The Evolution of the Sound We Play

The music on our station didn’t appear overnight — it evolved through moments of cultural highs, backlash, reinvention, and underground creativity.

In the late 1970s, disco ruled dance floors across the world. Born from Black, Latino, and LGBTQ+ communities, disco was joyful, rhythmic, and unapologetically inclusive. But as it crossed into the mainstream, it also attracted resentment.

That resentment reached a flashpoint in Disco Demolition Night, when rock DJ Steve Dahl encouraged fans to destroy disco records at a Chicago baseball game. What began as a stunt turned into a riot — and symbolically marked disco’s public “death.” While disco didn’t actually disappear, it was pushed out of the mainstream almost overnight.

From those ashes, funk stepped forward. Funk had always existed alongside disco, but now it became more prominent — heavier basslines, tighter grooves, and a stronger emphasis on rhythm over orchestration. Funk carried disco’s dancefloor DNA but grounded it in grit, soul, and musicianship.

At the same time — on a parallel path — disco didn’t die at all. It went underground, especially in Chicago and New York. DJs stripped disco down to its essentials: drum machines, basslines, repetition, and space. This evolution gave birth to house music, pioneered by figures like Frankie Knuckles, whose club edits and extended mixes transformed disco into something hypnotic and futuristic.

As the 1980s turned into the 1990s, funk and soul began influencing a new generation of artists. This wasn’t the first R&B — rhythm and blues had existed for decades — but it marked the rise of what many now call “old school” or classic 90s R&B: smoother production, deeper emotional storytelling, and grooves shaped by funk, post-disco, and early hip-hop.

By the early 1990s, R&B, hip-hop, and house were no longer separate lanes — they were cross-pollinating. Artists sampled funk, borrowed house rhythms, and blended soulful vocals with modern production. This era defined the sound that still resonates today: music built for both the dance floor and the heart.

That lineage — disco → funk → house & modern R&B evolving side-by-side — is the foundation of the music we play.