Last night I was on my way home from Mandaluyong. I was about to ride a bus outside MRT North Avenue Station when I was able to catch up listening to this show on radio called, “The Flow”, on my portable radio.

I’ve heard about this show a couple or so times especialy whenever it’s being promoted on its home station, 103 1/2 Max FM. It’s an all hip-hop-and-RnB show, genres that I seldom enjoy listening to for the past few years (Maybe because a lot of RnB artists are starting to sound all alike and Hip Hop nowadays is becoming more commercialized that its purpose of being is no longer to break the social spectrum).

What just made me try listening to this is that I wanna know what makes this show interesting. More interesting though is how its host, HTown (of Power 108 and Blazing 105.9 fame), educates its listeners about the genre with interesting facts, trivia, bits of info about hiphop culture and old-school stuff dating back to the 90’s.

Speaking of the 90’s, the first hour of the show played nothing but music from 10 years ago. A lot of the songs played were all familiar to me, some that I even grew up listening to. Unlike today, hiphop back in the day was all-good. Less of those themes about sex, drugs, and violence (which hiphop artists are being notoriously branded) and more about social change, life in the streets, things that matters most, and things that everyone can all relate to. I was able to request a song from Bone Thugz ‘n’ Harmony, and HTown was able to play one (when he can’t find the particular song I was requesting for, which is okay for me).

They may be the “pop” music (“popular”) that definitely shaped my first ten years of life. It’s quite disappointing that there’s too few of good-sounding artists today that are driven by the purpose of showing the reality of life, whose songs that really reflect that very soul of the community and of society as whole.

Glad to know that some artists from the 90’s are still pretty much active up to this time, like Will Smith who matured into a fine actor (but is still active as a rapper) as well as Mark “Marky Mark” Wahlberg (who completely turned back on his ‘hip-hopper’ past to become one of the most bankable actors of today), and MC Hammer (who continues to discover outstanding new hiphop talents, and recently gave praise to Filipino hiphop dancing group, All-Stars).

Try listening to “The Flow” every 6:00-9:00 PM Saturdays on 103.5 Max FM at masisiyahan kayo sa mapapakinggan ninyo!