In the ’90s, California Music Channel Became the MTV of Bay Area Rap

Editor’s note: This story is part of That’s My Word, KQED’s year-long exploration of Bay Area hip-hop history.

My family didn’t have cable television, but music videos from Andre Nickatina, Mac Dre and Spice 1 were in steady rotation in our home. To catch glimpses of our favorite Bay Area rappers, my siblings and I would rush home from school and tune into the California Music Channel.

I still have VHS tapes I recorded in the ’90s of my favorite CMC broadcasts: Messy Marv running plays as a mob boss in “On the DL.” Mr. ILL and Devon spitting game at a house party in “Can U Swing It.” Dancers strutting in San Quinn’s “Shock the Party.” It was CMC that encouraged my generation to revere Bay Area artists as much as we did their internationally known counterparts.

Looking back three decades later, CMC’s influence on Bay Area hip-hop is undeniable. The small station allowed artists to share their music, style and slang on television screens from Vallejo to Daly City, paving the way for bigger opportunities. And it became an early-career stepping stone for beloved media personalities like Chuy Gomez, Sway Calloway and San Francisco Giants announcer Renel Brooks-Moon.

“It’s funny, because we actually had some videos that were shown on CMC before they went national, or got picked up by the major labels,” says Gomez.

In a region that prides itself on out-the-trunk, independent hustle, CMC created infrastructure for the Bay Area rap ecosystem of the ’90s to thrive.

The Bay’s own MTV

Rick Kurkjian didn’t know CMC would become a hip-hop destination when he founded it on Aug. 31, 1981. He was starting out in his radio career, and music videos had begun to emerge as a new medium. In 1980, KTZO ran a program called TV-20 Dance Party, a Top 40 show featuring local high school students. BET went on air that same year, and MTV played its first music video in 1981. Locally, KSTS launched Magic Number Video.

Kurkjian was fascinated. After seeing Doobie Brothers and Michael Jackson videos on Soul Beat, the Black-owned network out of Oakland, he knew he was ready to take a chance. On March 1, 1982, CMC premiered to 25,000 households as a half-hour show that came on twelve times a week on Oakland Cable Channel 12.

In its early years, CMC had a pop focus: Some of its first music videos were by the Village People, British new wave band Bow Wow Wow and Scottish singer Sheena Easton. Kurkjian remembers visiting labels like Capitol, A&M and RCA to request music videos for the station.

“I’d come down from San Francisco in my three-piece Aberdeen suit, which was the only suit I had. I’d walk in and it’s all dark, and I go back to this artist promotion guy’s office, and he’s in a Hawaiian shirt,” Kurkjian recalls. “It was great. I felt so out of place but I also felt like I was representing San Francisco, the city. It was kind of fun.”

By 1983, CMC reached over two million households on Saturday nights on KCSM, an educational access station out of San Mateo. A year later, CMC went on to broadcast Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. on KTSF until 2018.

CMC becomes a home for hip-hop

In the late ’80s, hip-hop grew from a Black and brown youth subculture into a commercial force, and its music videos began to play in living rooms across the country.  A hip-hop-oriented video request show called The Box began broadcasting out of Miami in 1985. Yo! MTV Raps aired in 1988, and BET debuted a competing show, Rap City, in 1989. This was also an exciting time for Bay Area rap: Too Short and MC Hammer went platinum, and the Bay found itself in the national spotlight.

CMC’s programming began to shift with the arrival of Andy Kawanami in 1992. “I was just an intern answering the phones, and came to Rick with a crazy idea of, ‘Let’s do a hip-hop late night show,’” says Kawanami, who eventually became CMC’s program director. “He let us run with it.”

After the first Hip Hop Friday episode aired, Kurkjian got a voicemail from a concerned viewer in Berkeley who was in disbelief at what they had just seen. But Kurkjian wasn’t discouraged.

“I said, ‘Andy, you lit some fires. Let’s go with this. You do it every night,’” he recalls. “So it was hip-hop late night on CMC, and that became very popular.”

Soon, Kawanami recruited Chuy Gomez, whom he had met while interning at the radio station KSOL. At first, Gomez was skeptical: “I didn’t want to be on TV,” he recalls.

But Gomez agreed to fill in for Kawanami, and eventually took over as host. “After being on it for a few years, it was just awesome to have folks recognize you and see you — but it was weird because all of a sudden I felt like Dennis Richmond,” Gomez recalls, referring to the beloved KTVU anchor.

CMC gave Black artists a platform to take up space beyond their neighborhoods, which helped spread their music and message throughout the greater Bay Area. The music video for “Game Recognize Game,” a 1993 track by San Francisco rapper JT the Bigga Figga, is a perfect example. When it dropped, millions of CMC viewers watched JT do the Get Low, an iconic dance from the Fillmore, in a crowd rocking his Get Low Recordz merch. Though hyper-local, the video had wide appeal. Two years later, JT signed to Priority Records, one of the most influential rap labels of the ’90s.

“Bay Area artists knew that if they wanted video exposure, they’d have to come through us at some point,” says Gomez. “So there’s definitely relationships that form — everybody from JT the Bigga Figga, to Mac Dre, to Boots from The Coup. They were in constant communication with us to try and get on the show.”

CMC also played a role in the success of San Francisco group 11/5. At first, members Taydatay, Hennessy and the late Maine-O didn’t have expectations for their careers — they simply wanted to make party music for the people of Hunters Point. After releasing their hit single “Garcia Vegas,” an ode to cannabis, they shot a music video for “Brousin’” and pitched it to CMC.

Once “Brousin’” hit the airwaves, fan requests for the video started coming in. 11/5’s album Fiendin’ 4 tha Funk sold 60,000 units in it first four weeks, and went on to reach #76 on the Billboard Top Hip-Hop/R&B Albums charts.

“[CMC was] able to help us show ourselves visually, we were able to do it vocally,” says Taydatay. “Shoutout to Andy Kawanami and Chuy Gomez. They opened up the door and made an outlet for us. We appreciate that.”

CMC’s legacy lives on

By the late ’90s, Kawanami transitioned from hosting to working behind the scenes. He directed the music video for Mac Mall’s 2000 hit “Wide Open,” and eventually partnered with director Bernard Gourley to executive produce music videos for M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes,” E-40’s “Tell Me When To Go” and more.

Gomez went on to have a 20-year career on KMEL. He now spins hip-hop, R&B and pop throwbacks on 102 JAMS every Monday through Friday.

Meanwhile, 42 years after he founded CMC, Kurkjian still operates it as president and CEO. It’s one of the longest running local music video television stations in the world, and is available on the CMC app, Roku, Amazon, Apple TV and local broadcast television throughout Northern California and Boise, Idaho. Kurkjian is still motivated by the success of “radio with pictures,” and looks back fondly on the channel’s legacy in hip-hop and beyond.

“It is the connection with people, whether it’s the advertisers, whether it’s the viewers, whether it’s the artists,” he says. “It’s all part of the wonder and the joy of doing this work. So we’re happy that hip-hop is part of that.”