New "Hot 102.5" radio station spins hip-hop and R&B oldies

"Hot 102.5" sounds like an ironic moniker for a radio station playing hip-hop and R&B oldies from the '90s and '00s, but iHeartRadio (formerly Clear Channel) unveiled the format Friday afternoon. "Mo Money Mo Problems" by the late Notorious B.I.G. and "Party Up" by DMX kicked off the station.

Lucas Phelan, afternoon personality on iHeartRadio's KDWB, is doing double duty as the program director for the new station, which is spinning 5,000 songs commercial free to start, without DJs.

In a recent hour, Hot 102.5 aired old hits by T-Pain, Da Brat, LL Cool J, Diddy, Jay Z, Tone-Loc, 50 Cent, Ice Cube, Nelly, 702, Dr. Dre, Chris Brown, House of Pain and Kanye West.

Concert bookings this spring and summer by Nelly, Ice Cube, Salt-N-Pepa and Geto Boys suggest that there may be an audience for what Hot 102.5 calls "throwback hip-hop and R&B."

Hip-hop and R&B on the Twin Cities commercial radio dial have had a checkered history. In 2010, B96 dropped its contemporary hip-hop and R&B format after a four-year run. While that format is popular in other large markets, it doesn't currently exist in the Twin Cities. KMOJ, a community radio station at 89.9 FM, does program R&B and hip-hop.

The official call letters for Hot 102.5 are KTCZ-HD3. At 102.5 FM, the new station falls between two country stations on the Twin Cities radio dial – iHeartRadio's K102 (102.1 FM) and CBS' BUZN 102.9 (102.9 FM).