Pioneering Rap DJs Stretch and Bobbito Detail New NPR Show
Pioneering New York City hip-hop radio DJs Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito Garcia will return with a new NPR podcast this summer. The pair – real names Adrian Bartos and Robert Garcia – teased the new show with a trailer featuring snippets of an interview with El-P from Run the Jewels.
In the clip, Stretch and Bobbito recount their Nineties rise, during which their show on Columbia University’s WKCR became a proving ground and launching pad for MCs like Notorious B.I.G., Nas, Eminem and Busta Rhymes. As El-P says of Stretch and Bobbito’s show, “We looked up to you guys as the most important thing you could possibly do. For rap music, you weren’t ish until that moment.”
While Stretch and Bobbito will continue to discuss and cover hip-hop and music on their new podcast, the pair will also tackle art, politics, sports and more. “It’s a crazy journey we’ve taken from doing a radio show on a radio station in 1990 with a console from the Sixties that had dustballs in it,” Stretch says, before Bobbito adds, “And now NPR.”
A premiere date for Stretch and Bobbito’s NPR podcast has yet to be announced. The show follows a limited-run series the pair produced for Samsung 837 last year.
In 2015, Stretch and Bobbito were the subjects of a documentary, Stretch and Bobbito: Radio That Changed Lives. The duo’s massive archive of shows from the Nineties is also available to peruse on Mixcloud.