Hip-Hop Heeb

Peter Rosenberg on the air at Hot 97. The station is doing something “outside the box,” says a hip-hop magazine editor. Michael Datikash

Peter Rosenberg on the air at Hot 97. The station is doing something “outside the box,” says a hip-hop magazine editor. Michael Datikash

by Eric Herschthal
Staff Writer

It was a little after 6 a.m. on the last Wednesday in July, and Peter Rosenberg was discussing whether it was OK to prefer one color of rear-end over another. Young Berg, a popular African-American singer, had recently caused a minor stir on hip-hop radio for saying on air that he preferred “dark butts.”

Rosenberg was having none of it. “He sounds like a moron,” he said. He turned to his radio show co-host, Luis Diaz, who nodded in agreement. Then they told their assistants to cut to Young Berg's sound bite as part of a segment for their new morning show airing on New York’s pre-eminent rap station, Hot 97.

After a tumultuous three years in which the station withstood a

large public outcry for a skit it broadcast mocking the 2004 tsunami relief efforts, as well as a shooting that took place in front of its offices and its parent company’s depressed stock value, Hot 97 (WQHT-FM 97.1) is trying to turn things around.

To do so it replaced Miss Jones, the troubled disc jockey on whose morning show the tsunami skit appeared, with Rosenberg and Diaz just three weeks ago. Together, the duo is attempting to redeem the still prominent, though battered, station.
“It’s a little bit of a weird transition for Hot 97,” said Rob Markman, an editor at the hip-hop magazine XXL. “But one door closes for a DJ like Miss Jones and another one opens for guys like Rosenberg and Diaz.”

Rosenberg, a Jew from Maryland, is not entirely new to the station: he was hired 14 months ago to host a 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. Monday underground hip-hop show, as well as a weekend morning show with Diaz, also known as Cipha Sounds. But the new time slot is a significant step up. And it is also something of a gamble — never before has a white, Jewish, non-native New Yorker held the high-profile DJ spot at the radio station. “It might raise some eyebrows,” Markman said of Rosenberg, “but he’s proven himself on the underground show. He’s done his homework.”

Along with Cipha Sounds, Rosenberg fills in the 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. weekday slot left empty by Miss Jones’ departure last month. The rest of her morning time slot, from 7 to 10 a.m., is being filled by a syndicated hip-hop show beamed in from Los Angeles. But, as Hot 97’s program director Ibrahim “Ebro” Darden, who decides all programming for the station, wrote in an e-mail: “Not sure when and/or if they will be the main show, but they are positioned well.”

Between on-air bull sessions with Cipha Sounds, Rosenberg took time out in his office to discuss his quick rise from the ranks of the unemployed less than a year ago to the airwaves of New York’s most revered hip-hop station.

Not so strangely, the story begins where Rosenberg now resides, at Hot 97. Founded in 1993 and owned by the Emmis Communications Corporation, the station had been a major player in promoting hip-hop in the ‘90s, when the genre was fast gaining broad public appeal. Funkmaster Flex, the station’s premier DJ who is still a major hip-hop entity, provided Rosenberg with his introduction to hip-hop. Rosenberg’s older brother Nick played Flex’s syndicated broadcasts frequently in their Maryland home. Through the show, Rosenberg became enthralled with rap acts like the Notorious B.I.G., KRS-ONE, Nas and the Wu-Tang Clan. “When I was 14, I really began to listen to Flex,” Rosenberg, now 29, said. “That’s when I said, ‘That’s what I want to do.’”

During high school, he saved enough money to buy two turntables and began DJ-ing high school dances and house parties. At the University of Maryland-College Park, where Rosenberg went to college, he began DJ-ing on air. “I called myself the Jew on ones and twos,” he said, referring to the hip-hop colloquialism for turntables.

He also interned at the premier D.C.-area hip-hop station, WPGC-95.5 Jams, and upon graduating in 2002 he was offered a job to host a show for a smaller market affiliate in Ocean City, Md. Soon, though, he was fired. Rosenberg says he was misquoted in an article that portrayed him bad-mouthing the whole of Washington D.C.-radio. Soon after, he was hosting another hip-hop talk show carried by XM Satellite Radio. But by 2004, that show folded, too.

