"You gotta say 1580 KDAY, not just KDAY. There's a difference," says legendary program director and radio personality Greg Mack while discussing the legendary AM radio station which eventually became one of the nation's first to program mostly Hip-Hop.

Greg Mack started at KDAY in August of 1983, just as recorded rap music was entering its first transitional phase from bands, crews, and a more disco-like sound to drum machines and smaller two and three-person groups. Mack says in an interview with The Foundation that he always liked Rap music, but he wondered why radio didn't embrace and support the format more.

"There was 'Rapper's Delight,' but before that there were novelty records like 'Disco Duck' by my friend Rick Dees," he explained. "Lots of people thought that 'Rapper's Delight' was a novelty, but then came Sequence, West Street Mob and all those groups and The Sugar Hill Gang was blowing up all over the place. I just didn't understand why radio didn't support it from that side."

Mack describes the KDAY format as Top 40/Urban prior to his arrival. "They played things like Spandau Ballet ("True") and those were big records, but I started playing lots of R&B and I talked to management about adding some Hip-Hop," he remembered. "Some of the first stuff that I played was Run-DMC, Kurtis Blow, Whodini, and local acts. Mack emphasized the importance of playing music by local acts. If I play music by the World Class Wreckin' Cru (an early non gangster iteration of N.W.A.), World Class is gonna tell a hundred of their family members. They are gonna call another hundred and this is gonna snowball into thousands of people who are listening to us." Greg says further that he didn't always broadcast local music because he thought that it would be a hit, but it was a programming strategy, even though a great deal of them became hits.

When speaking of breaking local music Mack says that he had a segment called The High Five where he invited kids from the area high schools to countdown their five most requested songs.

"This was another research tool for me," he said. "In many cases, their lists didn't reflect what we were playing on the radio. This song by Toddy Tee called 'Batteram' kept showing up and I asked the kids what stores were selling it. They replied that he sold it from his car, so I went to the park where he sold it and I bought a copy and played it on air. In a few days, it was one of the most requested songs on KDAY."

Mack considers himself more of a visionary than a program director and he injected “high energy” music by The Cover Girls, Shannon, Trinere and Joyce Sims into the station's format. The station's Saturday night Mix Masters show was consistently the highest-rated Saturday night mix show in radio.

Always forward-thinking, Greg Mack invented the “traffic jam” time slot — his first DJs for it were Dr. Dre and Yella. His Mixmaster DJs were Tony G, Joe Cooley, and Jammin’ Gemini. KDAY also introduced the latest New York-based rap to its listeners. In a recent interview with ROCK THE BELLS, Ice Cube revealed to LL COOL J that he first heard LL's debut single "I Need A Beat" while laying in his bedroom listening to KDAY.