isn’t all that's giving the two on-air veterans a blast from the past.
On Jan. 20, iHeartMedia flipped the format of its New Orleans rock station, at 96.3FM, to classic hip-hop and R&B. The rebranded Throwback 96.3 format covers a good 30 years’ worth of music, playing sounds from the earliest days of hip-hop through roughly the turn of the millennium — tune in and you might hear Heavy D, Juvenile, Missy Elliott, Salt N Pepa, LL Cool J and Sugarhill Gang all in one set, mixed in with funk, pop and R&B from artists like En Vogue, Prince, Destiny’s Child, Boyz II Men and Michael Jackson. The playlist stacks itself most heavily, though, with material from the '90s.
“When you listen to it, it reminds you of what Q93 was when we started years ago,” Watson said.
“It’s like a time machine,” said Benjamin, “but one that can go back and forth, and oscillate between then and now.”
Throwback 96.3 hit the air on Jan. 20, a date that turned out to be advantageous for a variety of reasons. After discussing the possible switch over the course of several years, Watson was told, on a Wednesday, that the new format would go onto effect that Friday.
With just three months on air so far, there are few hard numbers to gauge success with. But, Watson said, the first Nielsen report, covering the initial month of the new format, showed promising growth.
Classic hip-hop is, in fact, one of the fastest-growing formats in American radio. In December 2014, The New York Times identified the Radio One chain of stations as an innovator of the trend, introducing it in Dallas, Philadelphia and Atlanta and prompting rival broadcasters to introduce it as well. Atlanta now has three “throwback” stations.
iHeartMedia already had two stations playing throwback hip-hop, in St. Louis and Jacksonville, Florida. Media giants like Cox, Univision and Cumulus have all also switched multiple stations over to hip-hop oldies; radio analyst Sean Ross, quoted in the Times report, compared the trend to the arrival of the now-ubiquitous classic rock format, back in the '80s.
The '90s are "in" right now, from fashion (the Gap recently reintroduced a limited-edition collection of its '90s designs) to media (BET’s three-part miniseries on the R&B group New Edition was the station’s most-watched premiere in five years) to music (at the 2016 Essence Festival, Puff Daddy and the Family’s Bad Boy Records Reunion headlining set was enthusiastically received).
It’s a nostalgic sweet spot for a market — people in their mid-30s to mid-40s — desirable for its spending power that also appears attractive, in a retro sense, to consumers who do not remember the decade from the first time around or were even born then.
With hip-hop and R&B, Watson also noted, it was a special time for New Orleans in particular, and she hopes the station will reflect that.
“In the '90s, we had so many of our own artists coming out,” she said. “Partners N Crime, Mystikal, of course No Limit and Cash Money,” plus local club hits that still hold up.
“When you’re out in the club now, the DJ gets into that mix of ‘Pump the Party’ from PNC” — a 1995 release on the local outfit Big Boy Records, Mystikal’s first label — “people get really, really excited,” she said. “So we’re going to create a place for that at Throwback, too.”