“Then,” he said, “I started making YouTube videos.”

Back in his office, Rosenberg got up from a plush purple velvet couch pushed back against an aqua-and-purple-wall — the handiwork of Miss Jones, who sat there less than a month ago. He Googled his name and the words “Duke sucks” at his computer and the now famous YouTube video came up. “This is Why Duke Sucks,” a Weird Al Yankovic-style rap parody made in early 2007, turned Rosenberg into a minor media celebrity. (Maryland has a rivalry with Duke.) He was featured in XXL magazine, on the popular college Web site CollegeHumor.com and had a fleeting week on top of YouTube’s most-viewed charts. After failing earlier to get Hot 97’s attention with letters to its directors, the YouTube video finally did the trick.

“We got a feel of his comedic sensabilities [sic] and overall passion for hip-hop,” Darden, Hot 97’s program director, wrote in the e-mail. “I wanted to integrate [him] into the HOT97 brand.” In the fall of 2007, Rosenberg was hired.

Barely three weeks on the new higher-profile “Morning Show,” the program’s official name, Cipha Sounds and Rosenberg have been making headway. Their show has already played host to prominent rappers like Fat Joe, The Clipse and P. Diddy. While ratings data for particular shows is unavailable, Hot 97’s managers say they still hold the lead for overall listeners of New York hip-hop radio in the most important 18 to 34 demographic.
According to the most recent statistics — from the spring of 2008 —compiled by the Arbitron Diary Survey, which tracks ratings, Hot 97 has 906,000 listeners compared to the 739,000 of Power 105 (WWPR-FM 105.1). The station is Hot 97’s main rival, founded in 2003 and owned by Clear Channel Communications, Inc. But close listeners like Markman, from XXL, say the chemistry between Rosenberg and Cipha Sounds is palpable. “When Cipha and Peter Rosenberg get together, they’re entertaining,” he said. “Power, they go for the tried and true,” he said, noting that Power 105 hired Ed Lover, formerly of Hot 97, to host its weekday morning show. “Hot 97 is doing something new and outside the box.”

As much as Hot 97’s Morning Show is for hip-hop music and commentary, Rosenberg does not shy away from politics or race. He deliberately uses his given name and even plays up the fact of his Jewishness as a kind of pre-emption of any potential bias. Every Morning Show opens with a pre-recorded skit featuring a stereotypical old Jewish lady saying, “This nice Jewish boy, it sounds like I’ll hook him up with my niece or something.” (Rosenberg said he had an older woman in the office do the recording.)
In any event, Rosenberg says he has heard virtually no unsavory remarks about Jews and that any verbal anti-Semitism heard in hip-hop has since faded since the early-‘90s. It was then that the group Public Enemy received flak for lyrics perceived as anti-Semitic. But Jews have always had a close relationship to hip-hop, from much-admired producers like Lyor Cohen and Rick Rubin to the seminal group The Beastie Boys, all of whom are New York Jews. If Rosenberg has any concerns, he says they mainly stem from the fact that he is white. “Especially after Eminem, I was worried,” he said. “Damn. Another white guy stole my shtick.”

In the realm of political commentary, Rosenberg feels on safe ground. Since the Obama campaign began, black-oriented radio and hip-hop stars have played a heightened role in political discourse, serving as liberal counterweights to conservative radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage. Hot 97 and Rosenberg are no exception: “I’m pretty liberal on most issues,” said Rosenberg, whose father M.J. Rosenberg is a director at the Israel Policy Forum, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C. “I don’t mask that.”

But for the time being he’s keeping his political commentary to a minimum. He thinks there is an over-saturation of pro-Obama commentary at the moment, and, anyway, he uses his underground show on Mondays, which he still hosts, as his soapbox. “That’s when I get in my best anti-O’Reilly rhetoric.”

Which is not to say he’s playing it totally safe on the Morning Show. After talking with this reporter between on-air segments, Rosenberg got the signal that he was about to go live. He put on his headphones, leaned into the microphone and began: “I’m Peter, Peter Rosenberg, and I’m Jewish. And I went to a pretty, pretty white high school.”

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