The Tim Westwood show on BBC Radio 1 always played album tracks. When he would fly over to NY to do live shows from places like Sylvia's Soul Food Restaurant rappers would come by with album tracks that weren't going to be singles way before the albums were released, rough cuts, demo's etc. I'm in the process of digitising my cassettes still.
I remember way back in 2001 when he played The Wash & On The Boulevard by Dre & Snoop from The Wash OST several times over his 2 hour show and kept saying "from the new album out now baby, drop the bomb" and all his usual shyte. I got up early the next day and hunted high and low for this album only to find out it was the OST. Still bought it and was not disappointed though.
BBC Radio 6 when it launched sometimes played full albums and still does, mainly new releases and not often hip hop but still a great thing to do. Especially as local stations would play songs with raps in them and they would edit out the rap parts really badly. Mainly in the early 2000's when rappers were jumping on pop artists tracks. Dirty by Christina Aguilera springs to mind. That build up to Redman then a bad cut to the next chorus for fukk sake.
When it was the chart show they even cut out Rakim's verse from Addictive. Unacceptable behaviour haha.
I remember way back in 2001 when he played The Wash & On The Boulevard by Dre & Snoop from The Wash OST several times over his 2 hour show and kept saying "from the new album out now baby, drop the bomb" and all his usual shyte. I got up early the next day and hunted high and low for this album only to find out it was the OST. Still bought it and was not disappointed though.
BBC Radio 6 when it launched sometimes played full albums and still does, mainly new releases and not often hip hop but still a great thing to do. Especially as local stations would play songs with raps in them and they would edit out the rap parts really badly. Mainly in the early 2000's when rappers were jumping on pop artists tracks. Dirty by Christina Aguilera springs to mind. That build up to Redman then a bad cut to the next chorus for fukk sake.
When it was the chart show they even cut out Rakim's verse from Addictive. Unacceptable behaviour haha.