[RADIOLAB INTRO]

JAD ABUMRAD: Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT KRULWICH: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab.

ROBERT: The podcast.

JAD: Okay, so Robert, here's a question that I've been puzzling over for a long time.

ROBERT: Okay.

JAD: What is the fruitiest fruit that you know?

ROBERT: My fruitiest fruit?

JAD: Yeah.

ROBERT: Is a plum.

JAD: Well, no. I mean, that's—well, that's yours. I don't want to take that away from you.

ROBERT: No, you shouldn't.

JAD: But when you ask most people that question, they say "apple" or "orange."

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: No. I mean, it's true. Scientists have figured out that when you make a category in your mind, you're not doing it based on, like, a set list of traits, you're like—what you do is you call to mind the prototypical example of that category, and then you measure this new thing against it. And for fruits, prototype is the Gala apple if you ask me. The red, shiny, waxy apple.

ROBERT: You say that somebody has decided that an apple is the fruity fruit?

JAD: They've—they've done experiments!

ROBERT: Oh, they've done experiments.

JAD: They've done experiments.

ROBERT: I bet you bananas outpoll apples for consumption.

JAD: Maybe, but that's not what makes a fruitiest fruit a fruity fruit. It's more about, like, how well it represents the category.

ROBERT: Okay.

JAD: That's what it's about.

ROBERT: Why are we talking about this, though?

JAD: Well, because I've been wanting to explore this in story form ...

ROBERT: Forever.

JAD: ... forever.

ROBERT: But you never have a story, so it's like a—you never find a story.

JAD: But I got one now.

ROBERT: You do?

JAD: It's not about fruit, though.

ROBERT: What is it about?

JAD: It's about this.

[hip hop sample]

ROBERT: [laughs] What is it? What are you talking about?

JAD: Let me explain.

JAD: Hey!

ANDREW MARANTZ: Hey.

JAD: So I met this guy, Andrew Marantz.

ANDREW MARANTZ: I work at the New Yorker as an editor, and I write stuff occasionally.

ROBERT: Wandered in here one day by mistake, I think.

JAD: Super interesting guy, great reporter. And he ended up talking with us about this story he was reporting for the New Yorker about hip hop.

ANDREW MARANTZ: There are all kinds of rappers who are trying to sing, or ...

JAD: And how hip hop might be changing. Because as we all know, this was a genre of music that began in a really specific time and place: Bronx, '70s, Black and Latino kids. But it's since expanded so much that these inevitable questions pop up.

ANDREW MARANTZ: You know, to really simplify it, the more white people come to the party, the more you kind of start going okay, at what point is it—it's clearly okay if everyone in the room is Black, and it's okay if everyone in the room is Black except for one guy.

JAD: Yeah.

ANDREW MARANTZ: You know, if Rick Rubin's at the party, but it's still, you know, Black people at The Tunnel in 1989 or whatever, it's still okay. But at what point—okay, if it's 50 percent white, if it's 75 percent white, if all the people who own the record labels are white, if a majority of the popular rappers are white. Like, at what point—and that's just the racial thing.

JAD: Yeah.

ANDREW MARANTZ: Then there's also sonically the way it sounds, there's the way the production is kind of merged with other forms of music. So then all of sudden you're at a point where you get the sense that there's somehow inherently—that there's something being replaced or taken over.

JAD: Mm-hmm.

ANDREW MARANTZ: You start to have this dilemma.

JAD: Which is, you know, who owns the music now?

ANDREW MARANTZ: And the dilemma is obviously heightened by the fact that everyone knew this was coming. Like, there's never been a form of American popular music as far as I know that wasn't invented by Black people and co-opted by white people.

JAD: And Andrew in his piece, and in this story, focuses on a guy who sits right at the heart of that dilemma, one of the most influential DJs in hip hop today.

JAD: Peter Rosenberg is his name?

ANDREW MARANTZ: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

JAD: So tell me how you came to him.

ANDREW MARANTZ: I mean, the first thing was ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Peter Rosenberg: Hot 97, the most important hip hop radio station in the world.]

ANDREW MARANTZ: ... listening to Hot 97 because I like rap and I want to know what is popular.

JAD: Mm-hmm.

ANDREW MARANTZ: And I was listening and I heard this guy who they kept calling "Rosenberg." And I was like, "Is that Rosenberg, is that like 'Whoopi Goldberg' Rosenberg?" Like, what does that mean?

JAD: Yeah.

ANDREW MARANTZ: And then I looked him up and I was like "No, it's just a guy named Peter Rosenberg."

PETER ROSENBERG: One-two one-two one-two one-two. I mean listen, doing NPR is already pretty soft, you know what I'm saying?

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: He actually works just down the block from us.

JAD: Is this gonna hurt your cred in some way?

