We’re not much of the hip-hop heads here at Stylus, but when two independent media personalities are publicly bashing heads and an army is being rallied via Facebook, it’s hard not to notice.
A boycott of STREETZ 104.7 FM is loosely being organized by local hip-hop group Filthy Animals, calling on fans to call or text in to STREETZ to send requests for their music to be acknowledged, and for fans to bombard STREETZ’s Facebook page with their love for the group. Member Jeff Bromley, who has had some notoriety in Winnipeg as host of music news and interview program “Signal to Noise” on Shaw TV, wrote an “essay” detailing why this is all going down.
It seems Filthy Animals was approached from Julie Lafreniere (who worked at the station and is now Uptown’s hip-hop columnist), and they had gotten airplay for an early version of “Bizness as Usual” — so early, that it was unmixed and unmastered. The group, again prompted by Lafreniere, sent more unmixed and unmastered songs, and waited patiently. According to Broms, Big Bear sent some angry drunken emails (always a great idea) first to the aforementioned employee Jules, then to Miss Melissa, morning DJ and music director for the station. According to his account, Bromley tried to remain as mature as possible, but the next part really gets his goat:
“TWO DAYS LATER one of our homies gets at us and tells us that Melissa AND Jules are talking s**t about us on their Twitter page saying that ‘Filthy Animals need some tissues’ and that we’re ‘crying about not being played’ and ‘you wanna know the truth? you guys suck’ and to ‘step our rap game up’ LOL
“so at this point I’m like F**K YOU and I send Melissa an e-mail saying ‘you know what, take “Bizness as Usual” and remix it with a f**king Li’l Jon song and throw it up on yer Top 10 for all I f**king care, we don’t need you and yer s**tty station if yer gonna talk s**t about us on Twitter!!'”
The supposed Twitter posts have been deleted and according to Bromley’s note, Miss Melissa now denies that any Twitter-bashing had happened. When called earlier this afternoon, she had left for the day. Here is a video outlining STREETZ’s loose submission guidelines: