JULY 15, 2017 | PUBLISHED BY BANDINI

Today (July 15), “Uncle” Ralph McDaniels will resume his longstanding post as one of the hosts at the Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival. As he has done in four different decades, Ralph finds Hip-Hop culture in the flesh and transmits his excitement, passion, and belief onto the masses. A DJ, college student, and employee at a fledgling cable company, the Queens, New Yorker combined those things all in one. This week’s TBD examines McDaniels’ critical contributions to Hip-Hop culture as a host, VJ, and broadcaster. He put it on video and shared it via Video Music Box. A move that Uncle Ralph made in the early 1980s sparked a revolution of music video shows that would be replicated by big media companies worldwide

Host Justin “The Company Man” Hunte spoke with Ralph. Like many visionaries, McDaniels’ idea of disseminating Hip-Hop culture was first met with resistance and confusion. “[In the early 1980s], we pitched it as a video show. People didn’t know what that was because. MTV existed, but nobody saw it because there was no cable. Nobody had cable. My sell was edu-tainment. We wanted to educate kids [about] what’s going on in New York City as well as entertain them with the videos. They’re not going to listen unless you give them something they like, and this is something that young people are into. They are into music videos.” Long before Rap City, Yo! MTV Raps, YouTube, or WorldStar, Ralph knew what the people wanted, and how to properly feed them the content.

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