Anyone in the rap social media universe has likely shared and commented on an On the Radar Radio freestyle. The setup is simple: a mic with a stand in front of a neon On the Radar sign, a couch that brings the room together, some shelves with merch, and the often-imitated Monster Energy green glowing it up. Using their time wisely, a rapper picks a beat (or multiple beats) and precisely delivers bars, hoping a viral moment will result.
The trendsetting platform to showcase emerging and established artists has brought back the essence of music discovery. On July 11, Complex published its second annual hip-hop media power rankings for 2024, and at No. 25 was Gabe P, the host and founder, which was his first entry onto the list.
While he’s grateful and appreciative of the acknowledgment, he knows how competitive the hip-hop media landscape is — On the Radar has become a staple of hip-hop culture — and disputes his ranking.
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“It’s a big honor to be on the list with many people I respect in the culture. Look, Uncle Charlamagne [Tha God] said it best, ‘I’ll make an argument for Gabe P to be top ten,’” he says over a Zoom call in early August, referencing The Brilliant Idiots episode with Nyla Symone. “I’m gonna let Uncle Charlamagne speak for me on that one. I ain’t gonna lie. I should be top ten. I feel like if you’re in this culture, you gotta be like ‘Yo, I’m the best.’ I think the real ones know I don’t base my level of success on lists. I base my level of success on how many lives I’ve changed, and how well my platform is doing.”
Six years after its 2018 launch, Gabe P has built a platform he’s deeply embedded in, creating a premier destination for undiscovered talent you wouldn’t normally find on other hip-hop outlets. The YouTube channel’s blend of conversational interviews — with its ability to create noise on social media through exclusive freestyles, song performances, and cyphers — has established itself as a go-to stop for artists worldwide.
With 885,000 subscribers, On the Radar has uploaded over 1,400 freestyles that range from respected names to artists you haven’t heard of yet. Some artists go on there to freestyle and release the track shortly after on streaming services. Last year’s Drake and Central Cee’s “On the Radar Freestyle” was the viral moment that took them mainstream, earning Gabe P his first entry onto the Hot 100 with his platform.
“Some of the songs we’re lucky enough to put out with the artist themselves,” he says. “Some of them we’re not [able to]. But I love that we’re forever memorialized in hip-hop culture. I can forever say that I have a song within Drake’s catalog.”
Rappers like Meek Mill, Big Sean, CyHi, Ice Spice and Baby Tate have made their OTR debuts with impressive freestyles. Chances are, if they’re bubbling under like Laila! or LazerDim700, they’ve already been on Gabe P’s radar.
Gabe P says that the On the Radar team consists of 5-to-10 people. “I got John, I got Tobby, I got Calvin, I got Aiden, I got Cam, I got Rob,” he says. “Everybody has a very different music taste on the team. And with that, everybody pitches different artists. There might be some cases where we may not all agree on the artist or we may not all like this artist’s specific sound. But we see that the artist has a type of fan base.”
He adds, “I look at On the Radar like a spiderweb. I’m always trying to keep growing my web and reach within different sounds in hip-hop.”
On the Radar is doing “real A&R work,” clearing misconceptions that any artist can just come up to On the Radar if they pay a fee. He and his staff do the groundwork to find artists, communicating with them directly or through their teams to get them on the show. He recognizes hip-hop as a global phenomenon without regional boundaries or personal bias towards either coast. He doesn’t believe in catering to one specific audience. Just take a look at the channel, which has featured Christian rappers (MTMIsaiah, Nobigdyl, Caleb Gordon, Emanuel Da Prophet), Punjabi rappers (AR Paisley, Chani Nattan, Inderpal Moga) and Asian hip-hop artists (Warren Hue, Ted Park, pH-1, Charlu), among many others.
In June, he featured the first Italian On the Radar freestyle with Rondo, who makes Italian drill music. “There was a group from Australia who I like. They’re called Onefour. They’re not 41. See what I did there?” he says, referring to the Brooklyn rap group. “They’re like an Australian drill group. They’re so tough.”
With the sheer volume of hip-hop music released every week, you’d think Gabe P would have a process for keeping track of all the rappers who have a buzz. Instead, he’s all about having the fan bases overlap, describing a day when On the Radar put out freestyles with Benny the Butcher, Xaviersobased and Rx Papi within hours of each other. There’s no rhyme or reason to that selection, other than the fact that Gabe P’s hip-hop taste is very broad and he wants On the Radar to reflect that.
Gabe P is also a music connoisseur who doesn’t only listen to hip-hop. Growing up in a traditional Puerto Rican household, he was surrounded by salsa and reggaeton. The Long Island native was raised by his father, a “rock head” from The Bronx who introduced him to Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin and Aerosmith. He became a fan of The Beatles and Green Day, too.
“I was really into discovering hip-hop on my own, because when you come from this type of traditional Latin household, you don’t get exposed to hip-hop like that,” he says. “So at the time, I was really into rock music because of my father, but then I was also into what was poppin’ at the time, just being a kid in the early 2000s, listening to Terror Squad, 50, Hov, Nas. The classics.”
