Even as KDHX continues to make news with its imminent move to Grand Center, a show from the radio station’s archives is set to celebrate a mark of its own in a week’s time. African Alert, the station’s flagship hip-hop show at the dawn of the ’90s, will be marking a 25th anniversary on Saturday, Dec. 7, with a show at the upstairs venue of 2720 Cherokee.
The night’s organizer is Ron Butts, best known as DJ G-Wiz, a documentary filmmakers and longstanding member of the local hip-hop community. As a DJ, he’s still active on the club scene today, as well as a host on 95.5 fm. His on-air roots are inextricably tied to KDHX.
African Alert was founded by Russ Giraud, who took on G-Wiz during the show’s early days. The latter would provide the live mixing on what was a three-hour show. Though some of the dates have become clouded over the years, G-Wiz remembers the essentials of that moment.
“It started on Tuesday nights, from 11 p.m. to 2 in the morning,” he says. “I’d leave the skating rink (where I deejayed) to get to the station to do my mix. And then it shifted to Friday nights, 9-midnight; I think that was about a year-and-a-half later. Three hours is how long the shows ran back then. I’ve tried my best to figure out the exact dates, but I know that Russ had it in late ’87; that’s when it started. And John Anderson was doing the show with him. Russ brought me on in 1988. Shortly after that, John stepped down, so it was me and Russ. He left in 1992, and I kept the name for another year, then changed it to Street Vibes. The music industry was changing. There wasn’t enough music to do a whole show weekly, based on that theme. I’m thinking it ended in ’92 or ’93, one of those years.”
From the start, African Alert specifically attempted to play a conscious version of hip-hop, with positive themes and lyrical content that aimed away from violent or sexist feels. It was also, quite simply, one of the few hip-hop shows of any kind on FM radio in St. Louis.
“This show was pretty instrumental to exposing St. Louis to the golden era of hip hop,” says Jim Utz of Vintage Vinyl, who describes himself as “a cheerleader” for the upcoming event. “[It] always kept things on a positive tip musically, as well as all things culturally.”
G-Wiz says that “it’s interesting, because two hours back then was not enough. I guess being on the radio, being able to play songs you didn’t hear otherwise, was an exciting thing. So the time always went fast. The other things we did for the show was to take callers and have song vs. song battles. That let listeners comment on the songs. It was pretty fun at the beginning. It was raw and real.”
It was also well advertised, in the form of a bumper sticker was absolutely everywhere at the time the show ran. Asked about the stickers, G-Wiz laughs, having heard people comment on that for years now.
“Yeah, a couple of people still have them,” he says. “I have like five of them. And I have the actual banner. When he passed the baton, Russ handed me the banner. That’ll be hanging up at the reunion show. The last time I know that banner was hanging was in 1991, when African Alert did a concert and brought Gang Starr to St. Louis, back when they were a new act. Russ had those stickers designed; he had t-shirts, too. I know he sold those, but he passed the bumper stickers everywhere, for free. Specifically in the Loop area.”
When he decided that the anniversary show was something too good to pass up, G-Wiz initially went to Giraud, to get his blessing for the event.
“He said, ‘You can if you want to,’” Wiz says. “I’d been thinking about it, but I couldn’t do it without asking him; he came up with the name. But he said that I should do what I want to; he’s supposed to show up. I’m trying to get most of the people who came through the African Alert show to come out. African Alert was the grandfather to all the other hip-hop shows on 88. I’ve reached out to people from Street Vibes, The Science, Rawthentic, Deep Krate Radio, all of them, to participate and show up. A lot of them have gone on to commercial radio and this is a function that we can have together and play the music that we played back in the late ’80s and early ’90s. There’ll be local artists playing and we’re bringing in a national headliner.
“The thing about 2720,” he adds, “is that I needed a place that would allow me the freedom to allow me do what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to do it in a club. The show wasn’t built around the club scene. We played non-commercial, underground hip-hop. And the particular club scene as we know it today is not about that.”
G-Wiz says that he wants people to come out who both heard the show live and those who might not have any sense of its role in local hip-hop.
For them, he says, “I want this particular show to be a history lesson. People who came up on that show became DJs, MCs, producers, from being touched by that show. It was on at a time when commercial radio was saying thing like ‘You will never hear rap on our station’ or ‘We’re all such-and-such, with no rap.’ This was the launch of real hip-hop in this city. Stations might’ve played a song here, or there, but it would late at night. Our music was underground, at the time.
“And I’m really trying to let people know this isn’t a typical rap show, a typical hip-hop show,” he says. “The music is going to be pretty much radio-friendly. It’s not going to have a lot of vulgarity. I was never into that anyway, on or off the show. I’m not into disgracing women in lyrics. This is a show balanced for males and females, young and old. We’ll be playing songs that people haven’t heard in years. And we’ll play the videos of the artists. That’s the entertainment part of it, we’ll keep people engaged in what’s going on, musically and visually.”
The show will feature live sets by Wise Intelligent, Lyfe Stile, Nato Caliph and 3 KNGZ, with host DJ Kut and G-Wiz spinning between acts. The door at 2720 on Saturday, Dec. 7 will be $12, though you can knock $2 off by wearing red, black and green.
“We’re trying to get people out with those colors on,” G-Wiz says. “Anybody can do all-white or all-black parties. I wanna do a red-green-black party.”
