Some of your favorite TV One shows, Baisden After Dark, Bill Bellamy’s Who’s Got Jokes, Black Men Revealed, LisaRaye: The Real McCoy and Omarosa’s new show The Ultimate Merger, fall under an empire known as Radio One. If you’re not aware, Madame Cathy Hughes founded the Radio One company, which blossomed into several radio and television subsidiaries. Of course, we hail Hughes for her phenomenal stature as a black female entrepreneur. We also invited her to share thoughts about black radio’s problems today.
Madame Noire: Why does black radio play music that many have criticized as being reckless about black women and the community at large?
Cathy Hughes: Every generation, every youth’s generation, gets criticized by an older generation on the issue of content. In my generation it was “Puff the Magic Dragon,” which was about smoking marijuana, and “Let’s Go Get stoned,” with Ray Charles. So many of the Beatles songs that are still million-sellers have [reckless content] and ”Golden Lady,” by Stevie Wonder is about cocaine, so every youth’s generation [faces this issue]. These sexual lyrics go back to the ‘50s and the ‘60s. Clarence Carter, when he came out with “Stroking,” people were complaining, [because those were sexual lyrics:] stroke it to the left; stroke it to the right. It’s a recurring problem.
