95.4 KRhyme FM

Overview

95.4 KRhyme FM is the hip hop station in Saints Row 2, broadcasting out of Stilwater and hosted by DJ Mister Magic. The playlist sits between mid-2000s commercial hip hop (Ne-Yo, Young Jeezy, Kelis, Cassie) and a smaller block of older cuts going back as far as Run-DMC's Sucker M.C.'s from 1983. It is one of the more song-heavy stations in the game, with 15 full-length songs in the bank and the rest of the runtime made up of station IDs, sweepers and DJ Mister Magic's between-track talk.

DJ Mister Magic

DJ Mister Magic is the station's only host. The character is named after the real-world hip hop DJ Mr. Magic (John Rivas, 1956 to 2009), who pioneered hip hop radio in New York in the early 80s on WHBI and later WBLS. The Saints Row 2 version is a tribute character rather than a depiction.

His segments are mostly station IDs, song intros and short links between tracks. He does not run long-form talk segments the way DJs on Saints Row 2's other stations do.

Audio quality

The audio in this archive is taken from the Xbox 360 version of the game, which plays at 32 kHz with full stereo songs. The reason for going with the 360 source rather than the PC original is that CD Projekt's Saints Row 2 PC port is genuinely one of the worst PC ports I've come across, and the audio is the most obvious casualty: every radio station ships at 22050 Hz mono. That's especially appalling given the 360 audio was already perfect; the PC port simply downgraded it for no good reason.