MTV Base

Then Jennie Francis, and they were playing, she was playing the deep cuts R&B, kind of the rap, and DJ 279.

And there was that whole thing, and then you got Trevor Nelson that were kinda like, he had MT, he was on MTV Base.

He had the show called The Lick, and so you find out about all the cool American shit.

And then, like, MTV Base, they only play, like, UK rap.

But we was only playing UK rap after midnight.

Yeah.

Um, but by the time they came over for their second album, which was Writings on the Wall, w- you know, and they were ready to explode with a great album, the opportunities were different.

Already there'd been a change, you know? Uh, you know, MTV, but, you know, after just I think a year of doing The Lick, doing two shows on MTV, I think MTV decided, "Hey, we need this 24/7," so they created MTV Base off, off the hype of The Lick.

So it's a 24/7 channel.

All of a sudden, what people need to understand is record companies start spending more money on Black music because, hey, we got an outlet.

We had fun.

It was, it was almost like live TV.

The program showed that there was a huge demand for Black music programming, and it was monumental as it birthed the launch of a whole new channel, MTV Base, in 1999.

MTV Base was the first 24-hour channel dedicated to Black music, and Sheron went on to become the channel manager at MTV Base.

...

I was watching MTV Base, and then I saw A$AP Rocky.

It was the video "Peso".

A$AP, yeah.

And this is the point I want to say that most people don't know this, but what's the name of that first station?

So I created MTV base.

They sat me down at a PC and the PC was full of the entire library, all of the videos, the entire library.

and i moved moved videos moved them moved them holding holding holding delete delete holding holding holding and yeah by the end of the day the database i was looking at was just mtv base videos

wow so you are the person responsible for mtv base that's

fantastic i'm afraid so

well i mean i was looking and like i said to you earlier Although it's now no longer around, MTV Base in Africa was around until 2022.

So MTV Base started in 19... 1999.

Used to love his stuff.

And then when we got Sky TV, I remember watching MTV Base a lot and-

Right, yeah

... uh, MTV and seeing...