PETER ROSENBERG: I know! Possibly.

ANDREW MARANTZ: So he's a guy, born in 1979. He grew up in ...

PETER ROSENBERG: I grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

JAD: Is that 'Chevy' with a CH?

PETER ROSENBERG: Yes, it is.

JAD: And Peter says when he was about nine, his brother ...

PETER ROSENBERG: My brother's name is Nick Rosenberg.

JAD: ... his brother started staying up late and making tapes.

PETER ROSENBERG: DJ Red Alert, Marley Marl. He would start taping those guys on the radio.

JAD: At that point, 1987, '88, here in New York they were the only two people playing hip hop, and it was late at night.

PETER ROSENBERG: And at the time, I didn't consider myself a music person. I was only eight, but I really was like, "Yeah, music's okay but I'm really in—" I was just obsessed with sports. And then at some point, I was like, "Oh, no, no. I love this!"

ANDREW MARANTZ: It was punk, it was rebellious, it was interesting. It was just cool.

PETER ROSENBERG: You know, now to be honest, it's almost clichéd when people say that, like, "Who would ever guess you'd be into hip hop?" I'm like, "I don't know. I would, 'cause I know a million white kids who are into hip hop." At that time though, it was not common. It was very much something that was a badge of honor for both of us that we really, really loved it. And I was extra cool because I was super young. I remember one day—here's a great thing. I traded Javon my Poison tape. I had Poison's album on tape.

ROBERT: Ooh.

PETER ROSENBERG: "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" album. I traded that Poison tape for his Biz Markie tape. I was like, "This is the best trade ever!" It was Biz's Goin Off. Like, it's a classic album. And then at some point, my dad went out. He was coming home from work one day, and he said he stopped at Nobody Beats the Wiz. He asked the guy behind the counter what, like, the good rap albums were. And the kid actually gave him a pretty good recommendation, and he bought me a tape called "Girls I Got 'Em Locked" by Super Lover Cee and Casanova Rud.

JAD: [laughs]

ROBERT: What a father you have!

PETER ROSENBERG: I know! So my knowledge base was always very high very early. I had some friends in elementary school and we would talk about rap a little bit, but quickly I exceeded them. And then I got to high school and I ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, "Fight the Power" - Public Enemy]

PETER ROSENBERG: ... really took seriously being the rap guy. When I heard the passion in Public Enemy, like, that resonated with me. Like, N.W.A. scared me ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, "Straight Outta Compton" - N.W.A.]

PETER ROSENBERG: ... but made me interested. I just thought this is—I was like, "Yo, these guys are killing people! Like, this is really happening!"

JAD: [laughs]

ROBERT: Was it really happening, or were you going to the movies in song form?

PETER ROSENBERG: I was going to the movies, but to me I didn't know the line.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, "Straight Outta Compton" - N.W.A.]

JAD: Okay, so Peter goes off to college, mid-'90s.

PETER ROSENBERG: Did college radio.

JAD: Hip hop show. And then as he gets out, decides he wants to do this for real.

ANDREW MARANTZ: He secretly, you know, wanted to be a hip hop DJ, but people were not taking him seriously.

JAD: You know, white kid from the suburbs. Didn't compute.

ANDREW MARANTZ: He couldn't get on what was then called "urban radio."

PETER ROSENBERG: So I ended up doing a year on the Howard Stern station.

ANDREW MARANTZ: He was doing, like, talk radio, you know, whatever kind of radio. So he kept calling Hot 97, and the program director then was a white guy from Utah.

PETER ROSENBERG: You know, I gave him my spiel. I was like, "I'm super passionate about hip hop. I'm super honest. I don't think there's ever been someone who looks like me and is from my background who has as honest and loud a voice as me. I really think I'll be something different." And he basically said, "I don't doubt you."

ANDREW MARANTZ: "But no. What are you talking about?" I mean, they had token white people on various shows, but it was either you're super white like Lisa G, she was on the morning show for a little while.

JAD: I remember that.

ANDREW MARANTZ: She was super white.

JAD: And that was kind of the joke.

ANDREW MARANTZ: Or you were Bobby Konders, who does the Sunday night reggae show, who you would never know he's white.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Bobby Konders]

ANDREW MARANTZ: Because he just talks like he's Jamaican and he only plays Jamaican music, he only hangs out with Jamaican people. So you had to be one of those two things.

JAD: Where you denied your whiteness or you just were like, "I'm gonna ..."

ANDREW MARANTZ: "I'm gonna be the butt of the joke."

PETER ROSENBERG: White bosses have often been like, "You're really talented, but I don't know. Would people really like you? Like, we don't—" they talked to me the way we're talking right now and think if I'm able to relate to you this way, why would our audience relate to you?"

