The Talk of NYC: On The Radar Radio

Before rap freestyles were readily accessible on YouTube, there was Rap City: Tha Basement. The studio-style show, hosted by hip-hop historian Big Tigger from 1999 through 2005, featured everything from new hip-hop videos to artist interviews and cyphers. It became a hub for rap fans to discover new acts and watch their favorite MCs spit freely in a no-hold-bars environment.



Rap City yielded some great moments back in the day, from Lil Wayne’s iconic freestyle with his red bandana over the mic to a young Dipset flaunting their NYC dominance. Now, 14 years later, journalist and radio host Gabe P is creating new cultural moments for a different generation with his weekly radio/YouTube show, On The Radar Radio.

Having mentored under the tutelage of radio hall-of-famer Angie Martinez as a Power 105.1 intern during his college days at St. John’s University, the 26-year-old Long Island native recognized early on that there was a gap in rap interviewing he wanted to fill.

“For me, I was too young at the time to become a part of the SoundCloud era in terms of media, but that was when I was listening to this shit and watching media and thinking, ‘Bro, nobody here is representing for the young kids,’” he tells Complex in his rainbow-lit Brooklyn studio.

The desire to fill that gap birthed On The Radar—a radio show that Gabe started in 2018 in an empty studio in the iHeart Music building while simultaneously handling Power 105.1’s social media accounts. OTR started out small; Gabe says he interviewed one to two artists a week in the summer of 2018 through 2019. Now, that number has jumped to the dozens, with him shooting anywhere from 10 to 12 new episodes a week and steadily releasing them over the course of a month.

The shift to Zoom in 2020 due to COVID-19 slowed down the show’s progress, but after weathering that storm, On The Radar emerged with strong artist relationships fostered through virtual interviews and a new shared recording studio in Brooklyn—courtesy of R&B artist Devvon Terrell. The studio space that OTR became known for had a ceiling lined with white foam to imitate clouds, and a massive black screen behind a plush couch with the show’s signature logo projected onto it. In the last few weeks, though, Gabe and team were able to move into their own recording space elsewhere in Brooklyn, which now comes equipped with an upgraded LED-version of the On The Radar signage and a slime green and black hexagonal sky. 

The radio show now boasts over 100,000 subscribers on its YouTube channel and has become a pivotal part of the burgeoning New York drill scene, because it offers a platform for any size artist to tell their story and showcase their bars. You don’t need a specific follower-count or level of prestige to be on the show—just some passion behind your music and the courage to step behind a live mic and spit. “Some of the first artists I had up there were Cash Cobain, Leeky G Bando, and Chow Lee, mad funny looking back on that. Those were the first three artists we shot in the main OTR room,” Gabe explains. The show has shifted from being New York dominant to featuring artists from all over the world.

The show has yielded several viral drill moments already, including Chris Patrick’s impressive freestyle, a pre-“Munch” Ice Spice performance that caught the attention of Drake, and recently, an energetic lyrical display from Bobby Shmurda. And outside of the New York drill scene, On The Radar has also featured out-of-town artists like AJ Tracey, Giggs, and more. While the show has been a pillar to the New York drill community, Gabe’s vision is for the program to reach a more global audience.

“As we grow and bring more artists, I get to now bring their world and music to other people, and I think that’s the most beautiful part of it all: [showcasing] people’s lives who aren’t just from New York,” he explains. “I think we’ve done that pretty well with the UK… We’re going to continue to do that with the Afrobeats artists and continue to grow.”

Before conducting his interview with G Herbo, we caught up with the creator and host of On The Radar Radio, Gabe P, to talk about consistently finding new up-and-coming talent for the freestyle series, receiving recognition by the likes of Drake and Nicki Minaj, and how he plans to make the show a global brand.

How did On The Radar begin, and when did it gain traction?

I saw a gap in the industry… My homie Nick and I came up with the On The Radar name, and somewhere in a journal of mine there’s an old OTR design that I drew. I gave that to the graphic designer at Power 105.1 at the time because I was running the social media accounts. The graphic designer was in the cubicle next to me, this was in summer 2018. I gave him the design and he made me the logo. Then I found a little side room in iHeart and I asked my boss, “Hey, I just want to do interviews. I don’t want anything crazy. Just a space to do one interview a week, can I find a space in here.” I connected with the guy who runs the schedule for the studio, booked with him once a week, and brought in interviews once a week while doing my normal job. At that time, I wanted On The Radar to be under Power 105.1 because that would be the name to help me get bigger artists, but they wanted me to build it up on my own. I didn’t understand it at first, but I definitely understand it now, for obvious reasons why it’s important to build my own brand. So from 2018 to 2019 I would just bring one or two artists there a week and do interviews. I wasn’t doing any real big artists early on, but one of the dope artists who first fucked with me were Phony Ppl out of Brooklyn. If you know them, you know. 

When did you see it start to gain traction?

We were doing one interview a week for a while, and then at the top of 2020, I started doing more… I started a gaming show on Power called Enter Player 2 where I would play video games with artists. That gave me access to Sheff G and Sleepy Hallow. I did that for a while, and then the pandemic hit and I couldn’t do the gaming show anymore, but I was still doing On The Radar [that] whole time… dropping one to two OTR interviews a week leftover from pre-COVID time, and I was in a tough place because I had no real direction. At the time, I didn’t want to do Zoom because I was just going to wait for the world to open back up, which is funny to think about now.

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SOURCE

https://www.complex.com/music/on-the-radar-radio-gabe-p-interview

By Jordan Rose