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Ralph McDaniels - Hip-Hop Power Vision
Interview by: Melanie J Cornish
 There are always going to be those personalities that you just adhere to. You pay attention to what they say because they have been on the scene pretty much since the start and are still very much active players of the game.
Ralph McDaniels has probably ‘baby sat’ most of NYC’s Hip-Hop heads at some point, breaking videos on his show Video Music Box, had kids and adults avidly tuned in. Wu-Tang, KRS One, De La Soul, Jay-Z are a tiny portion of legendary names that Ralph broke on the show which is now in its 23rd year. Uncle Ralph, as he was fondly named by Kool DJ Red Alert, took Hip-hop to a new dimension by showcasing videos that went along with the songs you bought on maxell tapes from your dude on the corner. Allowing you get the vision as well as the music.
Growing up in the same era as Russell Simmons where people worked so so hard to get to the next plateau is a formula Ralph has continuously stuck to. Always looking to break the next new artist, spinning on one of NY’s top Hip-hop stations Hot 97 and providing background and education into the game that is invaluable, whether he be in the role of VJ or DJ Ralph McDaniels is a legend. Here he talked about the lack of ‘soul,’ how the corporate structure has made artists to step their game up for fear of getting ‘lost’ in the genre of music they helped create and just how fans are as crucial as the powers that be, if not more.
 Nobodysmiling.com : You have been on the scene for more than a minute, seeing changes for the good and for the bad, thinking back to the early days when you got started did you ever think it would become the commodity that it has today?
Ralph McDaniels : No not at all. It is like I always tell people the stories of Russell Simmons bringing me a rap record and no one had ever put a rap on a record and I was like ‘Why would they do that when they can just hear this in the park for free?’ And he was like ‘No No everyone is not going to want to come to the park,’ and I was like, ‘But why not?’ You know that was just how I thought back in the days. It has changed a lot and it is something that was a culture. You know the words Hip-hop have just been twisted from it being a culture to it now being a particular genre. It has gone from people just living it to it now being commercialized or institutionalized and that is where we are at right now. I mean maybe rock and roll went through that. I mean different music’s become very popular. For us, the people that were there at the beginning it can be very difficult at times because a lot of people cant make the transition from then to now or they don’t want to. A person like myself, I have sat back and watched the progression of it and one of the advantages I did have was watching a guy like Russell Simmons, you know he grew up not far from where I grew up at and watching a man like Russell who from day one was taught how to hustle, the music part of it. You know the rest of it he was like if you are going to live like that then you are going to live like that, but he was going to hustle the music and the idea.
Nobodysmiling.com : Do you think now the business aspect now overshadows the musical creativity?
Ralph McDaniels : Oh definitely, now it is about making a record that is going to sound good on the radio. You know now there are so many radio stations, they were what made it very corporate as they all decided at one time ‘Ok we are going to go with this hip-hop thing,’ and they went to record companies and told the companies they would start playing hip-hop, but there were only certain types of hip-hop that they liked and wanted to play, you know they wouldn’t play the stuff about guys killing but we will play the stuff that sounds good. So they would put whatever record was hot at the time and they would put it out on say 900 stations and in turn they would want the labels to do business with them, make the artists accessible to us and spend a second round of money advertising them on our stations and that was how it went down. We are still in that realm today. You know if radio stations decided that there was something else they wanted to switch up from hip-hop then it would change.
Nobodysmiling.com : People complain that there is no-one to rival the Jays and the Biggies etc. but yet there appears to be very little thought and effort that goes into developing artists and albums anymore and do you think this is why we are still living in the past?
Ralph McDaniels : We will always live in the past. You know if you don’t get to know an artist, how can that person become legendary tomorrow? Stevie Wonder is a legend because we know him, he got to know us and we got to know him. These guys who may put out these quick hits don’t really know us. They may know a certain portion of the audience but they don’t really know the audience, you know they might know the top 100 fans on that radio station and all the decisions are made on that top 100 fans. You know there is no artist development and I think that the only person that right now that has the potential to be there and is in the turmoil all the time is 50 Cent because he is kind of like half of that person from back in the days and half of the corporate now because of the Interscope records element that you have to live up to and that it what is important and that is what allows him to continue what he does. He has all the elements of someone from back in the day and hopefully he will be around to continue to do what he does or Interscope will keep him around long enough.
Nobodysmiling.com : But do you find that because artists are concentrating more on the business side/money aspect of things we fail to get the material to listen to that we so badly need?
 Ralph McDaniels : If you are not playing the game and the game is played right then you are not in the game. So there are artists out there say like even Mos Def, you see him in a Cadillac commercial, you know who was like the ultimate B-Boy to some people, but he understands that ‘Look I have to play along with this some how some way if I am going to be a part of it because if I don’t, I am lost,’ like Common he probably said ‘I gotta deal with Kanye as this kid is cool right now,’ he doesn’t have to but maybe he saw something in Kanye or Kanye saw something in Common, you know maybe Kanye said ‘I want to be around people like Common as this dude is authentic,’ whatever the situation is as I don’t know how it went down but Kanye is open to doing things. Also he may want more quality around him as eventually the bullshit artists are going to go away.
