DJ Akademiks has said Angela Yee‘s departure from The Breakfast Club might signify the death of radio, and compared the morning show to the current two-member Migos.
“Radio is finished,” Ak said in an interview with VladTV. “First of all, I think the announcement was kinda weird. I listened to their explanation. They said it was to figure out who was against them but like it didn’t feel like everybody was on the same page. It felt like one person leaving the band, but kinda not wanting the band to continue.”
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He continued: “Imagine if Offset left the Migos and said, ‘The Migos are done!’ like no…Quavo still rocking, whatchu mean? You’re just leaving. Now granted that’s a whole different story where the Migos are kinda just seen as them, same with The Breakfast Club. I just think radio is different now man. I think radio and radio personalities has almost gotten killed.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Akademiks claimed that radio has dissolved into nothing more but ad sales.
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“I think we’re just not in that era no more,” Ak said. “I think radio is just all about selling ads, which pretty much most businesses are, but they’re in such a safe space where it’s like, it’s not in their benefit to really empower. What we saw early Breakfast Club with Charlamagne being so edgy, that’s done. Who put their brand behind someone like that like a big company at this point?
“But like when you think about what radio now is, that whole announcement to me was like I’m happy for her, but in reality I know Angela Yee. Angela Yee kinda brought in sex talk on Sirius.”
Angela Yee announced last week that she was leaving The Breakfast Club to begin her own show, and then on August 11, iHeart Radio confirmed Yee’s new show would be titled Way Up With Angela Yee and would debut on their platform this fall. The program will air midday instead of her usual morning slot on iHeart airwaves including on Power 105.
The new show is described as covering, “hot and timely topics in which [Angela’s] garnered trust over her decades on air — from relationships to Hip-Hop and R&B, headline news topics, and overall culture, both in and out of the music industry.”
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Rumors as to who might replace Angela Yee on The Breakfast Club have been running rampant ever since her announcement, but Yee confirmed to TMZ that no one is even being considered yet.
“We can’t even look until this all got announced and this was all top-secret. Now that it’s announced we can start looking for somebody. I’ll still be there during that whole process,” she told the outlet.
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“I promise you they haven’t even started,” she continued. “They want to cast a wide net and open it up. Obviously, it’s for them to decide and I’ll be there until they decide and maybe I’ll be there helping while they audition people. I think nothing will be set in stone until there’s chemistry.”
Angela Yee’s time on The Breakfast Club has no doubt been fruitful. After launching in 2010, the Power 105 program became one of the biggest staples in New York Hip Hop radio. In 2020, the show was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame alongside Sway Calloway and Angie Martinez.
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“One day people will look back and give us respect for how we impacted the culture the past decade,” Charlamagne Tha God said of the show’s induction at the time. “I know it’s hard to show love when folks are still active, I get it, I get it. I’m sure when we get a documentary or something the flowers will come…”
