Somebody asked me the other day, “What exactly IS Pinnacle?” And honestly, I had to think about it for a minute. Like, what is Pinnacle, for real? An app? Desktop music player? Hip-hop iPod? I mean, I guess it’s all of those things. But mostly, Pinnacle is hip-hop.
I know that sounds a little arrogant. That’s not my intention. What I mean is, Pinnacle is hip-hop and that’s all. We don’t do anything else. We don’t search the globe for new and interesting folk artists to appeal to coffee shop millennials. Unless that coffee shop knows who Def Squad is and those millennials are into break beats, we’re not interested. We do hip-hop. That’s it.
Do I personally listen to other genres of music? Yes. But Pinnacle is where I go for my hip-hop fix. It’s the radio station I’ve always wanted. I open the app, push the button, and hip-hop music comes out. And not just the same stuff I’ve heard at every house party and bar-b-que for 20 years. Do I want the overplayed, well known bangers? Yes. But I also want track 9 off the second album too. Do I want “Love 4 Tha Hood”? Of course. But I also want “Set Trippin”
.
And that’s just it. I know I want to hear that song because MC Eiht’s “Death Threatz” is one of my favorite albums. When E.1999 Eternal came out, me and the guy I started this project with, just rode around letting Bone split our wigs for hours. So if you think you’re not gonna hear “Down 71(The Getaway)” here, please guess again.
Pinnacle is a radio station created by 2 friends who love hip-hop. We’ve known each other for almost 30 years. There have been countless times when the events of our lives wear accompanied by these songs. These artists. These albums. This music. Living in this culture. We literally started this whole project with music from our own personal collections. Pulling out old cd books, digging thru the desk drawer to find that mp3 player and praying it still fires up because that’s the only copy of “4,3,2,1” I have. We pooled our resources, said ‘fuck it’, and took off. Everything we’ve added since is something we picked.
The playlist is curated. The shows are intended to create a vibe, as well as provoke a bit of nostalgia. We’re not a huge corporate entity, only looking to profit from the culture. We exist in this space because we love the culture. We want to showcase this art form in the most relatable way we know how. By focusing on what we know. We know hip-hop music, because we love hip-hop music. End of story.
So, what is Pinnacle?
Pinnacle is a radio station made for hip-hop heads, by hip-hop heads.
No more, no less.