One of the first albums he bought was Linkin Park and Jay-Z’s 2004 mashup album, Collision Course. Inspired by opposite genres clashing with each other, it influenced him to want to break into the music industry. “I think it’s so telling of what I would be doing in this industry because On the Radar has become such a diverse platform with so many different music tastes and genres attracting people,” he says. “That was what that project was, it’s a blend of two different worlds in one place.”
Gabe P always had an ear for what’s next. It goes back to his time at St. John’s University, working at WSJU Radio as programming director, producer and on-air personality, where he would bring up artists for interviews. When his friend Romel suggested he should be an A&R, he knew the music side and the media side of the music business would come together. After graduating in 2018, he eventually got an internship at Power 105.1 through Angie Martinez, impressing her in an interview he conducted with Nyla Symone during her My Voice: A Memoir promo run. He was hired officially at Power as a Digital Content Manager.
While working at Power, his idea for On the Radar started to formulate when detractors were trash-talking SoundCloud rappers. At 20 years old, he thought the 2016 XXL Freshmen Cypher with Kodak Black, 21 Savage, Lil Uzi Vert, Lil Yachty and Denzel Curry was the “greatest piece of hip-hop media in history” — but he remembers how it made him feel, listening to older hip-hop heads discredit them. “I was like, ‘Damn, am I not the hip-hop fan that I thought I was?’” Gabe P says. “I’m like, ‘No, I’m just younger than everybody, and they just don’t understand the type of music that these kids are making.’
“A lot of these kids, who are my age now, Denzel, Yachty, Uzi, etc., we all grew up listening to the same s–t,” he continues. “We also grew up with the alternative side of ourselves, with rock, punk, things like that. You think about artists like Trippie Redd, XXX, Juice WRLD, the reason why I gravitated so much towards those artists because it felt like an extension of that Jay-Z and Linkin Park, Collision Course album,” he continues. “I think that’s my core for starting On the Radar because I saw everything changing. I saw the rise of drill music, I saw this, I saw that. I’m like, ‘Nah, somebody’s gotta give these artists a fair shot.’”
On the Radar’s rise as a platform comes from its consistency and adaptability to the modern fan’s listening experience. On the Radar began in a small backroom, crediting Power director/producer Nick Ciofolo, who helped him come up with the name. After New York started to reopen after the pandemic, Gabe P connected with Devvon Terrell, a singer, rapper and producer, who assisted him in migrating their operations to HMD Studios. Now, On the Radar calls their own studio space in Brooklyn, New York their home base, although they’ve also taken On the Radar on the road, setting up shop in California, Houston, Nashville, Milwaukee, Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Detroit, and Miami. There are plans to go international soon.
“Early on, when On the Radar was starting to get big, we had international artists on the show like Digga D, AJ Tracey,” he says. “A lot of these guys were on the show at the early stages and had already gone viral. Because of them, the reach we were able to have in Europe was a lot bigger. This is in 2021, 2022. Drill music was so big globally at the time. Drill music helped bring the show internationally.”
He also mentions Cash Cobain and Chow Lee’s freestyle from 2022, which was important for the brand’s growth. “The Cash Cobain and Chow Lee On the Radar freestyle kickstarted everything you see today with the sexy drill s–t,” he says. “It changed a lot for a lot of us. That’s why I feel so indebted to the boys and why I love them so much. I will always support them [because] I look at them as more than just artists, they’re family.”
Cobain, a New York rapper, producer, and frequent guest, knew Gabe P had good instincts, agreeing he helped move the sexy drill sound and “everything in New York, period.”
“Gabe P showed love from Day 1,” Cobain says. “From the first moment he had me up there, I knew he was tapped in. Gabe saw it when a lot of people didn’t, honestly when the world didn’t. He and OTR were extremely important to the scene. It was the spotlight that I needed at the time and to this day, anything he needs from me I got him and vice versa.”
He believed in Gabe P and On the Radar from the start. “The interviews, freestyles –– it was a void the music world was missing,” Cobain says. “It gives a spotlight to artists like myself and eyes and ears for the kids. The kids need to be heard! On The Radar does that for them.”
As Gabe P expands On the Radar into country, rock and other genres, he sees the risk of upsetting his hip-hop segment. But those who know “the real Gabe” find that he’ll be doing a disservice if he doesn’t explore the other musical sides of himself. What’s next for On the Radar is more DJ sets outside of hip-hop like his recent goth one. You can expect On the Radar Records to be more of a presence, teasing a collab EP with Lonny Love and Chow Lee called LoveLee Sounds.
You can also expect Gabe P.to spin his On the Radar web to the farthest threads it can reach, using the “biggest music platform in the world” as his goal. “The mission has never changed,” Gabe P says. “The vision has always been and always will be: I want to be the biggest and I want to be the best. And I think we’re working towards that goal.”
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