thaformula.com - You've been doing radio for almost 10 years now right?

Peter Rosenberg - Yeah I did my first college show on July 5th 1997.

thaformula.com - How does it feel to have your own show on Hot97 after all these years grinding in the radio biz?

Peter Rosenberg - It's crazy. It feels like a dream. Every time I play one of those Hot97 drops with my name on it, it literally feels like a dream. I always believed I would be on Hot97, I really did believe it but it got to a certain point where it seemed so far away and the idea that I would actually have the show that I dreamt of seemed impossible. When I was a kid and would go to New York and listen to (Funkmaster) Flex on Friday and Saturday nights I literally made it my dream at that point that I would have a mix show in New York where I would break records and talk about what I wanted to talk about.

thaformula.com - So how did you eventually get your start in radio and who or what aside from Flex made you want to get into radio?

Peter Rosenberg - My grandparents are from Rockaway, Queens and we would go visit them all the time on the weekends. My brother got into Hip-Hop first and we would always tape Marley Marl, Red Alert, Chuck Chillout and all those legendary DJ's on WBLS and KISS. Then in (Washington) D.C. there was a show on WKYS on Saturday nights with DJ Celo (who I would later work with) and DJ Iran who did the same kind of thing as the New York DJ's only in D.C. playing straight underground shit. I was already into talk radio kind of stuff and I always liked the idea of being a talk show host and I was always a big mouth also it was kind of built in me. I started getting into Hip-Hop radio when I was like 10 years old and it just like grew from there.

thaformula.com - So how did the new Hot97 gig (Real Late with Peter Rosenberg) finally come about?

Peter Rosenberg - You know, I still don't even really know that. My boss at Hot 97 is E-Bro (the Program Director) and when I've asked him how he heard about me I get kind of an unclear answer. I think heard my name from various places over the years because I used to just straight call up the old program director and nag him. I actually had a meeting there probably two years ago before I got my talk gig in D.C. and I tried to pitch them my whole spiel but at that point I didn't have a lot of experience so I knew I wasn't going to get anything but they let me come and talk to them. I think E-Bro saw my video ("Throw Some Cheese on It" 600k+ views on Youtube) and my boy Frank Miller who runs the Hot97 website and is kind of a Justus League affiliate who does a lot of artwork for mad underground shit (www.ohsonappy.com), he works up there and he had my number. He hit me up and was like "E-Bro is looking for you, you should hit him up." So I hit him up and he was like "let' stay in touch." So like three weeks go by and I read on-line that the old Program Director at Hot97 left and E-Bro was named Program Director and I was like, "this is the best luck that ever happened to me in radio!" Then he hit me up and was like "I want to talk to you and see how we can fit you into the station." I went in for another job up there and didn't get that but then he was like "I want you to do your own sort of like Hip-Hop talk show" and it was like the best fuckin' news I ever heard.

thaformula.com - Kind of break down your vision for "Real Late" and what makes it stand out from other mix shows that are on the air right now…

Peter Rosenberg - Well, two things. Obviously the content is different musically because I don't have any restrictions. Number two, E-Bro loves Hip-Hop. He's a real Hip-Hop head from Oakland who loves the real shit. He knows a lot about running a radio station but in his heart he loves Hip-Hop and would love to see real Hip-Hop make a comeback. It's pretty crazy when you think about how many stations are out there in markets much less significant than New York where no one has the opportunity for freedom and I'm in New York, the biggest market in the world. It makes for a really insane opportunity.

thaformula.com - Yeah, that's a lot of ears listening…

Peter Rosenberg - Exactly, and the New York market is so hungry for Hip-Hop that like I'm in this great position where people have been sitting around for years like "where can I get some real Hip-Hop" and there's like a famine. Now I get to show up every Sunday with gallons of Gatorade you know?

thaformula.com - Like dropping a parachute with a box of food from an airplane to all the starving people…

Peter Rosenberg - Exactly.

thaformula.com - You talked about being able to actually break records which is kind of rare especially artist wise because when was the last time you really heard DJ's actually break a new artist that major labels weren't pushing?