ROBERT: If I say yes, then why would my audience say with me?

PETER ROSENBERG: Because—because they assume their audience is so different than them.

JAD: Which might have been true—for a while. And then 2007 ...

ANDREW MARANTZ: Ebro Darden took over.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ebro Darden: Ebro Darden in the building. What's up, man?]

JAD: This is him on air, Ebro.

ANDREW MARANTZ: A half-Black, half-Jewish guy from Oakland. And he got it.

JAD: That hip hop had changed.

ANDREW MARANTZ: It's no longer so small and simple and provincial that we can go on pretending this is only a Black and Latino thing.

JAD: So when Peter came to the station and gave him the pitch ...

ANDREW MARANTZ: "Hey, I'm PMD."

PETER ROSENBERG: Which was my old name back then.

ANDREW MARANTZ: "'Cause I'm P—P for Peter, MD for Maryland. You can call me PMD." And Ebro was like, "No, you're Rosenberg." [laughs]

PETER ROSENBERG: Ebro gave me my parents' name, more or less.

ROBERT: [laughs]

PETER ROSENBERG: The hook is like, "That's your name."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Peter Rosenberg: Hot 97, Peter Rosenberg. Summer Jam 2007 ...]

PETER ROSENBERG: There's a video on YouTube of—it's called, I think, "Peter Rosenberg does Summer Jam 2007." And it was my first day on the job.

ANDREW MARANTZ: Summer Jam is the biggest event of the year at Hot 97. It's this big show at Giants Stadium.

JAD: All the top acts.

PETER ROSENBERG: I showed up there, and so my first day was just walking into Giants Stadium, parking my car by myself, getting a backstage pass, and being given a mic flag that says "Hot 97," the place I've always wanted to work, and being told, "Go up to all the famous artists who are here and just get interviews." And if you go back and watch that video and see how much of an ass I make of myself ...

JAD: [laughs]

PETER ROSENBERG: ... I say to T.I., I think I go, "Is this your first Summer Jam?"

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Peter Rosenberg: First, T.I., have you done a Summer Jam before?]

PETER ROSENBERG: And he looks at whoever he's with and they both start laughing.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Peter Rosenberg: I'm asking. Have you done many Summer Jams?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, T.I.: Today is your first day on the job.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Peter Rosenberg: It's my first day on the job!]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, T.I.: I can tell!]

PETER ROSENBERG: And I cannot believe in retrospect I survived this day.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, radio announcer: The Cipha Sounds and Rosenberg Show with K Foxx on Hot 97.]

JAD: Not only survived, he became the host of two shows on Hot 97, a late night underground show and also the big weekday morning show.

ANDREW MARANTZ: And Rosenberg's brand is all about realness.

PETER ROSENBERG: The Realness.

ANDREW MARANTZ: His segment in the morning is called "The Realness." His late night show, Sunday night to Monday morning, is called "Real Late with Peter Rosenberg." It's all real, real, real.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Peter Rosenberg: It's gonna be real.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Peter Rosenberg: Is it real?]

ANDREW MARANTZ: Because that's the central question: can I be a real hip hop guy even though I'm Peter Rosenberg from suburban Maryland?

PETER ROSENBERG: Well, I think you're raising an interesting point. Most outsiders rarely become insiders.

JAD: But Peter says the key to understanding him is that he's kind of both. Like, on the one hand, he is this suburban white kid from Maryland—he doesn't pretend to be anything but. But on the other hand ...

ANDREW MARANTZ: I mean, a big part of Rosenberg's job is to go to shows and blogs and get tapes from people and find the new thing. So he has a stable of, like 20 or 30 underground artists who are making tapes and, you know, trying to pass around beats.

JAD: And what's more insider-y than that? Plus ...

ANDREW MARANTZ: He is like a purist.

PETER ROSENBERG: I've always liked—there's a certain pure form of hip hop, and because of that ...

ANDREW MARANTZ: You know, in the kind of rap nerd community, they talk about certain things that are like, lyrics and listening for the metaphors and the intricacies of the music. They talk about boom bap beats.

PETER ROSENBERG: Big sounding, drum-wise.

ANDREW MARANTZ: Boom bap! Like a ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, "We Can Get Down" - A Tribe Called Quest]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, "Return of the Boom Bap" - KRS-One]

ALI SHAHEED MUHAMMAD: It's just a feeling of sound, of energy.

JAD: This is Ali.

ALI SHAHEED MUHAMMAD: Ali Shaheed Muhammad. A Tribe Called Quest.

JAD: We called him up because he is the DJ and producer for A Tribe Called Quest. And for Peter, Tribe? They're the prototype.

PETER ROSENBERG: I was obsessed with them.

JAD: They were—they are—like that shiny red apple. They define the category. And in fact ...

