A New York state of mind

I’m cruising down Wilshire, Snoop blaring on the radio, when my friend Ben calls from Brooklyn.

“The latest Nas track is the jam. Heard it?� he asks.

“Nope. They’re not playing it out here.�

I sigh. And Ben sighs, with some disgust and much pity. He knows my state: I’m a New Yorker in exile. A Bronx-raised hip-hop fan exiled from New York radio.

You, musical snob, are having two thoughts. First, who but musical dilettantes listen to radio anyway? And second, how can “radio exile� exist when hip-hop is the national soundtrack, when listeners from Pittsburgh to Sioux City to San Fran are supposedly jamming to the same 10 commercial tracks?

Eschewing such snobbery, I hereby “out� myself as a radio listener. It’s the aural diet of the masses -- and with all my musical conceit I am, after all, one of the masses. As for haters who moan that radio is monopolized by one playlist, I question your attention to subtlety. If I’ve learned one thing since moving from N.Y. to L.A. in October, it’s that listening to hip-hop radio is not an identical experience in every city. Adjusting to life among the Angels, I’m discovering, includes setting my day to a new soundtrack.

Yes, the soundtrack includes some ubiquitous radio tracks, ones that harass our ears from coast to coast: Nelly and Kelly’s “Dilemma,� Eve and Alicia’s “Gangsta Loving,� anything by Eminem, anything featuring even a half-second vocal by Ashanti. Some such tracks are actually worth their weight in spins: Missy’s “Work It,� Erick Sermon and Redman’s “React,� even that anthem for whiteboy flava, Justin Timberlake’s “Like I Love You.�

But, to use an apt L.A. metaphor, if these must-plays are a station’s protein, its carbohydrates are the old standards, the songs that fill gaps between New Jam and Newer Jam. They’re much-beloved background music, or radio’s musical wallpaper.

In New York, this wallpaper is undeniably East Coast: tracks by Nas, Jay-Z, Noreaga, Notorious B.I.G. Oldies by Rakim, Pete Rock, Slick Rick. Nowadays, I can hardly tune in to one of New York’s three mainstream hip-hop stations -- Hot 97, Power 105 and WBLS -- without hearing, say, 50 Cent’s “Wanksta� or Erykah Badu and Common’s “Love of My Life.� I haven’t tired of these songs yet.

I haven’t had the chance to -- since I rarely hear them on L.A. radio. 100.3 the Beat and Power 106 are wallpapered in Snoop, Dre, Xzibit, WC, Nate Dogg (who might as well add “featuring� to his title, since he shows up in WC’s “The Streets,� Shade Sheist’s “Wake Up� and Xzibit’s “Multiply�). Without rehashing East-versus-West rhetoric, I’ll say that the laid-back groove of local hip-hop reigns on airwaves here.

This, I realize, is not necessarily bad. Though I’ve been Jay-Z deficient since my exodus from Manhattan to Miracle Mile, I’ve also escaped such irksome tracks as “If I Could Go,� by New York DJ Angie Martinez (who, thankfully, isn’t given much airtime here). Instead, Mack 10 and Westside Connection’s “Connected for Life,� a hot track I missed out on back East, is now my car stereo’s jam of the week.

Which brings me to the fact that I, like everyone else I know, never had a car stereo in New York. I got my hip-hop radio peripatetically: Strolling down Broadway or 125th Street, we hear hometown MCs blaring out of bodegas and open windows. These rappers become our neighbors. When we catch walk-by snippets of their rhymes -- even rhymes about rims we can’t use or Cristal we can’t afford -- it’s as if they’re right here on the block, partying with us.

In L.A., radio listening is obviously not a pedestrian activity. This means certain tracks that didn’t quite do it for me on a New York street -- like WC and Nate Dogg’s “The Streets,� or Roscoe’s “Get Ready� -- suddenly come alive now that I’m behind the wheel. It also means that I hear more than song snippets now, and that during rush hour, when we’re a captive audience, DJs really work for their dollars: I give it to Adimu and DJ Dense on the Beat, and Mr. Choc on Power 106, for their tight mixes, for pulling out old, new and neither-old-nor-new jams. (How sweet it is that N.O.R.E.’s “Nothin’ � and Truth Hurts’ “Addictive,� all but retired in New York, are still on playlists here.)

For all you “backpackers� -- underground hip-hop fans who are looking down their noses at every track and station I’ve mentioned thus far -- I concede that, yes, L.A. radio treats you better than does New York radio. Though my radio tastes are on the populist side, I am impressed that mainstream DJs here, such as Felli Fel, are playing Jurassic 5’s “What’s Golden,� and that KCRW’s Garth Trinidad, KPFK’s Fidel Rodriguez and KXLU’s Mike Nardone spin Dilated Peoples and Black Money Manglers to a hard-core fan base.

But while we’re talking diversity of styles, though I’ve heard house, rock-rap melanges, even Latin rap on hip-hop radio here, where’s the reggae? Thank goodness for the Beat’s Dredd and Barbara B., and KPFK’s Chuck Foster -- but can’t we wind to a little dancehall outside a specialty show? Yes, Sean Paul’s “Gimme the Light� is a killer track, and I’m glad L.A. radio finally discovered it, but there’s more where it came from. How about spinning, say, Wayne Wonder’s “No Letting Go,� which is lighting up N.Y. stations?

And for my final New York-style kvetch, I make another request. Because L.A. is an industry town, where no one wants to step on anyone’s toes (or screenplay), radio DJs seem too, well, pleasant. Their good cheer leaves me homesick for the attitude-slinging, hate-loving DJs of New York hip-hop radio. Bring on the raw nastiness of New York’s Star and BucWild, or the gruff bark of Funkmaster Flex! Because in the end I side with Biggie Smalls: “If I got to choose a coast, I got to choose the East.� But while I “rest in the West,� I still love to turn my radio up.

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Baz Dreisinger is a freelance writer and a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA’s Center for African-American Studies.