Funkmaster Flex has been a pillar in the Hip Hop community since he began rocking parties at age sixteen in the early eighties. After emerging during Hip Hop’s Golden Era, he was hugely responsible for putting the East Coast back on the map when the West Coast was dominating the Hip Hop landscape in sales at the cash register. While maintaining underground Hip Hop music, his respectable mixtape series as well as spinning by the playlist makes Flex is a prize fighter staying at the top of the ranks in his weight class through competitive energy. It makes us swoon and want to turn our ear towards him going after your favorite rappers, record label executives and radio personalities.
But since Hip Hop’s balance of power had stretched far beyond New York City down towards Interstate 95 South and the Midwest after Andre 3000 declared at the 1995 Source Awards “The South something to say,” Flex went beyond his New York City stronghold for the next hot records to stay fresh and spin on his mixshow. Aside from becoming a business magnate and pitchman for brands including Starter, Lugz and Virgin, he helped develop Hot 97’s annual Summer Jam into a worldwide attraction.
In 2015, the question is whether Flex, and even Hot 97, still matters to the Hip Hop community? It obviously does because every market needs a duality for radio stations. Listeners yearn for rivalries and love to see two warring factions attack each other for the gold. Nothing has changed. Just like cultural staple WBLS 107.5FM’s Mr. Magic needed a nemesis in WRKS Kiss 98.7 FM’s Kool DJ Red Alert and Chuck Chillout. Both used to compete at the dawn of Hip Hop on FM radio and let fans decide who would rule the airwaves, in the true competitive essence of Hip Hop. The rap industry as a whole needs New York’s competitive energy to push sales and media attention, like the NCAA needs Duke vs. North Carolina to make the college basketball the biggest draw possible, based on both team’s historic rivalry in their mutually shared backyard. Or, think to The Joker when he declared to Batman in The Dark Knight, “I don’t want to kill you. You complete me.” Funk Flex and his Hot 97 colleagues are always taking shots on the air at their Power 105 FM rivals and vice versa. All to pique the interest of their mutual target demographic of 25-to-54 year old demographic. Hot 97 has been playing catch-up to Power in the Nielsen ratings for awhile. Yet, we still tune in for beefs and breakdowns of the Meek Mill vs. Drake faux-beef. Despite the salacious memes and petitioning on social media that urged the purist in many of us that called the ousting of Flex from the airwaves, we consciously still participated on that fateful Monday this past July to prove that we still care about Flex’s opinion.
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As Fetty Wap is playing the Billboard singles charts without an album released, Flex was the first to co-sign the New Jersey-bred singer on his nightly mixshow. Plus with his allegiance to New York artists like Action Bronson, Joey Bada$$, A$AP Rocky and his “Mob,” French Montana, Troy Ave, DJ Statik Selektah, Hip Hop fans can see how the East Coast block is back on the map. Despite the fact that Flex is now middle-aged at 48 years old, Hip Hop has finally gotten over the ageist stigma of being “washed up” simply because you’re officially in the “30-and-over league.” As some of our biggest stars like Rick Ross and Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, Eminem, Kanye West, plus Big Sean needing a verse from middle-aged E-40 for “IDFWU” to make it one of the genre’s top-selling singles of 2014, and we obviously have not forgotten about Dre, each are well over the hill. This proves the younger generation of Hip Hop artists and fans finally are looking to respect their elders, and Flex falls well into that category.
Even though Apple is making its presence felt with Beats1 Radio with Dr. Dre, Drake, and Q-Tip, Hip Hop fans still look to the opinions and interviews on the station because it’s New York. This is the location for most major labels and most importantly publications like Complex and Def Jam. The Big Apple is still a litmus test market for how music is going to be “the next” to impact the Hip Hop and R&B industry. Flex remains a rook on Rap’s chessboard who can “castle” to protect the station from a checkmate of obscurity from their competition. Especially since their former “Queen” Angie Martinez who left Hot 97 for rival Power 105 FM in 2014.
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The Hip Hop faithful in New York City need their elder statesman as the main attraction. Rap purists tune in for his old school mixes as well as other types of fans who may not be so cerebral and just want to have fun with what they hear, one ear out the other for turn-up tunes. Whether Hot 97 rises or falters, Flex is still most certainly the captain of that ship “where Hip Hop lives,” and we will remain interested to listen in— bombs dropped and all— wading in the Hudson River.