PETER ROSENBERG: I guess up until my wedding weekend ...

JAD: ... the best weekend of his life, he says, or I guess now it would be his second best, was when he was ...

PETER ROSENBERG: I was 14.

JAD: And he went to a Tribe show.

PETER ROSENBERG: It was everything I ever dreamed a hip hop concert experience would be.

JAD: He says he spent the whole time at the front of the stage, waving this hat around that said "Dawgs."

PETER ROSENBERG: D-A-W-G-S.

JAD: Because one of the lead rappers was named Phife Dawg.

PETER ROSENBERG: And I held up my Dawgs hat so much at the concert that eventually Phife ...

ROBERT: The Phife.

PETER ROSENBERG: The Phife Dawg acknowledged me the same way I would do now if I was hosting and someone kept doing it. He just gave me the hand like, "I got it. You can put the hat down now."

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: This was a weird moment for hip hop, not just for Peter but for hip hop in general. Like, the early '90s, this was a moment when you had stations like Hot 97 converting to all hip hop formats, playing, you know, N.W.A., Public Enemy, Tribe Called Quest. Groups, you know, that were suddenly attracting loads of white suburban fans. Yet if you listen to their lyrics ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, A Tribe Called Quest: Listen up, everybody. The bottom line ...]

JAD: ... some of them, at least, they were about stuff those fans could've never experienced.

ALI SHAHEED MUHAMMAD: Struggle, oppression, lack of opportunities in the ghettos. The fact that you have young Black teenagers who are living in a society where they're told that they will never amount to anything, and that their lives have no value, no worth. That, to me, becomes the angst and the frustration and the rage which is the embodiment of the music.

PETER ROSENBERG: I wanted to be a part of this—of Black culture. Like, I felt—I've always been very interested in loving things that required defense.

JAD: And hip hop is definitely that. From the beginning, it was initially shunned by Black radio because it was thought to be indecent. Then you had the whole Tipper Gore thing.

PETER ROSENBERG: I love things like that. I don't know why. And I think I do always see hip hop in that sort of light—in the way that it needs defense.

ANDREW MARANTZ: Can we talk about your fracas with Nicki Minaj?

PETER ROSENBERG: Of course! That's my paragraph two. If, God forbid, I drop dead tomorrow, it's "Peter Rosenberg of Hot 97, blah blah blah." Next paragraph, "In 2012 ..." [laughs].

ANDREW MARANTZ: Nicki Minaj is this rapper from Queens. Hugely talented rapper.

JAD: Oh, wait. She's not the one on American Idol, is she?

ANDREW MARANTZ: Yeah.

JAD: Oh, okay. Now I have a face for the name.

ANDREW MARANTZ: Uh-huh.

JAD: Okay.

ANDREW MARANTZ: And she kind of blew everyone away on this Kanye song called "Monster." You know, she was with all these big rappers—and Jay Z was on the song—and she blew everyone out of the water.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, "Monster" - Kanye West]

PETER ROSENBERG: I thought she was really good. I thought she was a natural. And beautiful. Like, I thought she was the total package. In fact, the year before it all happened ...

JAD: 2011.

PETER ROSENBERG: ... I pulled her aside at Summer Jam and I said, "Hey, I think you could be the greatest female artist of all time, the greatest female rap artist of all time."

ANDREW MARANTZ: Right.

PETER ROSENBERG: "And I just want you to know that in thinking that, I'm gonna hold you to a high standard. So I probably will say things about you."

ANDREW MARANTZ: You said all of that?

PETER ROSENBERG: Yeah. In a really quick moment too. It was really brief. She probably wouldn't remember it, but it happened.

ANDREW MARANTZ: I would remember that if someone said that.

PETER ROSENBERG: And I said, "I think you could be the greatest."

ANDREW MARANTZ: She had all this underground cred, right? And then how did she spend that cred? Well, she started making poppier and poppier records.

JAD: Culminating in the following song which, if you are me, you've not been able to get out of your head for a week.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, "Starships" - Nicki Minaj]

ANDREW MARANTZ: She made this song called "Starships."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, "Starships" - Nicki Minaj]

PETER ROSENBERG: "Starships" was a blatant pop song.

ANDREW MARANTZ: Lowest common denominator.

PETER ROSENBERG: So I didn't—I didn't like the song.

ANDREW MARANTZ: You listen to that song, and you cannot tell that it's not a song by Katy Perry or P!nk or it could be anyone.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, "Starships" - Nicki Minaj]

ANDREW MARANTZ: So all of a sudden, who is the underground cred cop ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, radio announcer: The Cipha Sounds and Rosenberg Show with K Foxx.]

ANDREW MARANTZ: ... but Peter Rosenberg?

