Uncle Luke: While I was traveling in Europe in the early 90’s, on the road with 2 Live Crew, I heard about these pirate radio stations in England. There’s only one radio station there for the whole country, so they needed different outlets. They had offshore pirate radio stations in boats, and vans driving around trying to stay on the move. It’s like a run-hide-chase type thing with them and the government.
You brought the concept back home?
Uncle Luke: Yeah, I started thinking about the situation here in Miami at that time. They weren’t playing any rap music on the radio. There was this nerdy guy, Steven Gray, who was working at WEDR 99 Jamz at the time. I told him I wanted to set up a pirate radio station. He did the research and came up with the plan to put one together. He started playing music out of his house and tweaked it. He gave me a transmitter and I put it in my Team Disco. We used to broadcast out of our nightclub, and people would come from all over town just to hear me on the radio. We’d play the uncut version of records, and talk about stuff like high school sports and teenage pregnancy. We used the negative stuff to preach positive things to kids, cause that’s who was really listening. After that, it took off. Before you know it, everybody wanted a pirate station. Steven was selling the equipment to everybody, and more and more people got involved. It got flooded down here. A lot of guys would come down here and hear about it and go back to their city – especially Orlando – and put up pirate radio stations.
How did you avoid the FCC?
Uncle Luke: At the time when we started up, the FCC was running around regulating. They had big budgets and offices in every city. But due to the budget cuts, they had to eliminate the local FCC offices, so that turned out to be a good thing. Now, they just have regional offices, like one in Atlanta and one in New York. They’d still come through and give you a warning, but we were located in the ‘hood and white people were just plain scared to come to Liberty City. When they started to come around, we’d just get more creative.
You don’t have a pirate station anymore, right? Why’d you get out of the game?
Uncle Luke: Part of the reason I got out was because of all the controversy happening with me in the record industry. Some of the right wing people were saying, “He has a pirate radio station too!” so I had to back away from it. Miami is where it all started, though. We started it here, because even to this day there’s a lack of support for local artists. I think pirate radio stations should be on the air in every city in America. Instead, you’ve got national chains of radio stations where corporations buy them up and they become stock market properties. The problems come from that corporate structure. Radio stations used to be owned by individuals in their markets, so the programming was much more geared towards the local scene. The first problem was the surge of the consultants. These consultants sit in New York or Minnesota and program the radio stations out of their market, so they never program local music. That’s actually against the FCC rules and regulations. A certain amount of programming is supposed to be focused on the local community, but nobody regulates that right now. Everybody’s violating that law. These stations are playing twenty-seven songs over and over and none of those songs are local artists.
Once you started broadcasting, did the corporate stations notice you?
Uncle Luke: They definitely took notice, because you could see the change in their programming once people started listening to us. Word of mouth spreads quick. We appeared on the Arbitron ratings. We received a share of the market. It was bananas. People were dying to listen because it was different. It was easy for us, cause we were the club DJs. We knew what people wanted to hear. The easiest test is to see what makes ‘em dance. You could program a radio station just by going to the nightclubs. [Corporate stations] don’t do that. The reason underground stations are so powerful is because they play local music and they’re local DJs. They have a good understanding of the area.
Why is pirate radio so strictly regulated? The FCC says it can interfere with airport transmissions.
Uncle Luke: No, it doesn’t interfere with those signals because they’re broadcasting on the same frequency as a regular radio station. Plus, technology has gotten much more intricate and advanced.
What about bleeding over onto other radio stations? Is that a problem?
Uncle Luke: You can bleed onto another station, but you’ve just got to make the adjustment. The number one rule of pirate radio is to find open air.
Is there a lot of competition between pirate stations and corporate stations?
Uncle Luke: I’m proud of those DJs in Orlando because they hate 102 Jamz. At one point it was almost coming to blows. They hate ‘em with a passion and I did a little bit of research to understand why. They hate ‘em because they’re so successful. 102 Jamz don’t even play local artists.
Aren’t there ways you can legally operate a low-powered station?
Uncle Luke: Colin Powell’s son, the head of the FCC, is in bed with Clear Channel and he just shut all that shit down. A lot of people don’t realize that’s one of the reasons I’m trying to educate these hip-hoppers to vote. A republican FCC is much more strict. When you get a democratic president, you’ll get an FCC chairman that’s more sensitive to people of color and our needs. These corporations are spending a lot of money in these presidential campaigns, and a lot of it has to do with airplay. The Republicans proposed a bill to ban pirate radio stations and go in and lock them up and it passed. It’s a felony now.
Does pirate radio affect corporate radio?
Uncle Luke: At a point it did. It forced them to play music they really didn’t wanna play. It’s another avenue for new artists to break through. If a record is a big hit on the pirate stations and in the clubs, the [corporate] radio stations have to make a decision. If they choose not to play the music, then the station doesn’t get any respect. If it wasn’t for pirate radio stations, I probably wouldn’t be here today. It was one of the main components of my success and the success of hip-hop in Miami, period. They weren’t playing no rap on the radio back then, zero. No Run-DMC, no Jazzy Jeff. The pirate radio stations work like mix CDs work in other areas. You can get on the air and say exactly what you wanna say and talk how you really wanna talk. When you open your mouth, people know exactly what’s on your mind. Unrestricted programming.
How many stations are there in Miami?
Uncle Luke: Miami? Oh, my God. I don’t know. It’s gotta be at least twenty stations. They’re on one minute, off the next.
How did you make money off pirate radio?
Uncle Luke: I didn’t sell ads, I was just using it to promote my parties. There are some stations that sell ads.
In Miami, what’s the relationship like between the pirate stations and the major stations?
Uncle Luke: When I got my show on [corporate station] WEDR, I brought some guys in from pirate radio. That’s how DJ Khaled was discovered. He couldn’t get on the air in Orlando so he moved to Miami and got on a pirate radio station. I liked what Khaled, Teddy T, and Papa Keith were doing on the air, so I invited these guys to my show on Friday nights, the Luke Show. I suggested that they should be hired, and Khaled became a regular mixshow DJ on WEDR. Teddy T got a job at [Miami’s] Power 96, and Papa Keith is on [Miami’s] 103.5 The Beat.
Why is pirate radio viewed as such a threat?
Uncle Luke: Hip-hop is so valuable because it’s our ghetto press. That’s how we communicate. Hip-hop is like our CNN. There’s regional news, yeah, but it’s national. That’s why there’s a big fight to get rid of it. Our communication, man, they can’t take this shit. These big corporations buy up all the radio stations and cut the playlist to twenty songs that they pick out of New York. Then, they’re working hand-in-hand with all the other major corporations like Def Jam and J Records. That’s how the little man gets squeezed out, and then what’s gonna happen? The death of the music industry. It’s dying a slow death, crashing and burning. We need a new form of the underground; another form of independence.
