He was too good for the world we are currently living in, and he only died a few years back.

MTV was like radio was for decades before it came along. Black artists with great music and no hits would get covered by cheesy white artists like Pat Boone who got big hits. Baked into the system.

Of course Bowie grew up in a place where the BBC handled alla that kind of sorting.

When/where did MTV not play Black artists? I saw a bunch of rap and R&B. I would have liked to see more Black artists in rock, like Lenny Kravitz, and the guy from Sevendust, or country, like Darius Rucker (of Hootie and the Blowfish fame), or pop that wasn’t R&B. I felt like, growing up in the 80s and early 90s, that some music was predominantly white and some was predominantly Black, with ample evidence it worked both ways (like Eminem in rap).

Overall it was plenty diverse. But within genre, it seemed racially scripted. As a white kid, I felt like rap wasn’t a space I was meant to be in, though I liked to listen to it. And still do. Though I listen to a bit of everything — just finished listening to an Enya album, haven’t decided what to play next yet.