Peter Rosenberg - I spend a good amount of time talking to all the jocks up there at Hot97 and the reality is that pretty much everyone up there is a straight backpacker at heart. Everyone from Enuff to Envy to Flex, Angie and even Missjones who was on Big L records, everyone there is on some level really, really underground. You get to a certain point in radio, and I think this is something that a lot of people in the indie world never get because I was always doing commercial radio, but while I was doing college radio and while I was doing underground shit I always had my hand in commercial radio. In commercial radio down here particularly (Maryland) people really don't break Hip-Hop records so that's not what Program Directors are looking for in a market like Washington D.C. So I really was privy to how tough the radio world could be in terms of that and I don't think that a lot of people realize that for a guy like Funkmaster Flex who broke records, underground records in the mid 90's it becomes very difficult as Hip-Hop got that much bigger to continue to break really underground records because that really isn't what people are checking for anymore. I think the bottom line is Flex, Enuff and everyone are great DJ's who have a great ear for music but at a certain point and you have to remember that unlike every backpacker in front of Fatbeats, they have to live off of this and this is what they do and they have bosses, and an audience and themselves to please. They all at some point still break records, like Enuff will break a Premier record or a Pete Rock record for sure, it happens. But it can't happen constantly when Hot97 has gone from being the home of everything that is underground to everything in Hip-Hop culture. Hip-Hop culture is so much bigger than the underground now but I don't think there isn't one DJ there now who wouldn't be thrilled to see things go back to the underground. Frankly that's one of the reasons I felt so great when I got up there, everyone is like "word you're the dude who's doing the underground shit, I'm excited to hear what your going to play because I haven't been able to keep up with what's underground."

thaformula.com - That's ill that they all actually want to see you succeed…

Peter Rosenberg - It's crazy. I was in situations where I was at stations where you would think I would "fit in" better but I got nothing but hate. At Hot97 where I stick out a little bit and you would think people would be like "who the hell s Rosenberg in the first place? Some random White dude from Maryland?" You'd think it would be the perfect place to be hated. Obviously I'm not privy to every conversation about me but I know that I feel a great vibe there and already have personal relationships with every on-air person there. I have some kind of rapport with everyone whether it's one great conversation we had or whether we chat regularly, I have great relationships there and everyone seems really excited and E-Bro seems really excited to make some real Hip-Hop shit happen.

thaformula.com - You talked a little about having to create clean versions of a lot of the records you play, but a lot of people don't realize how hard it is to find clean versions of some of the old stuff and underground stuff. Talk about how you've been editing and compiling the music you're playing…

Peter Rosenberg - I made a joke on-air last week that I edited out so many "N" bombs that I should win an NAACP Image award. I played "Reality" by Black Moon and it literally took me a good 40 minutes to edit that record. I have a really basic sound editing program and I either just flip curses backwards or I have little sounds like Ric Flair and stuff that make my edits unique so you know people will be like "oh this is one of Rosenberg's edits." But yeah, a lot of those records aren't edited and for the most part and anything I play that's older than brand new pretty much is ripped from my vinyl. It's an annoying painstaking process for those records that don't have radio edits but honestly it's so worth it and it's so satisfying. When I edited "Reality" and all my Blackmoon stuff and played it Buckshot called the show and was psyched that I was playing his stuff and that's another ill thing about being on in New York.

thaformula.com - You mentioned Buckshot calling in, you've only been on the air for two weeks and you've had interviews or taken calls from Talib Kweli, Just Blaze, Primo and of course Buckshot…

Peter Rosenberg - I'm not used to being able to just call people and get an interview instantly it's kind of crazy.

thaformula.com - Tell me about it, believe me I feel you…

Peter Rosenberg - Yeah, I'm sure you can relate. I mean it went from "hey I'm Peter Rosenberg from so and so, can I please get 5 minutes?" to "hey we're the record label, we'd really love to give you so and so." It's like going from being the ugly chick to being really hot in one night. But I've generally always had good relationships with artists and I don't have many complaints with them over the years as much as I'd have complaints about the record labels. Everyone's been real receptive though and excited that there's someone at a station like Hot97 who's into their stuff. I mean I am really a fan. The most exciting thing that has happened so far is DJ Premier calling me. Kweli has been great and did a joint for me in two days, he did a song for me. So far everyone seems to have faith in me. I think where I had the biggest concern was in terms of breaking records in front of a finicky New York audience. I hope I can break the records that other people think are dope too.

thaformula.com - Yeah, I liked that Coalescence joint you played, I had never heard of them.