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Peter Rosenberg: Sometimes I gotta keep it real. Can I, though? For a second?]

ANDREW MARANTZ: Several mornings for his segment called "The Realness," he would get on there and play a clip of "Starships."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Peter Rosenberg: Check out this "hip hop!"]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, "Starships" - Nicki Minaj]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Peter Rosenberg: If that's hardcore hip hop, then would this song be considered another hardcore hip hop song?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, "Dynamite" - Taio Cruz]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Peter Rosenberg: Oh, no! No, stop it. That's not fair. That's not fair. Maybe she's just ...]

ANDREW MARANTZ: There is a real question being asked at the center of this, which is: what is this music, where the boundaries are? And also, is this where hip hop is going? Is it just "Let me cash in and just follow the trends of what white music is doing?"

JAD: Would it be too strong to call it, like, you felt betrayed as a—as a music fan?

PETER ROSENBERG: Yeah, it felt like come on! In the moment it felt like you're a hip hop star, why would you—why would you do this? This is a—this is not for us. When core hip hop artists make pop songs it upsets me because it can be a moment that blurs and messes up hip hop.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Peter Rosenberg: To be frank, this song right here, "Starships" is literally one of the most sell-out songs in hip hop history.]

JAD: Just to put that comment in a little tiny bit more context for just a second, now we mentioned of course the history, right? That so many forms of popular music had been invented by Black people, co-opted by white people—jazz, blues, rock, we all know the story. Now according to Frannie Kelley ...

FRANNIE KELLEY: One of the hosts of a podcast called Microphone Check.

JAD: ... which is a hip hop podcast.

FRANNIE KELLEY: From NPR Music.

JAD: According to her ...

FRANNIE KELLEY: 2013 was the first year that no Black artist had a number one song. And ...

JAD: ... since 1958, since they started the Hot 100 charts, this is the first year where no Black artist has made it to number one. Now this may be a blip, may not be, but what's clear is that there is a new force in town, a style of music called EDM.

ANDREW MARANTZ: EDM is—is a meaningless acronym that stands for "Electronic Dance Music." And it's like, you know ...

PETER ROSENBERG: It's more like a "oomph oomph oomph."

ANDREW MARANTZ: ... than a boom bap.

JAD: It's sort of an amalgam of synth-y, dance-y, techno-y, Euro-poppy stuff, and it has taken over.

FRANNIE KELLEY: What happened was EDM was just so glaring and fast, and then to see that sort of start to creep into hip hop was scary for people.

JAD: Because according to Frannie Kelley, what's scary is that EDM is a style of music that's meant to work on any dancefloor with any crowd. So in a way, it's like a music without history—on purpose!

FRANNIE KELLEY: A lot of the criticism of, like, EDM is that it is all about money, it is the corporatization of a genre with a long history. So in some ways I think the root of the protest is: don't sell our stuff to the highest bidder.

JAD: That's a little context. Anyhow, after ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Peter Rosenberg: ... one of the most sellout songs in hip hop history. Listen to it!]

JAD: ... after Peter trash talks Nicki Minaj's "Starships," we arrive at that year's Summer Jam.

PETER ROSENBERG: 2012.

ANDREW MARANTZ: And that year, Nicki Minaj was gonna be one of the big headliners.

JAD: Plan was for her to perform on the main stage inside Giants Stadium.

ANDREW MARANTZ: But outside the stadium in the parking lot ...

JAD: Earlier in the day ...

ANDREW MARANTZ: ... there's the Festival Stage, which is where the underground backpack kids hang out, and that's Rosenberg's zone. So he's introducing the acts on that stage.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Peter Rosenberg: Now hold on, before I get to the real hip hop [bleep] of the day, 'cause I see the real hip hop heads sprinkled in here. I see 'em!]

PETER ROSENBERG: I said, in trying to hype up this crowd ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Peter Rosenberg: I know there's some chicks here waiting to sing "Starships" later. I'm not talking to you all right now. [bleep] that bull[bleep]!]

PETER ROSENBERG: ... the crowd kinda goes "Ooh!" And a little—but, like, there's a cheer. Nothing crazy, though. Just a regular cheer. It's not like—I didn't realize a bomb was dropped. I—I forgot that not only was the Festival Stage live streaming, but it was live streaming on her website.

ROBERT: [gasps]

ANDREW MARANTZ: And her core fans ...

PETER ROSENBERG: Her Barbz, as they're known ...

ANDREW MARANTZ: ... are 13-year-old girls.

JAD: And when they see Peter say that ...

ANDREW MARANTZ: They go wild. And they go out on the internet and say, "Who is this Rosenberg guy? What is his deal?"

JAD: And he says within minutes ...

ANDREW MARANTZ: It got back to Nicki and her people.

JAD: Before she went on stage?

