Free La Kalle 10/26/2006

Nas flipped out on the Deja Vu show on Power 105.1, with accusations claiming that executives at rival station Hot 97 and radio personalities like DJ’s Funk Master Flex, Clue, Angie Martinez and a few others took pay for play proceeds under the table. Shortly after the incident Nas apologized and went on to say that the accusations were false and that he was just mad. Really? Not because he had just dropped an album and Jigga owned his sweet azz? Ok!

Nas: “You see it’s a whole evil empire funded by a bunch of other evil empires with Def Jam being one of them who are giving them money to play all their artists records. Meanwhile the struggling artists have to recreate records that sound like Jay-Z and they’re destroying themselves.”

Many up and coming latino artists in New York City, Chicago, Houston, L.A. and Miami were pleased when Univision decided on a programming change from the traditional latin mix to 100% reggeton and latin hip hop music 24 hours a day 7 days a week. This meant more opportunity to be heard; now the “streets” had their own radio station. Boy were you all fooled! Not everyone was going to be heard on the airwaves of the new stations. In New York City’s “La Kalle” ( newbees, don’t even THINK about “La Mega”) it is obvious that no music by artists who are not of Puerto Rican origin (that means born IN Puerto Rico or one of the azz cheeks that Casanova kisses) is played on the station and that has a few listeners and artists mad. So mad that one rapper, Temperamento from Providence, RI (Puerto Rican) took it so far as to dedicate a song to DJ Casanova talking about his favoritism to the “select few” and taking payola. One underground campaign slogan is “How Much Pay for Play/Cuanto Pago por Radio?” The movement claims that many New York, L.A and Miami radio stations are still using black market under the table tactics to play independent music charging as much as $10,000.00 for one month of rotation with no promise of making it a hit. For a lot of new artists this is more than half of the marketing and promotion budget for their entire project.

But what about Lune y Tune? They’re Dominican and they made Reggeton what it is today?

What ABOUT Lune y Tune? They’re Dominican’s with Puerto Rican accents that live and were raised in Puerto Rico. Yeah you’ll find a few jock ridding Tio Tomas’ (Spanish Uncle Tom’s) running around in the back ground reppin other nationalities at the radio station but at the end of their shout outs and reppin it’s back to Puertorro. I am willing to bet my left testicle that most of these “Puerto Ricans” started going to P.R. and being “Puerto Rican” as soon as the movement began to blow. (Hint, Hint: N.O.R.E. and Fat Joe, who by the way is half Cuban but doesn’t mention it because it seems more beneficial financially to be Boricua).