Not Everyone Is Ready To Drop The Industry Term "Urban"

A rep for iHeartMedia sayss that the company is in the process of removing “urban” from job titles, adding that it has “already transitioned away from it” and into “more descriptive and specific names such as hip-hop and R&B” to break from the past. iHM will also no longer use “urban” when referencing the format or in internal communication. The term is “definitely outdated,” the rep says.

In addition, multiple major label executives and other industry sources familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone that the iHM-owned data analytics company Mediabase, which powers the industry’s go-to charts on radio airplay, is planning to remove “urban” from its chart names. Mediabase currently publishes two charts reflecting the top-played tunes at U.S. Urban stations and Urban Adult Contemporary (AC) stations; these charts will be renamed Hip-hop/R&B and R&B, respectively, sources say.

Republic Records announced last month that it would remove the word from departments and job titles, calling it a reference to “the outdated structures of the past,” and the Grammy Awards has renamed its “Urban Contemporary” category to “Progressive R&B.”

But other organizations and individual black executives are standing by the word. Shawn Gee, manager of the Roots, for example, told the New York Times that he believes the conversation over the word is a distraction and the “problem lies in the infrastructure, in the system — not in the word.” And iHM’s executive vice president of programming Thea Mitchem said to Rolling Stone last month: “If you eliminate the word, does that stop the marginalization of black executives or does it exacerbate the situation?”

Rolling Stone says it's also worth questioning how effective the removal of the word “urban” can be from awards, official formats, and job titles, if other companies in the industry still operate with it. Interscope Records just announced its new senior vice president of urban radio promotions, for example, and several other major labels also retain a robust department explicitly under the “urban radio promotion” umbrella.

The word was was first popularized within the radio community in the Seventies, thanks in large part to Frankie Crocker, a famous DJ and one of the pioneers of black radio in New York.