In 2006, I profiled local hip-hop radio host DJ Toast, who had just packed his record crates for one final Friday night shift of “The Main Event” on WRPI Troy 91.5 FM. Toast, aka Eric Haskins, had decided to retire after dedicating 17 years to airing the best of new and old school hip-hop, from classic Gang Starr cuts to fresh demo tapes by local 518 artists.
Then a funny thing happened. Haskins, a Clifton Park resident, came out of retirement eight years later to launch the Grown Man Rap Show on WRPI, which he’s hosted ever since.
On Friday, May 24, DJ Toast celebrates his long-running radio career with a 35th anniversary show at Empire Live featuring ‘90s hip-hop outfit Smif-N-Wessun along with El Gant, Akrobatik, DJ C, NYCE and more.
“I stepped away in ‘06 for a number of reasons,” Haskins told me this week. “I wasn’t feeling the music much anymore. Hip-hop changed from being drum-based to a lot of keyboards and synth sounds, like The Neptunes. So I really wasn’t feeling it. And then also my kids got to be a certain age. And my wife was putting up with me for 17 years of not being able to make plans on a Friday night.”
The musical landscape had fundamentally shifted since Haskins began his show as a Public Enemy-loving RPI sophomore in 1989. Haskins grew up in a Boston suburb and first started listening to hip-hop on college radio when the music was raw and had an edge.
“I couldn’t keep up with the new stuff,” he said of his decision in ’06 to retire. “My heart wasn’t into it anymore. And then my kids were being a lot more active, and I just thought, ‘Alright, let me step away.’”
Haskins stayed away for eight years. Then in 2014, he attended a hip-hop anniversary concert in New York City’s Central Park featuring his friend DJ Eclipse, the legendary Rock City Crew breakdancing group, and some ‘90s hip-hop stars, including M.O.P., Slick Rick, and DAS-FX.
“It was all the music I loved. I was like, ‘Oh, this is great,’” he said. The event sparked a realization that Golden Era hip-hop wasn’t going away—and Haskins could continue to play it for appreciative listeners.
DJ Toast, right, with Lil Fame.
“I thought, ‘You know what? I can go back [to radio] and just play what I want. I don’t have to stay current. I can play the music that I love from the era that I grew up with.’ So in 2014, I went back to WRPI, and I started the Grown Man Rap Show, which is what I’ve been doing since then.”
Although the Grown Man Rap Show typically airs Sunday nights at 10 p.m. on WRPI, the station’s transmitter has been down since a late March storm damaged the satellite hookup to the studio. In the meantime, all of Haskins’ 300-plus radio shows are available for free on Soundcloud at https://soundcloud.com/toastwrpi.
Haskins’ radio shows typically have a theme—whether a historic look back at the 1987 Def Jam concert tour that hit the RPI Fieldhouse in 1987 with LL Cool J and Public Enemy, or a tribute to his friend Paul Nice, a well-known DJ and producer from the Hudson Valley who passed away in April.
Friday’s Empire Live anniversary party celebrates 35 years since Haskins’ very first WRPI radio show. “I’m really just using that as an excuse to throw an event and have fun,” he said.
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