There's some good news and bad news for Funkmaster Flex. First the
good news, Flex as you may know is heavy into cars. Not a show goes
by where he doesn't make some reference to his love for nice rides.
He even had some sort of contest earlier this year where he would
customize your truck. Well it looks like Flex has stepped up his
involvement by partnering with Lincoln Mercury to create a limited
Team Baurtwell 2003 Lincoln Navigator Edition. The price tag will be
81 thousand bucks.
Now that's the good news.. Now it appears Flex may have to deal with
another nagging concern that keeps surfacing about how he goes about
choosing his music for his hit radio show on Hot 97. There is no
doubt that Flex is one of the most influential DJs in the country. He
can make or break an artist with the drop of one of his trademark
bombs. He is also credited with being the main force behind the rise
of what is arguably the country's most influential commercial Hip Hop
station-Hot 97. At one point the brother was repping for Hot 97 in
New York. Doing mix show for Power 106 in LA and holding it down on
MTV's DFX. He was damn near 'running' all the big night clubs
including the infamous Tunnel. If that's wasn't enough he was
releasing his successful series of commercial 'Mixtapes' where he
would break new artists. He also established Big Dawg record pool and
marketing firm called Franchise.
Well it seems like over the past year there have been grumblings about
him abusing his influence by taking money for airplay and not exactly
delivering. KRS-One made mention of this a few months back when he
publicly accused Flex of taking 40 thousand dollars and only playing
his record once....
http://www.eurweb.com/articles/
musicpages/07172002/musicpages741407172002.cf
m
Nas alluded to this a few weeks later when he went on Hot 97s rival
station Power 105 and put the station and Flex on blast. West Coast
rhymesayer Easki expresses the difficulty in dealing with Flex in his
song 'Manuscript'. And that's just the beginning.
Over the past week
an open letter has been making its way on various listserves and
websites calling Flex into account..It comes from an unnamed source
that claims to have infiltrated his business [former employee perhaps?
] and accuses Flex of funneling money through his marketing firm in
exchange for airplay. It also calls for listeners to call Hot 97.
And it threatens to expose evidence of wrong doing to the NY Times and
other news organizations. Here's some excerpts from that open letter:
I'm sure those of you have noticed the downward spiral music radio
has taken over the past few years. It all started when Emmis
Communications decided to try an experiment which was to change the
format of their New York and Los Angeles radio stations Hot 97 and
Power 106 from Latin dance music to the Hip Hop & R&B format today.
This became a revolution, which have spread over to their competitor
Clear Channel, and others to become URBAN POP Stations.
Now I'm going to explain to you how hip-hop and R&B records are played
on these stations. Unless you are a hermit I'm sure all of you have
heard of DJ FunkMaster Flex who spins 5 Nights a week on New York's
Hot 97. He is also the owner of Franchise Marketing and Big Dawg
Record Pool.
Franchise Marketing is a music promotion company that gets paid by
labels like Bad Boy, Def Jam, Ruff Ryder, Rock-A-Fella, Murder Inc,
Cash Money, Arista, J, Universal and No Limit to promote records to
Radio DJs like FunkMaster Flex and his crew of 25 radio DJs to
convince them that a record is hot.
Big Dawg record pool is similar to Franchise but its really an
non-profit organization that services it's members of Radio, Club &
Mobile DJ's records from the labels before mentioned. This Record
Pool also has a promotions department that influences their members to
report to several chart publications like Billboard, Hits, Gavin,
FMQB, BRE & DMR.The United States Federal Government has a law called
payola which simply means that it's highly illegal for a Radio DJ,
Programmer or Radio Station to play records that have been paid for by
a record company, manager, producer or artist.
If you're like myself and listen to DJ FunkMaster Flex show you'd
realize that he'll play the same record over and over proclaiming how
hot the record is. If you were to research the hot record he's so
excited about then you'd find out that this record has been presented
to him by Franchise Marketing.
This means DJ FunkMaster Flex is breaking a FEDERAL LAW and could be
imprisoned like four of his former clients for 25 Years.How I know
this is because I infiltrated his organization and collected enough
evidence to put him and 25 other famous Radio DJ's away for a very
long time.Now why would I do such a thing is because I am a patriot of
the hip-hop nation and Mr. Aston Taylor (FunkMaster Flex) is a traitor
to us all.
If you are an intelligent person you'd realize how
powerful hip-hop is. Thanks to hip-hop people of all walks of life
have come together and come to recognize who our oppressors are.This
an open declaration of war against payola because I want FunkMaster
Flex to use his limited power for good by opening his playlists to
great hip-hop artists like the following:
The Roots, Common, Q-tip, Talib Kweli, Dilated Peoples, Peoples Under
The Stairs, Pete Rock, Black Eyed Peas, De La Soul, Spooks, 4th Avenue
Jones, Defari, El The Sensei, Life Savas, Blackalicous, Lexicon, Mr.
Lif, Mos Def, J-Live, Lyrics Born, Public Enemy, Slum Village etc.
And other hip artists who are make great hip-hop music. FunkMaster
Flex has 20 hours a week of airtime for his show. I strongly suggest
that he and his DJs remind themselves of why they became Hip-Hop DJ's
in the first place....
What I want you to do is call his show at 1.800.523.9797 and tell him
about this post. Because I promise this is not a threat if he don't
open his playlist with 60 days I will go before an U.S. Senate panel
and testify against him and others within the music industry. I will
also turn over all of my evidence to The New York Times and all of the
major news organization...>>
While the email raises some valid points that have been circulating,
one can't help but wonder if this is just a ploy to get more
'underground' artists played on the airwaves. We'll have to wait and
see.
In any case the other side of the coin to this is, if Flex wasn't
doing his job, by getting good ratings and maintaining a certain level
of popularity he wouldn't be on the air. Radio stations are
bottomline in that way. If cats weren't feeling what he's doing they
would be turning off the radio station in droves and throwing their
support behind other DJs and radio shows.
Who knows, perhaps Flex
should play a few Slum Village records or at least dedicate a couple
of nights a week to showcasing underground material and that'll make
everyone happy...