ANDREW MARANTZ: Before she went on stage.

JAD: Oh, interesting!

ROBERT: Ooh!

ANDREW MARANTZ: So then there's this backstage conversation. Rosenberg, basically as soon as he gets offstage, his boss ...

PETER ROSENBERG: My boss comes out, pokes his head around the curtain and goes, "Did you say something about Nicki Minaj?" I was like, "Uh." And I legit didn't remember. I'm like, "Uh, oh yeah, yeah. I did." And he's like, "Yeah, well she just canceled the show. So she's not coming."

JAD: What?

PETER ROSENBERG: And I was like—I was like, "Oh!" And I looked at my phone and I go to Twitter. Sitting on the stage, the crowd's all out there. I'm at Giants Stadium. And I look on Twitter, and I go to Trends, and on the main Trend page it just says, "Peter Rosenberg." And I was like, "Oh, wow! This is nuts!" This is a Sunday afternoon at, like, five o'clock, and I was, like, the third-most trending thing in the world. I was just watching my name get bigger in a moment.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, radio host: Hot 97 DJ Peter Rosenberg ...]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, radio host: One of the big dramas to happen in New York ...]

PETER ROSENBERG: I was reading just my name over and over and over again.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: The dude Rosenberg is the dude from Hot 97.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, radio host: Peter Rosenberg.]

ANDREW MARANTZ: All these people saying, "I don't know who this guy is, but he's dissing my favorite artist."

[ARCHIVE CLIP: I'm just really disappointed, and I don't understand how ...]

PETER ROSENBERG: I was reading, "Who is this guy?"

[ARCHIVE CLIP: What he said that "Starships" song is not hip hop.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, radio host: Peter Rosenberg.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Man, that's not real hip hop.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: One man say one thing and everybody suffers for this.]

JAD: He must've gotten some serious cred from this.

ANDREW MARANTZ: He—yes. Not only was his name getting out there, but it was getting out there as "I'm the gatekeeper."

JAD: "I'm the defender."

ANDREW MARANTZ: "I'm a defender of the real—the realness."

PETER ROSENBERG: I couldn't appreciate it at first because I didn't know if I was maybe gonna get fired for messing up Summer Jam.

ANDREW MARANTZ: Because Nicki is beefing with the station.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Nicki Minaj: I wouldn't dare come on your stage or even say something to my fans ...]

ANDREW MARANTZ: She's calling in, you know, mad at the station.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Busta Rhymes: You better apologize to Nicki Minaj.]

ANDREW MARANTZ: Busta Rhymes gets involved. He's trying to broker a deal. Funkmaster Flex gets involved.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Funkmaster Flex: We exchanged some emails.]

ANDREW MARANTZ: They're trying to reach a detente.

JAD: Wow.

ANDREW MARANTZ: It becomes a months-long process.

PETER ROSENBERG: Nuts!

ROBERT: If they say unanimously, "No, you were wrong about that song. This is our song. We include it in our map of what's going on. Stop trying to draw the map." What do you say to that in your—inside of you?

PETER ROSENBERG: I think my gut reaction is: you know nothing, you don't draw the map. You need people like us to draw the map or there's nothing—or what is there? If we don't get to determine certain things, who does? We should leave that to the crazed 13 year olds who may not even like this artist in two years?

FRANNIE KELLEY: As a woman hearing that ...

JAD: This is Frannie Kelley again.

FRANNIE KELLEY: ... this idea that young girls will hear "Starships" and say, "Oh, that's hip hop. That's what I want to hear, so I'm gonna judge everything against" is wildly unfair to the intelligence of young girls.

JAD: Frannie says they can figure out the difference between hip hop and pop. They don't need help.

FRANNIE KELLEY: It's insulting.

JAD: And furthermore ...

FRANNIE KELLEY: When he chose "Starships" to single out, it felt revealing of another layer to this debate that people weren't saying out loud.

JAD: Which is that when people refer to things as quote ...

FRANNIE KELLEY: "Real hip hop."

JAD: ... that's usually code for "aggressive, street, masculine."

FRANNIE KELLEY: "Authentic."

JAD: Whereas when they say "Pop?" That's usually code for ...

FRANNIE KELLEY: "Feminine." Which is a perversion of the music. Period. And so there is this idea that, you know, people make songs for the ladies, which implies that all the rest of them are songs that we can't hear or, God forbid, understand.

JAD: Okay, so all of this was swirling around. Months go by ...

ANDREW MARANTZ: And then ...

JAD: Fast forward ...

PETER ROSENBERG: ... to the week before the next Summer Jam.

ROBERT: This is 2014? 2013, I mean?

ANDREW MARANTZ: 2013, yeah.

JAD: The feud is still going.

PETER ROSENBERG: At this point it's a year later.

