VENTURA COUNTY NEWS : Making Waves : Hip-Hop Station Stirs Controversy and Wins Ratings

DJ Divine is getting “Supersonic.”

He grabs the track by 1980s one-hit wonder J.J. Fad, snags another by K-Ci and JoJo and one by dance diva Jennifer Lopez. It’s a rush: Play a song, grab a track or two, rush back to the mike to drop the next request.

“This is Q104-7,” DJ Divine says across the airwaves, unruffled by his last few hectic moments. “Your one spot for all the flava.”

Like DJ Divine, Q104-7-FM is a smooth mix of styles--the pumping beat and the slow, sweet ballad. Old school rap from the ‘80s. Slow romantic jams. Harder-edged urban rap.

And that recipe--the station’s so-called “flava”--has become part of the mainstream in Ventura County, the radio station’s disc jockeys say. Both the music and the station that plays it have been blamed in part for a fracas at a free station-sponsored show at the Ventura Theatre this month, but Q104-7--and hip-hop music--have gotten a bad rap for the incident, they say.

This is the music of the county--of the 805, as they say--not some destructive force from urban Los Angeles inciting riots.

The ratings bear that out. According to Arbitron, Q104-7 has the second-highest ratings in the Oxnard-Ventura metro area--the 106th largest market in the U.S.--just behind Spanish-language Radio Lazer.

In a majority white and Latino county, music made primarily by African Americans is the sound of choice. Just over half the station’s listeners are Latino, according to Chip Ehrhardt, general manager of the station’s owners, Gold Coast Broadcasting.

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That is obvious in the language of some callers, a hip-hop combination of Spanish and English, or when DJ Divine refers to a song as a “rolla”--Spanish slang for a good song. The deejays are black, white and Latino, some from Santa Paula and Fillmore, some from L.A.

“This county is opening up to hip-hop,” said Corn Dog, a deejay who grew up in Pacoima and worked for L.A. stations. “Black, brown, white. We have all the flava. Just like in gumbo, there are a lot of different styles.”

And such incidents as the one at the Ventura Theatre two weeks ago, in which a show sponsored by the station was shut down after the crowd got rowdy, are an anomaly, the deejays say.

Yes, Mack 10, the rapper who reportedly whipped up the crowd, often deals with violent subject matter. But, he has played several times before in the county without a problem, they say. And the music isn’t an incitement to violence, any more than any other genre. Morning deejay Danny G said there were more problems with fights at concerts when he worked at a country station in Modesto.

It’s simply a page from real life, the deejays say. The term gangsta rap, still bandied about in the press, is passe. This is reality rap.

“It’s like a poem,” said Corn Dog. “It simply explains what they’re going through. There’s no way you can blame anyone else for individual violence.”

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The station’s listeners tend to agree. In an on-air discussion following the concert, more expressed disappointment than anything else, saying that a night meant for fun was ruined by a few.

Hip-hop has an established history in the county, and will live through the latest upset, said DJ Scratch, who mixes records live on air. KMIX 106 was founded in the mid-’80s by Howard Thompson, and it was soon clear that there was a firm base of support from listeners for the music of LL Cool J, Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys. When Thompson, who was the force behind the station and its programming, died in a car accident in 1987, hip-hop in the county did, too, Scratch said.

“The station went under. It was a flat-line,” he said. “The hip-hop scene was down. Gangsta rap was getting a bad name.”

Until Gold Coast Broadcasting bought R&B; station Q105 three years ago, hip-hop fans had to look to the south--to L.A.--for the right beat. Q105 suffered badly in comparison with the Beat and Power, hip-hop-oriented stations in L.A.

“Q105 was stuck back in 1990,” said Divine. Q105 was renamed Q104-7 and prides itself on being timely. “We jump on songs before anyone does.”

But even though its popularity has soared in the last few years, the station still struggles to compete against bigger stations from the second-largest market in the country.

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For one thing, performance venues, which popular music stations rely on to promote themselves, are limited here. Q104-7’s relationship with the Ventura Theatre is still strained over the fights and subsequent arrests that ensued after Mack 10’s performance, but there are no plans to cancel a concert scheduled for late November, according to station officials. Other than the Ventura Theatre, the only viable space is the Metro Nite Club in downtown Ventura, and the occasional trips over the county line into Santa Barbara.

“That’s a problem. [The county] doesn’t have an arena built for large [rock and rap] crowds,” said Danny G. “The station has blown up so huge that the concerts have also grown. We need something bigger.”

Q104-7 still manages to bring in the name artists. Warren G--whose “I Want It All,” featuring Mack 10, is a top 10 hit--visited the station recently. Other big names like Busta Rhymes, Montell Jordan and Destiny’s Child have been through the office.

That’s because the station has more room to break songs than L.A. stations, DJ Divine says.

“We’re more independent,” he said. “We don’t have the big boss breathing down our necks.”

What they do have is a growing audience of professionals listening to the music of their youth: secretaries who listen to the station at work, lawyers tuning in on the way to the office.

“It’s not just kids who like hip-hop,” Danny G said. “We’re gonna have 40-year-olds listening to Run-DMC in their cars. We’ll eventually have hip-hop oldies stations. We make everybody happy.”