If you, like me, have been experiencing the George Floyd protests primarily online, you’ve noticed two distinct waves of activity. The first week featured law enforcement launching tear gas and “non-lethal” rounds at protestors exercising their First Amendment rights. The second week saw a deluge of corporate PR departments scrambling to release branded statements promoting vague commitments to racial justice, but lacking concrete actions or plans. And then came Dunkin’, whose email reminded us that June 5th was National Donut Day. Their apparent disconnect from reality was oddly refreshing, because I cannot imagine how a branded Dunkin’ social media post about police brutality would go over. I’ve spent countless mornings at 3:30am inside a Dunkin’ and, based on the clientele, I might as well have been at a police union meeting.
In the music industry, Republic Records took a long-overdue step forward and announced they will no longer use the antiquated and racially-charged “URBAN” to describe music on their label.
“Urban” has been a catch-all term for any music made by a black artist: R&B, trap, hip-hop, disco, etc. Its official use dates back to the 1970s, when radio program director Frankie Crocker found massive success with his “urban contemporary” format at New York’s 107.5 WBLS, a black-owned station by Inner City Broadcasting. Crocker coined the term to describe the inner-city clubs that informed his eclectic playlists, and his station showcased R&B, funk, and often crossed over with disco and developing sounds (summarized, Top 40 Democracy, Eric Weisbard).
In [Frankie Crocker’s] hands, radio became the locus for urbane, worldly, African Americans with disposable income and nuanced musical palates.
- Harry Allen, “Media Assassin” for Public Enemy, Vibe, 2000
By 1981, New York’s WKTU launched a partially competing format “Disco” and both stations fought for the #1 spot in New York Radio. From Inside Radio 1981:
However, the radio industry had not adopted Crocker’s “urban contemporary” into the lexicon. WKTU was labeled “Disco,” due to its corporate and genre-adherent playlist; but WBLS and its genre-agnostic approach was officially branded “Black.” This stark language indicated that white tastes were the default and worthy of nuance, while black tastes were abnormal and lumped together as one entity. This perspective can be visualized through a list of formats from the same issue of Inside Radio 1981:
There were eleven music formats centered around the tastes of white Americans, including two separate rock formats. These white-centric categories did not necessarily develop maliciously, as they were the product of industries dominated by white men, whose perspectives naturally became the industry standard. These programmers and marketers could easily identify two different audiences for “Album Rock” and “Rock,” but saw no discernible difference between R&B, funk, and hip-hop. The result was an array of stations created for white audiences, and very few, if any, for black audiences.
The “Rock” formats especially segregated themselves from black artists. Funk and soul records had tremendous crossover potential with rock audiences, but radio programmers resisted them, refusing to play artists from “Black” stations:
If a person says, ‘We cannot play a particular artist because they have a particular sound,’ that’s cool. But then you cut a song like ‘Fight the Power’—‘I can’t play that.’ You cut ‘Livin’ in the Life/Go for your Guns’—‘I can’t play that!’ I don’t think we would have any problem crossing over if the color of our skin was different. It’s not the color of the music.
- The Isley Brothers, Rolling Stone, 1978
It depends on what you consider. Stevie Wonder of course is not Black. And that’s the kind of stuff we play and consider it Black. But we really don’t, no.
- Max Floyd, KYYS Kansas City, 1977
(quotes from Top 40 Democracy, Eric Weisbard)
We can see how the “Black” moniker was weaponized against black artists, preventing their songs from crossing over into mainstream popularity.
Eventually, radio executives decided that the word “Black” might scare away potential white listeners, which would lead to a decrease in advertising dollars, and rebranded to “Urban.” Major record labels follow suit and formed entire divisions to seek out and develop “Urban” artists. With this term came all the negative connotations associated with inner-city stereotypes and prejudices. Regardless, the term has remained in use for several decades, even as hip-hop surged in mainstream popularity. “Urban” simply became the new “Black:” a fresh way to deny black artists airplay on white-centric radio stations.
In 2018, Music Business Worldwide published a report of executives in the music industry who reject the “Urban” descriptor:
I hate and despise the word urban. The word urban to me feels like a project. It feels like something that needs to be built. It’s basically like, ‘Oh this urban neighborhood.’ It means it’s low-income, not safe, etc. So when you say urban music, to me, it’s letting me know that you think it needs to be rebuilt. Nothing about hip-hop and R&B needs to be rebuilt. Nothing. Hip-hop’s been running for 40-something years, R&B’s been running for however long, if not longer. And, it’s been successful every single year. So, to me, the word urban is not synonymous with the words hip-hop and R&B.
- Sam Taylor, Kobalt
I despise the word urban. I know artists that do hip-hop, grime, or rap. I don’t know anyone that does urban music. Urban’ is a lazy, inaccurate generalization of several culturally rich art forms.
- DJ Semtex, Sony Music UK
I hate that word. I had it in my title for a while and I hated it, because there’s no such thing as ‘urban’… at what point can we get you to give up and just describe Drake’s ‘God’s Plan’ as a massive pop record rather than ‘urban’?
- Rob Pascoe, Virgin EMI
As Rob Pascoe indicated, “Urban” styles have completely penetrated mainstream music in the US. Hip-Hop is no longer a fringe art form—it has become a key component of popular music. If you listen to a pop radio station, more than half of the songs will have significant hip-hop influence or be bonafide hip-hop records. Over the past few years, even R&B has surged in popularity, with artists like Khalid and The Weeknd, who has topped the Hot 100 five times. In spite of their massive mainstream pop success, these black artists are still classified as “Urban” by industry standards.
A case example of the music industry refusing to acknowledge hip-hop as pop music is Katy Perry’s 2010 smash hit “California Gurls.” The official single features a bridge with Snoop Dogg, but some pop radio stations aired an edited version sans Snoop, fearful that rapping could alienate their primarily white listeners.
Since then, there has been a massive increase in traditional pop songs featuring rappers, and many pop radio hits are themselves hip-hop songs. A quick look at the top two spots at the Hot 100: “Rockstar” by DaBaby feat. Roddy Rich, and “Savage” by Megan Thee Stallion feat. Beyonce. Rap is no longer a faction of popular music; it is “Pop” music.
But the music industry establishment continues to separate “Urban” from “Pop.” When Justin Bieber adopted hip-hop styles on his 2020 album Changes, he was not called an “Urban” artist—he remained a “Pop” singer. This same classification was not given to Tyler, the Creator, who won Best Rap Album in 2020 for his artful genre-bending Igor. He accepted the award, but had a message for The Grammys and the wider music community:
It sucks that whenever we — and I mean guys that look like me — do anything that's genre-bending or that's anything they always put it in a rap or urban category. I don't like that 'urban' word — it's just a politically correct way to say the n-word to me.
- Tyler, the Creator
There is still more work to do when it comes to racial justice in the music industry, but eliminating the pedantic and racist classification of “Urban” is a good first step.
Words Cited
Weisbard, Eric. Top 40 Democracy: The Rival Mainstreams of American Music. University of Chicago Press, 2014.