Rhythmic Contemporary

Rhythmic Contemporary, also known as Rhythmic Top 40, Rhythmic CHR or Rhythmic Crossover, is a primarily American music-radio format that includes a mix of EDM, upbeat rhythmic pop, hip hop and upbeat R&B hits. Rhythmic contemporary rarely uses rock or country in its airplay, but it may occasionally use a reggae, Latin, reggaeton, or a Christian/gospel hit. Essentially, the format is a cross between mainstream radio and urban contemporary radio formats.

Although some top-40 stations such as CKLW in Windsor/Detroit made their mark by integrating a large amount of R&B and soul product into their predominantly pop playlists as early as 1967, such stations were still considered mainstream top 40. It was not until the disco era of the late 1970s that such stations came to be considered as a format of their own as opposed to top-40 or soul. This development was largely spurred by the highly successful "worst-to-first" debut of the disco-based format on WKTU on 92.3 FM in New York City (now WBMP) in 1978. That station was classified as disco but actually played a blend of disco, dance music, and pop crossovers. At that time, stations playing strictly R&B tracks were known as "black" or "soul" stations. Stations such as WKTU came to be known as urban contemporary in the early 1980s as the disco era ended. In the 1980s, many urban contemporary stations began to spring up. Most of these leaned towards R&B and away from a lot of dance music. These urban stations began sounding identical to so called black stations and by 1985, stations that played strictly R&B product were all known as urban stations. Still, some urban outlets continued adding artists from outside the format onto their playlist. In most cases it was dance and rhythmic pop but in other cases they added a few rock songs. For example, Detroit's successful WDRQ included artists such as Cyndi Lauper, Culture Club and The Romantics in its urban format circa 1984.

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