When I was a child, I listened to childish things. I put a B96 bumper sticker on my mom’s car in grade school, I was glued to Loveline and Q101 all through middle school, and I studied classic-rock radio with naive devotion in high school. So when my car’s tape player broke down six years ago and I was forced to listen to the radio again, I was excited to revisit all my favorite stations. But I quickly grew tired of my stereo presets—they were too familiar, too repetitive, and too clogged with commercials. I wandered up and down the dial till I eventually landed on WVAZ 102.7 FM. I never moved the tuner again.
Though in industry terms V103’s format is “urban adult contemporary,” it’s basically an R&B station. And its definition of “R&B” is flexible: Saturday I heard Loose Joints’ “Is It All Over My Face?,” a song I’d characterize as postpunk or avant-garde disco or protohouse. On weekends V103 might play obscure soul or Sade deep cuts. Once I was at a party with incredible music on the stereo, and when I asked the host what we were listening to, she said it was V103 DJ Maurice “Ice” Culpepper—she’d taped his sets of disco and funk and cut out the commercials.
