Rhythmic Top 40
Encyclopedia : R : RH : RHY : Rhythmic Top 40
Rhythmic Top 40, also known as Rhythmic Contemporary Hit Radio and "Rhythmic Crossover," is a music radio format that includes of a mix of dance, and upbeat rhythmic pop, hip-hop, and R&B hits. While most rhythmic stations' playlists are comprised of that mentioned above, there are some tend to lean very urban with current hip-hop, urban pop, and R&B hits that gain mainstream appeal.
They will not play music with a harder rock sound or songs that sound too adult for their taste, leaving those songs to the conventional Top 40 stations.
Another factor of the format is like mainstream Top 40, they too also attract a broad based audience. However most of its core listeners makeup a multicultural mix of African-Americans, Hispanics and Asian-Americans as well as a core group of teens, young adults (mostly 18-34) and young females.
History
The origins of Rhythmic Top 40 can be traced back to the 1980s when several Urban contemporary outlets began adding artists from outside the format onto their playlist. But it wasn't until January 11, 1986 that KPWR Los Angeles, a former struggling adult contemporary outlet, began to make its mark with this genre by adopting this approach. It would be known as Crossover because of the musical mix and the avoidance of Rock at the time. Billboard magazine took notice of this new format and on February 15, 1987, it launched the first Crossover chart. But by December 1990 Billboard eliminated the chart because more Top 40 and R&B stations were becoming identical with the rhythmic-heavy playlist that were also being played at the crossover stations at the time. Billboard would later revive the chart again in October 1992 as the Top 40 Rhythm/Crossover chart. On June 25 1997, it was renamed the Rhythmic Top 40 chart as a way to distinguish stations that continue to play a broad based rhythmic mix from those whose mix leaned heavily toward R&B and Hip-Hop.
Over the years since its inception the genre has grown and evolved, but not without criticism. Traditional R&B outlets claim that the Rhythmic Top 40 format does not target or serve the African-Americans community properly, while traditional Top 40 stations claim that the format is too urban to be Top 40. However, those claims have since been all but quieted with both R&B and mainstream Top 40 stations taking cues from the format they criticized.
In recent years the format has managed to carve its own niche by breaking such diverse acts such as Gwen Stefani, Britney Spears, Natalie, Baby Bash, Sean Paul, Eminem, Christina Aguilera, Frankie J, Jennifer Lopez, The Pussycat Dolls and JoJo. It has also embraced other sub genres as well with the emergence of dancehall and reggaeton acts such as Daddy Yankee and Nina Sky.
See also
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.