‘Stretch and Bobbito: Radio That Changed Lives’ Chronicles Legendary Hip Hop Radio Show

2016 felt like a breakout year for television shows and documentaries about hip hop. From The Get Down, Baz Luhrmann’s over the top retelling of rap’s early days, to the scholarly four-part documentary series Hip Hop Evolution, there were more choices than ever before to deep dive into the little stories that make up the genre’s larger history. As someone who grew up in New York City during hip hop’s “Golden Age,” it’s been interesting to see which eras, artists and personalities in rap’s four decades of existence are finally getting their propers.

Stretch and Bobbito: Radio That Changed Lives is one of those little stories that had a huge impact. The 2015 movie is currently available for streaming on Netflix and chronicles The Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito Show, a New York-based college radio program whose influence travelled farther than its weak FM signal should have allowed. It had a religiously dedicated fanbase, and from 1990 to 1998 played host to just about every East Coast rapper of note before they hit it big. Perhaps more importantly, they cultivated an aesthetic appreciation of hip hop that would inspire underground hip hop for years to come. Hip hop authority The Source magazine went so for as to name it the “Best Hip Hop Radio Show of All Time.”

Adrian Bartos, a.k.a. DJ Stretch Armstrong, and Robert “Bobbito” Garcia were essentially hip hop nerds, who would geek on their favorite obscure hip hop sides and had pointed opinions on what made a track good or bad. Both were the products of socially fluid backgrounds; Bartos a tall gangly white kid from the Upper East Side who liked to hang out in Spanish Harlem, and Garcia the son of immigrants, raised in the projects in the Upper West Side before earning a college degree from the prestigious Wesleyan University. Both caught the hip hop bug early and were raised on the legendary New York area hip hop radio shows of Mr. Magic and Kool DJ Red Alert. While Stretch Armstrong made his name as a club DJ, Bobbito was a breakdancer with the famed Rock Steady Crew. They met while Bobbito was interning at Def Jam Records and soon became friends and roommates. After Armstrong enrolled at Columbia, he approached their storied radio station WKCR about hosting a hip hop show. Though rebuffed at first, they eventually allowed them to host the show and broadcast in the graveyard shift between Thursday night and Friday morning.

Being a college radio show meant their signal was lacking and the station’s equipment was often in disrepair, but they weren’t constrained by the commercial demands of mainstream radio. They were hip hop connoisseurs, playing deep cuts by their favorite rappers, or demos by unsigned artists, regardless of their popularity. Stretch and Bobbito liked them, and that was good enough. The show soon became a destination for up and coming rappers, who would often freestyle on the air, sometimes over beats supplied by celebrated hip hop producer the Large Professor. The Notorious B.I.G. and Jay-Z are but two future heavyweights who first garnered notice thanks to a crucial freestyle verse they dropped on the show.

As the show’s popularity grew fans would stay up late, tape deck at the ready, recording the shows for future listening or in Busta Rhymes case, to dupe and sell to fellow hip hop heads. Years before the Internet, tape traders spread the show’s reputation cross country, as did fanzines obsessed with the finer points of hip hop culture, from graffiti to sneaker collecting. The show’s esoteric and curatorial approach to hip hop would be a seminal influence on the emergent backpacker culture of the mid-1990s. As El-P of Company Flow and Run the Jewels says, “It was like all us weirdos who are obsessed with this music had a place to be, and we don’t know each other but we know that we’re all sitting somewhere late at night listening to this music together. It was like the collective consciousness of artists, the kids who would become the next generation of rappers, all were being educated by (Stretch and Bobbito) at the same time.”

As a movie, Stretch and Bobbito alternates between a straight history of the show and segments with many of its famed guests, listening back to the freestyles they performed on it years ago on a battered old Walkman. It’s a fun device, and amazing to see someone like Nas listen back to something he did as a 19-year-old and has probably never heard since. However, they only start doing this halfway through the movie, which gives it an awkward feel. It might have felt more cohesive if it had been the entire focus of the film, though the loose structure works, echoing the easy going comradery of the original radio show, as seen in archival footage.

The Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito Show eventually succumbed to its own success. In 1996 they began hosting shows on New York’s commercial hip hop and R&B station, Hot 97. Hardcore hip hop heads saw it as a sell out and Stretch and Bobbito began to drift apart as their tastes in music began to diverge. Though their ’98 breakup was acrimonious, they eventually reconciled. In fact, the pair teamed up to create this very documentary about themselves, which was written and directed by Bobbito and whose soundtrack Stretch Armstrong oversaw. It’s a little weird and comes off a tad self-congratulatory once you realize they’ve created a movie all about how important they are, but the proof is in the pudding. Their influence is still being felt to this day and though it’s a less dog-eared chapter in the history of hip hop, it’s still a story that deserves to be told.

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.

Watch Stretch and Bobbito: Radio That Changed Lives on Netflix