Today August 11, is the 35th Anniversary Of Rap City, a music video television program, aired on BET from August 11, 1989, to November 8, 2008. The show was commissioned by station founder Bob Johnson and created by Alvin Jones aka ‘The Unseen VJ.’ It started as a traveling show featuring hip hop music videos, interviews, and freestyles from popular and underground rappers.
Then in 1999, it was rebranded as Rap City: Tha Basement transitioning to an in-studio format with wall to wall magazine cover decorated set, a turntable and a freestyle booth.
Jones, one of BET’s earliest employees earned the moniker “the unseen VJ” after BET founder Robert Johnson hired him in 1984 at age 25. At the time, he had just dropped out of college and was working three part-time jobs. “I was somewhere between employee 21 and 40 because BET had just doubled its staff on the day I was hired,” he said.
He said the first time he heard MC Hammer’s ‘Have You Seen Her’ and he spit the lyrics, ‘The girl is hard to see like an unseen VJ,’ he thought to himself ‘Oh, wow. That’s kind of cool. I’m an icon.’”
Rap City didn’t start in 1984 when Hip-hop was still in its infancy and Jones recalled that, “In the beginning, there were not enough videos to do a two-hour show.”
With a record of 19 years, Rap City it the longes running Hip Hop TV Show, outlasting its MTV’s, Yo! MTV Raps, which ran for seven years. Jones attributes the show’s longevity to its ability to evolve. “We had an intern in the sports department, not even in the video department, named Hans Dobson, aka Prime. He always talked about rap, and people didn’t want to hear it. I was like, ‘Wow, what is this rap? Tell me more about it.’ Prime kind of guided me through it. He gave me Rap for Dummies.”
“But there were so many people like him and comedian Chris Thomas [the show’s first host]. And all of the hosts and the producers kept changing things around. And Tigger. That’s what gave it longevity. The show wasn’t stale. It evolved,” Jones added.
Other than Chris Thomas the lineup of host include Hans Dobson, Prince DaJour, Joe Clair, Leslie Segar, Big Tigger, DJ Mad Linx, J-Nicks, and Q-45. The show’s time-slot and format evolved several times, with notable changes in 2005 and 2006.
Jay-Z, DMX, Big Daddy Kane, Rakim, Ja Rule, Cash Money and more passed through the based and delivered their breakthrough TV moment.
However the show is not only for rappers but for dancehall acts as well. Buju Banton, Elephant Man, Sean Paul and more all featured on Rap City and delivered standout performances in the Freestyle Booth, where guests performed freestyles in a booth designed to resemble a basement bathroom, introduced during Big Tigger’s tenure.
As BET made changes, it was last aired on November 8, 2008, replaced by The Deal. Special episodes aired in 2009 and 2013, featuring Eminem, and in 2021 with Big Tigger hosting Fat Joe.
