After a two-year hiatus during which the show has been limited to low-quality, bootleg DVDs, late-night and weekend reruns,Soul Train may return to the airwaves. While most of the taped, lip-synced performances of Soul Train served as a platform for Soul and R&B artists, the show provided many in mainstream America their first glimpse of Hip Hop when the SugarHill Gang performed during an episode in May of 1981.
Soul Train would later showcase early performances from artists such as The Fat Boys, LL Cool J, Run DMC, The Beastie Boys, Kool Moe Dee, Salt-N-Pepa, Big Daddy Kane and The Roots, among many others.
The New York Times reports Kenard Gibbs, group publisher of Ebony magazine, Anthony Maddox, the former head of Bad Boy Films, and Peter Griffith, formerly of VIBE magazine, bought the rights to the show from Don Cornelius under their MadVision imprint in May.
Both parties were brief in their reasoning for the acquisition, with Cornelius only saying, “Thirty-five years is a long time.”Griffith made no efforts to hide his intentions on ushering Soul Train into the digital era that has clearly passed it by since the last new taping aired in 2006 saying, “The series has never been shown on DVD, and it’s not been utilized on video-on-demand or mobile or Internet platforms. There are many opportunities that we are exploring.”