JAD: But, according to Andrew, Nicki decides it's time to settle, maybe because she wanted to perform at that year's Summer Jam.

ANDREW MARANTZ: So ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, radio announcer: Nicki Minaj sits down with radio station Hot 97 to clear the air with DJ Peter Rosenberg.]

ANDREW MARANTZ: ... she comes to the station before Summer Jam to make her peace. And they do this whole interview with Rosenberg and Nicki Minaj. And Ebro, the boss, is moderating.

JAD: Really? On the air?

ANDREW MARANTZ: On the air.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ebro Darden: Rosenberg. So this is on you, sir. Where would you like this interview to go?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Peter Rosenberg: I don't know. I'm excited—I'm excited to see Nicki, because it's very odd to have someone that you don't know very well who's become like such a fixture in your life. Like, I've always wondered—I was always like, "I wonder if Nicki knows that she's come up every day in my life for 350 days?" Like, point that where "Starships" got played at my wedding, and it was like the biggest deal at my wedding was "Starships" playing at my wedding.]

JAD: After some opening remarks, Peter basically apologizes.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Peter Rosenberg: I am sorry that things went as left as they did. I never had ill feelings about you as a human being. Ever.]

JAD: Basically, he says, "I have nothing against you as a person."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Peter Rosenberg: Beyond my sort of distaste for that song.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Nicki Minaj: That's cool. It's water under the bridge.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Peter Rosenberg: Do you mean that?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Nicki Minaj: Yeah.]

JAD: She then goes out of her way to apologize to her fans for skipping out on the gig.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Nicki Minaj: But ...]

JAD: Then the gloves come off.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Nicki Minaj: You know what? Like, I get it. Like, that's what you do. I guess to me, I just don't know your resume. You know what I'm saying? So I never found you funny. I never found you entertaining. I never found you smart. I just found you annoying because, you know, I grew up in New York. I've grown up on Hot 97. Like, I know Angie and I know Flex and Mister Cee and all these people. Whether they like me or whether or not we get along, I just know their resume. But like with you, I was just like, "Who are you?"]

ANDREW MARANTZ: "I don't recognize you as an authority on what's authentic."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Nicki Minaj: To me, you don't have enough of a resume to make those comments.]

ANDREW MARANTZ: "Who are you to tell me what to do?"

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Nicki Minaj: What people don't understand is that when I came—when I was doing this, I took a lot of [bleep] from people, from men.]

PETER ROSENBERG: She was like, "My whole career, there have just been random men who have, like, been in no position to stop me and tell me why I'm not good enough."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Nicki Minaj: I just—I just dealt with a lot of stuff from guys.]

PETER ROSENBERG: "And here you are, I don't know you. You're just some random man." And then Ebro jumps in and kind of jokingly trying to lighten the mood goes ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ebro Darden: And you're white!]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Peter Rosenberg: I didn't even say that.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ebro Darden: White boy!]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Peter Rosenberg: I never—she never implied anything about white. She implied ...]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ebro Darden: I did.]

PETER ROSENBERG: And then she jumps in and goes, "No, no, no. That too."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Nicki Minaj: Being white also struck a chord with me if I'm being honest, because I was like, "Yo, he's on a Black station dissing Black people." Like, I don't—I just didn't like the feel of it.]

JAD: And here you get back to that idea, that category idea that, like, when you don't have that, like, set list of criteria to help you figure out who's in and who's out, it's all about a gut feeling. And to Nicki Minaj at that moment, to have a white guy from the suburbs tell her, a Black woman from Queens, that she's not hip hop enough, it just felt wrong. But then Ali Shaheed Muhammad from Tribe Called Quest put it this way: maybe it feels wrong, but maybe this is actually evolution.

ALI SHAHEED MUHAMMAD: 40 years into it, that's what it's supposed to be. At some point we're all gonna be so far removed from the origin that no one would then qualify, really. But if you're going to be the person to carry the torch I guess, to be the gatekeeper, then at some point what qualifies you? It's your heart, and it's that feeling. You could be Bill Gates' kid and still understand the struggle enough to be like, "Yo, I'm riding with that."

JAD: Yeah.

ALI SHAHEED MUHAMMAD: "And I want to fight for that."

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Nicki Minaj: I was like, "Yo, he's on a Black station dissing Black people." Like, I don't—I just didn't like the feel of it.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Peter Rosenberg: Who am I gonna diss if not Black people? I'm on a hip hop station. I have to diss Black people sometimes. If I diss white rappers ...]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ebro Darden: Absolutely not. You watch your mouth, sir.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Peter Rosenberg: You only want me to go at Mac Miller? I mean, who am I gonna ...]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ebro Darden: And Macklemore.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Peter Rosenberg: And Macklemore.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Ebro Darden: You have plenty of artists now.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Peter Rosenberg: I used to only diss white rappers, but as I've gotten further along I felt I earned the right to diss all things I didn't like.]