Peter Rosenberg - Yeah that was dope. I had been talking to Torae a lot and I had no idea that he was part of that group. But it was totally random because his people emailed me the record and it was hot so I played it. Coincidentally he was in the process of doing a joint for me and when he heard it he was like "yo you just played one of my joints" and I was like "what?" But yeah, that was a record that was sent to me in my email that I thought was dope. There's a lot of stuff out there that's great and the cool thing is that I do have to sift through a lot of crap, but if I hear something dope I can play it. For the most part there's a lot of people out there making good music and when Hip-Hop gets as bad as it is right now there has to be a good chance that the worse the music out there is, the more people are responding to that with great music but it's a matter of taking the time to listening to peoples records and finding it.

thaformula.com - We talked about Premier calling you up but that conversation never made it to the air, what did he have to say to you?

Peter Rosenberg - I had sent Premier an email telling him that I wanted him to be on my show sometime and he wrote me back and thanked me for the show and said he had already heard about it and that he was listening right then and he appreciated me playing his record (the Skyzoo joint) and I was like "we should get up sometime." He called me the next day and we talked about the show a little bit and he talked about what a good look it was and we talked about his show on Sirius and I'm actually gonna go up to his show this Friday night and we're gonna help each other out because there are only so many people that are playing the stuff that we're playing. Obviously I'm sure you of all people can imagine that it feels like the best moment of your life when DJ Premier puts you on any kind of level as himself in any kind of way. I told my parents today "you know my all time favorite artist called me this week to talk about my show?" That's unbelievable to be in underground Hip-Hop as long as I have and to have someone like Premier be like "I appreciate what your doing, keep repping the real Hip-Hop." For a little White kid from Chevy Chase, Maryland I can't be much happier than that.

thaformula.com - So what else can we expect from "Real Late" and what do you have coming up on it?

Peter Rosenberg - For the next few weeks, well you can pretty much count on anything in Hip-Hop that's going on that's pretty major is gonna be represented on the show whether it's interviews, music or discussion. I'm working on Pharoahe Monch for next week since his album drops next week and lots of other interviews. The show is just gonna get better. I've been really happy that people have dug it so far but it's only been two weeks and I'm in my dream market so I'd be lying if I said I didn't come into it with a little bit of nerve but I think it got way better from week one to week two and I expect it to grow exponentially as the weeks go on. I also expect to really let my personality come out a bit more. I have a lot of really intense thoughts on Hip-Hop, I take it very seriously and I really think as time goes on I think people will be surprised. Sometimes Hip-Hop has to be mocked and it gets to a point where it's just absurd and there aren't enough people who will say "you know what? This is absurd and I hold Hip-Hop to a higher standard." But you know what? I hold Hip-Hop to the absolute highest standard. It is the art form and the music that I love more than anything in the world and for whatever reason me, and millions of other people like me who I guess early on weren't looked at as the typical demographic really, really fell in love with it. The reason that Hip-Hop is becoming less special now is because so many White kids got into it and over time, I think that the reason people like you and me got into it on the early 80's and 90's, for me it was something I didn't identify with. Urban Black culture was not something that I knew. It was the opposite of what I knew. Obviously I had black friends and stuff like that and I lived outside D.C. but I really loved the stories that I would hear in Hip-Hop and it freaked me out a little bit. It really opened me up. I mean listening to NWA records made me see things from a different perspective like about people's lives and it's really what made me love it so much and now, and now Hip-Hop is hair bands. It's the same thing that happened with Rock and Roll.

