What the fuck is hhh radio?

We’ve gotta be more careful about the words we say. lol

One day in 2024 you’re throwing a party at a local art gallery for a friend that could use more foot traffic — obviously, you book your friends to DJ it — obviously, you need a flyer for it, too. Apropos of nothing, you decide to print the flyer on a tee shirt and give those away for free.

You make these decisions because it just makes sense — because in your gut it felt right and your friends co-signed them. After all, you work on a mutual aid project called “Homies Helping Homies”. So like, just make the next best choice that will aid in furthering that premise.

A homie tells you to photograph the promotional tees and then the party. So you do but for what was supposed to just be “the instagram” of it all.

Next thing you know, your homie gets a dm from a local radio tech essentially asking “what the fuck is hhh radio?” followed by, “do you guys want airtime on our community radio station?”

We’re like, “wait, what?” This was supposed to be a one-off. Get bodies into the gallery space and talk to people about our food justice mission once they’re in the room. We in no way thought a party flyer would get us the keys to our local radio station lol.

There we were, face to face with our teenage daydreams in the most punk way — analog airwaves? The offer enticed us, but also came with doubts…

Are we sure we wanna do this? Can we commit? Does this even make sense? Who cares? Who’s gonna actually listen?

Despite the noise, we realized we’d never find the answer to any of these questions unless we actually decided to start.

So we did. We pulled up to a tiny booth in the annex of Scribe Video Center & were put through a series of workshops about FCC rules + regulations and how to produce a show. We put some grant money to use and bought a pioneer XDJ. Then it was time to decide a few things:

• Who was going to actually play music? lol. We knew we weren’t interested in being “DJ’s” ourselves so we needed to develop a plan to book local talent. Besides, the gallery party only happened because we booked our friends.
• Who’s gonna talk on a hot mic every episode? — I talk too much, so, me.
• What’s the angle? — The same as the party — Civic Trojan Horse — Build a show of sound and color and then drive attention to our community efforts.

We were given 16 episodes across a bi-weekly broadcast schedule to start — this framework would be Season 1 — that’s more or less, 6 months between our first broadcast in Jan 2025 - August 2025. A few episodes we forgot to record (stupid, stupid, stupid hahah) and others, we forgot to export and upload to our SoundCloud. Some episodes I find myself stuttering and nervous or just flat out embarrassed to hear my own voice but I’m reminded by Kev that this isn’t even about me. It’s about platforming the homies, giving them the opportunity to be storytellers through music, and about driving attention to the mutual aid effort back in Point Breeze. Get over yourself, Drew. Keep going, dude.

Fast forward to Winter 2025, and we take the project a bit more seriously. We tighten up on our production chops, commit to a weekly schedule and decide to really hone in on not just music but on-air interviews. The purpose? To dig into the minds and hearts of our featured guests. Meanwhile, Ned starts coming through and realizes this show should exist beyond social media, so he makes magic and creates our website.

We learned a few things about ourselves throughout this process:

• Music will save you. No matter what kind of shit week we were having, showing up to the station + dapping up a new guest to spin, is energizing every time.
• Friends will save you.
• Organizing is a transferrable skill. If we can feed hundreds of people per month, surely we can produce a show that acts as a megaphone for those efforts.
• Visibility isn’t always apart of “success”. Real impact is truth and consistency over time.

We’ve started hosting DIY shows in our garage space, have performed music at local shops in the city and are even making merch. I haven’t made time to really write about this for a few reasons ultimately rooted in some form of imposter syndrome — maybe it will become too real. Or I’ll find a way to sabotage it by saying “look at me” but nah, it’s a feel good project that our community has lovingly embraced — it’s about time we start to say the things, and keep building with heart.

The lessons we’ve learned are rooted in our commitment to one another. We broadcast every Friday from 7-9PM ET on 88.1FM, 95.1 FM and are globally streamed on hhhradio.com.

It’s coming up on two years since that first party in ‘24 and this Friday, August 8, 2026, will be our 50th recorded episode. What started as words on a flyer were, in fact, a prayer & an incantation.

and still some might ask… “what the fuck is hhh radio?” — Well, here’s the /TLDR

HHH RADIO platforms local musicians on radio airwaves weekly. We champion Philadelphia underground artists, and their peers, through intentional curation, interviews, and archiving. Our show is made possible by the efforts of Homies Helping Homies, a mutual aid group focused on food justice, and empowering the working class.

It’s pretty sick. And we’re proud to be here with you.