ANDREW MARANTZ: Rosenberg to this day takes credit for her saying, "My next project is gonna a—a hardcore hip hop album."

PETER ROSENBERG: When her album's awesome, you will see me take lots of credit for it. Absolutely.

ROBERT: [laughs]

PETER ROSENBERG: She called me the other day, and I was half asleep. And she was like, "Hello? I know you're thinking 'Why is this bitch calling me?'" [laughs]

JAD: [laughs]

PETER ROSENBERG: And I was like, "Not at all. What's going on?" And she wanted to ask me about her new song. And the amazing thing was she wanted to ask me an opinion on something. And it makes me feel ultimately super special.

JAD: So we asked Peter, like, so what does that mean? Like, if you are now a gatekeeper, you a white guy from suburban Maryland on a very commercial radio station, what does that mean for hip hop? Does that mean that hip hop has by default been co-opted? Because, like, here you are.

PETER ROSENBERG: I don't know. I mean, I feel like hip hop is in a better place now than before I started doing this. I would break it down on paper and go, "Let me tell you where we were when I started my underground show in 2007. And let me tell you where I think we are in 2014. And let me show you how many of those artists I broke and supported and worked hard with and talked to the label about and pushed, and how many I had an involvement with, I think you'd see a really high percentage."

JAD: So that was part of his answer. We asked Andrew the same question.

ANDREW MARANTZ: It's complicated. I mean look, I don't think that hip hop is dead. There was some quote, Frank Zappa, I think, said, "Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny."

JAD: [laughs]

ROBERT: [laughs]

ANDREW MARANTZ: Like, I don't think hip hop is ...

ROBERT: That's wonderful!

ANDREW MARANTZ: Yeah.

ROBERT: That should be our title.

JAD: "Hip Hop Isn't Dead, It Just Smells Funny!"

ANDREW MARANTZ: But I do think—I think hip hop isn't dead, it just smells funny.

PETER ROSENBERG: Well, it always smells a little funky.

JAD: Huge thanks to Andrew Marantz and the New Yorker magazine for letting us borrow Andrew for a beat. Definitely check out his story in the New Yorker magazine. It's called "Old School." It's a great story. It goes into way more detail than we could get into here. Also, big thanks to Frannie Kelley and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, who together they cohost the NPR podcast Microphone Check. And well, I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: Thank you for listening. Oh, and before we go, just one last thing. So lest you think that, like, hip hop has arrived at this new, like, quote "post-racial" situation, you know, for a second we were like, "Maybe?" We were just thinking out loud with Peter. And he was like ...

PETER ROSENBERG: No way! No. God, if there's one thing I could demand that air during this piece, it would be this statement right here: nothing has driven me more crazy over the course of my time in hip hop than white people who come up to me and go, "You know—" and it used to be really bad when he first came out. "You know, Eminem is just so talented. I don't even listen to hip hop, but Eminem? I mean, now he's good!"

ROBERT: [laughs]

PETER ROSENBERG: Well, if you don't listen to hip hop, why the hell should I care what your thoughts on Eminem are? And how do you know that he's good? No, you know that he's white. You know that he's white. And is Eminem good? Yes, it just so happens that he's as good as you—as you're guessing he is. But that's random. You don't even know that. Eminem could be any—could have been one of the dudes from Milli Vanilli and you would've thought it was great.

ROBERT: [laughs]

PETER ROSENBERG: And that drives me nuts. And so anytime I think about, "Oh, we're post-racial," just look at what Eminem concerts look like and what the sales look like, and you can be instantly reminded that even though Eminem has no experience that average suburban white America could ever identify with—I mean, culturally, the experience he went through is much more common with someone who went with—went through a Black struggle than any sort of regular white suburban life. And this is a guy who came up in a rough situation in a million ways, was the odd man out all the time, never had anything. And then makes it, and all of a sudden, the fact that people are like, "Oh, I so identify with him! What is it? Why do I identify with a guy who's from a trailer park, from a history of drug abuse, who raps about things that I'd be terrified of if a Black man was saying it? But I identify with him so much!"

PETER ROSENBERG: And then Eminem, because he's amazing, raps about this same thing. He does a song called "Dear White America" where he tells them you're an idiot. You let your kids listen to me but you wouldn't let them listen to anyone else just because I'm white? You're an idiot! And they love it.

JAD: [laughs]

PETER ROSENBERG: It's unbelievable!

[LISTENER: My name is Ayushi Shrivastava and I'm calling from the University of Chicago. Radiolab is supported in part by the National Science Foundation and by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org.]

 

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