thaformula.com - It became a caricature of itself…

Peter Rosenberg - Yeah, that's what it is right now. Certainly there are artists that make quality music out there but overall the game has been taken over. You look at the biggest record in the world last year and they weren't put out by artists, they were put out by people who got signed because they had one song and don't really offer anything new and great to the culture. Hopefully artistry will come back into play and everyone has that concern, and in all music that happens and it's sad. In black music that's sort of a pattern that after the mainstream culture completely embraces it, it sucks it dry. Generally White culture, White mainstream America is not happy until we have ownership of everything. Hip-Hop eventually had to go from being different to White people saying, "I don't want it to be something I can't relate to." It's almost the way the discussions came out after the Don Imus thing, people were discussing what you can and can't say. It's like White people won't be happy until they can say the "N" word too and it's like everything has to be for everyone. Sometimes not everyone participates in everything the same way. The role of Black people and White people in Hip-Hop is quintessentially different. As someone who tries to contribute to it myself I still feel like a visitor even though it's my culture and I'm a part of it and while I would never even entertain being challenged on my authenticity I also know that Hip-Hop was here long before people like me were involved and real Hip-Hop will exist long after people like me aren't a part of it. So I'm just happy to play a role to try and advance it but I feel no need to own it. I guess that's the thing that makes me standout a little bit. From my name being Rosenberg on the show I don't have some name that's ambiguous where you don't know if I'm White or not and my voice isn't ambiguous, everyone knows I'm White and I don't feel the need to prove my ownership of Hip-Hop. I just love it and want it to be the way it was when I was a kid. I want the music to be great and mean something and for it to be something that people from outside the culture are interested in it and want to study it because there's meaning to it. There's very little meaning to what is out there today, you can tell me that a lot of the records that are out today are somehow a depiction of the culture but that's bullshit, its not.

Thaformula.com - Yeah, I mean how real are these records that are filled with champagne and whips to the average radio listener?

Peter Rosenberg - Yeah, I mean NWA was really out there and really violent and entertaining but its still was a depiction of the culture and a depiction of the way people felt in South Central Los Angeles in the mid 80's. That was real. There's nothing to be learned from "2-Step" or "Work It Out," there's not. I'm not saying you can't have dance records anymore but at this point when I talk to my White friends that causally listen to Hip-Hop they tell me they don't listen to Hip-Hop even though 10 years ago they did. 10 years ago they would hear Busta Rhymes on the radio or even earlier on they would hear Black Sheep or A Tribe Called Quest, artists that got on the radio with good music. At that point people felt the need to pay attention. Now you have a lot of people, and the reason I keep stressing the White listeners and obviously I hate to downplay the Black listeners but Black listeners are going to be there, Black music is going to be supported by Black listeners pretty much as long as it exists but what changes is how many White kids are buying the records. If the White kids stop buying the records then Hip-Hop is gonna have a problem. The music has gotten so bad that people from the suburbs don't feel like stopping by the radio stations to listen because they have heard it a thousand times. But will they go out and buy the Andre3000 album? Yeah because it's different, but there is no need to buy the DJ Unk album or records like that because they have heard it before and they know what it is. It's a single, that's it. I don't want to over stress the importance of White kids buying records but I think it's more symptomatic than anything else because if you turn on 106&Park the kids look excited about it whether it's "Walk It Out" or the throwback to whatever song is too recent to be a throwback, it's the same thing. But when you really step back and look at who's buying records and how sales are going down you realize "wow, this is becoming less relevant" and people like us forget about it because we are so involved in it. Because to you and I, Hip-Hop seems like it's the only thing that's relevant and Rock and Roll seems completely irrelevant, it's been irrelevant in my eyes since a few years after Kurt Cobain died and it still is. The fact of the matter is that a few years after Biggie died Hip-Hop became irrelevant. God willing, there is going to be some kind of bounce-back now, and a Hip-Hop Grunge era will come about where the real underground street stuff will start to take over because people are just so fed up with the bullshit.

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