Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorAlong with the social-change efforts announced by its parent company Universal Music Group earlier this week, Republic Records has announced its own campaign — one aspect of which is that the company will cease to use the term “urban” to describe black music. “ ‘Urban’ is rooted in the historical evolution of terms that sought to define Black music,” the memo reads. “As with a lot of our history, the original connotation of the term urban was not deemed negative.
Nearly 50 years ago Frankie Crocker coined the term ‘urban’ to define the sound of his radio station in an attempt to better represent his audience.“However, over time the meaning and connotations of ‘urban’ have shifted and it developed into a.
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