Mike Love Presents – The Best of Bad Boy Radio Freestyles (1997-2007)
Thursday, May 28th, 2009
Seriously, I’m not one to wax nostalgic often but when I do look back at the Bad Boy Radio days, I realize today’s on-air DJs could never have the “freedom” that we had in our heyday. The cultural impact of Bad Boy Radio is still felt on Chicago radio today so I wanted to compile a lesser known but important segement of the show, the live in-studio freestyle sessions. By the millenium it was rare that a rapper could kick a verse without cursing so our interviews with rappers stayed just that, interviews. But in the early days every MC that stepped foot in the studio had to kick a verse. That said, there are some real gems here, from the classic All About The Bad Boyz (arranged by me) to Common’s freestyle over the Invocation beat (from One Day It’ll All Make Sense), to the late Big Pun exchanging verses with Fat Joe, to Twista jappin over Aaliyah’s One In A Million instrumental, to the entire Flipmode squad rhyming for 10+ minutes over a Master P track, to Juice’s crazy & completely off the dome freestyle, to DTP’s Shawnna noticibly stepping her rhymes up when former Infamous Syndicate partner Teefa steps in the studio, to KanYe West & Lupe Fiasco bringing the era to a close. Radio history was made.