Nobodysmiling.com : And we will be left with quality. Do you think we are going through a transition phase?
Ralph McDaniels : Yes most definitely as music is all over the place. The world is much bigger now than the five boroughs and if you are going to put out music through big companies you have to be able to touch all the little places. Now if it was just about New York back in the day that was what it was, we were just happy to go to Manhattan if you were from say Brooklyn and go to the Latin Quarter and perform there, or Union Square and you could become legendary based on just those performances, KRS One, you know whoever was performing you could become legendary based on the trip you took into the city. Now its not like that, now you have to go around the world, you have more places to go out and do shows at, you can go to Philly, you gotta go to Atlanta, you gotta go here, you gotta go there, you have to go out of the country to become known.
Nobodysmiling.com : You have worked hard to become the people you are, the likes of you, Russell Simmons, and many aspire to be like rappers and entrepreneurs such as yourself, but people don’t appear to want to put the work in, do you agree?
Ralph McDaniels : I think just in general people want things right now. This isn’t just a hip-hop problem, this is business in general, kids coming out of school want it right this second, they don’t want to do whatever it took us to get to that point. You know if it took you 15 years then the kids today would want to do it in a year. That is just the way they think. That is just corporate America having you think like that and the digital world we live in. You know people try to jump into positions right off the bat, you know they are in that position but they don’t know what it took to get to that position the work that had to be put in. You know they were good enough and clever enough to get there, but now they are sitting there and they don’t know what to do. That happens all the time.
Nobodysmiling.com : There is no longevity in the game anymore.
Ralph McDaniels : There is very little Soul in the music. I was talking to someone the other day about directors that make videos and I was saying how the way the videos were being made nowadays, the color wasn’t right or the edit was a little off and it didn’t have the ummphh. You know it’s like people are making something that looks like something else and only lasts for four weeks and then will be forgotten.
Nobodysmiling.com : But there appears to be no thought going into projects anymore, you know you listen to an album and maybe half of it is decent the other 50% you can live without.
Ralph McDaniels : Because people put out a bunch of projects you know like two albums in a year and you got to flip your music over so fast unless you are extremely good like a Jay-Z, other than that, you know I look at Nelly, you know here is a guy who has sold a lot of records and he keeps putting out the same sound over and over again and people keep buying it. There is a lot of music that comes out of the South which is cool if you can get into that sound and I have got into it. I think people have gravitated towards reggaeton because it is something new, if a new artist is going to come up and he has a little twist on his thing people are going to look at is as a new sound and he might not realize it and he gets lucky. You know people are consuming so much music and just spitting it out. You know most artists can’t even do a show. You know I went to see Jaguar Wright the other night and I was really feeling her because she was connecting with her audience and her audience was solely with her, it may not have been the biggest audience but they knew her, they understood and she understood them and that is what it is all about. You know not just on a real superficial level she knows them, she knows them all the way through, she was willing to let herself be open and not all artists can do that. Like Fat Joe, Fat Joe can’t sell a record and the reason he can’t sell a record is because he has no soul he is part of that corporate feel. You know I tell him you are talking above people and not at them and you know every once in a while Stevie Wonder may put out an album and not everyone would be feeling it but his fans would and that is what you have to do at times. You know God is bigger than that record company and the thing is we put that record company bigger than God.
Nobodysmiling.com : But the record companies are controlling things.
Ralph McDaniels : It is sad as you look at some of the people that work at these companies and if you were to take them out of that situation they are lost. You look at them and they are so afraid of loosing their jobs. You know a lot of people I know lost jobs last year and they can’t recover because they never dealt with having to deal with reality because all they knew was how to get that job, they could figure that out but after that what happens, they are in trouble. I just interviewed De La Soul and they said it best, they said we were just happy to be on the radio, you know that one song that Red Alert may have played on a Friday night or I played on the video on my show, you know they were like to come in and see our video or hear our song on the radio was like it, we were happy, you know we could go to the club and we were cool and we might be able to get on stage and do a show somewhere. It didn’t go further than that. For an artist back in the day it was that simple, you would get recognized in the club if people had seen your video or heard your song. Dame Dash said the same thing, when I played the first video they ever did and when he and Jay went out that night, that high lasted them for near two weeks.
Nobodysmiling.com : Where do you see Hip-hop ten years from now?
Ralph McDaniels : It will evolve into something else but not sure what it is but there is enough of us out here that still have that soul to make it continue. I am not sure exactly what it will be. I am not sure if it will get back to what it really was but you never know, who knows. There are kids out here and that is all they know; hip-hop.
Nobodysmiling.com : Do you think had I asked you that question ten years ago you would have predicted the future on point?
Ralph McDaniels : Ten years ago maybe, but prior when I first started out I knew it was cool but I didn’t think it would last forever which is a good thing.
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