WHPK funding crisis

J.R. Nelson and Leor Galil in yesterday’s “Gossip Wolf” column: In April, the student-run Program Coordinating Council, which allocates student government money every year, gave WHPK $20,600 for its next annual budget—about 35 percent of its $57,490 request. … This year the council covered only operating costs, so WHPK needs help—it wants the university to … Read more

Fighting for Chicago’s place in hip-hop history

In 1984, University of Chicago radio station WHPK had become the first in the midwest to launch a hip-hop show, and within a couple years it was the Chicago scene’s megaphone. [Darrell] Roberts learned about the station from a neighbor who’d found WHPK while scanning the FM dial during a WBMX commercial break. “He said he heard some rap,” Roberts says. “He said it was unusual—because he heard cursing on there.”

chicago-reader:

Fighting for Chicago’s place in hip-hop history
Darrell “Artistic” Roberts of Chi-ROCK Nation has worked to document the culture he loves for more than three decades—and now he’s finally publishing a book.
By Leor Galil

On the cover: photo by Kim Kovacik. For more of Kovacik’s work, go to kimkovacik.com

Read this week’s issue online.

Download this week’s print edition as a PDF.

Find a print copy in Chicago: https://chicagoreader.com/map

whpkrecordlibrary:

“You fucking dumb mediocre plank!” – Mark E. Smith himself (requested by Peter, Isaac, and Ed, all former DJ’s)

My favorite single comment in the WHPK record library, “signed Lord Marquis E. Smith” in response to the hilarious “Rule where? Slovenia? This is solid Fall, yes, but love must be deaf as well as blind ‘cause Mark’s wife [Brix] sure can’t sing"”