The List: Five Seminal Hip-Hop Moments from The Stretch & Bobbito Show

In the beginning, Adrian “Stretch” Bartos and Robert “Bobbito” Garcia were merely a couple of young hip-hop heads from Upper Manhattan. But when they scored a radio show gig on Columbia University's WKCR in 1990, the two friends quickly flourished into master tastemakers amid the incredibly fertile NYC scene.

For eight years, the finest local talent strode into their studio—unsigned artists and then-unknowns—among them Nas, Busta Rhymes, The Fugees, Big Punisher, Jay Z, and Eminem—and made their names over the airwaves. As Bobbito told the New York Times in 2015: “There was constantly that question mark about whether a dude was going to blow up. And that’s what made the show special.”

Here are five groundbreaking appearances from artists who didn’t so much blow up as atomically detonate.

Notorious BIG (1991)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ewcu9qkyjU

Nas (1993)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te93XejQ4Cw&feature=youtu.be&t=2m37s

Ghostface Killah & Method Man (1994)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I1PF0ojwwg

Mobb Deep (1994)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xERvO_X8io

Big L & Jay-Z (1995)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O86M_5zYziI

Hungry for more from this dynamic duo? You're in luck: after a seemingly endless hiatus, Stretch & Bobbito are returning in podcast form on NPR.  If you're in the Washington DC area, the dynamic duo are throwing a party on July 20th at Blind Whino. Head over to our Instagram page to find out how to win a pair of tickets!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXfQmzCXQ14