Atlantic Station resident Lewis Sills strolled past Hobnob Neighborhood Tavern one recent Friday when he spied Greg Street at a V-103 tent before an Atlanta Falcons pep rally.
The 50-year-old cybersecurity architect recognized Street, 57, immediately. Sills had recently started fishing and spontaneously decided to ask Street a question about good bait shops, aware from Street’s Instagram feed that he is a big fisherman
Street cheerfully offered him a couple of options and the best local lakes to fish before volunteering his cell number. Sills was taken aback but happily typed the number into his phone.
“Call me,” Street said. “I can give you more tips.”
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Street hands out his phone number to strangers because he said that’s a good way for him to stay close to his listeners. It’s part of Street’s literal street appeal that has kept him on the stalwart Atlanta R&B / hip-hop station for 30 years. For most of that run, he was on at nights but was moved to late afternoons in 2022.
“He’s been a joy to work with,” said Rick Caffey, his longtime boss who arrived at V-103 as general manager a few months after Street. “He’s one of our best ambassadors. He’s always wearing a V-103 shirt and hat. He’s never too cool for the room.”
This type of longevity at a single radio station is unusual, but Street himself is unusual. In a hip-hop culture steeped in alcohol, marijuana and other temptations, Street is a relative saint.
“I’ve stayed away from the stupid stuff: the crime, the drugs, the payola,” he said. “You have to be disciplined, stay focused and be spiritually grounded.”
He even keeps sugar and fat intake to a minimum, preferring fish and fresh, nonprocessed food.
“Sugar and grease are worse than crack,” he said.
And he eschews alcohol. “It don’t taste good,” he said, before accepting a mocktail “Mintini” from a Hobnob server.
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
But the Marietta resident is an indefatigable consumer of Black culture, especially the music. No matter the occasion, he dresses in jeans or khakis and an array of T-shirts and hoodies. He often stays out late, usually working six days a week, subsisting just fine on five or six hours of sleep.
Street DJs at three or more clubs and restaurants a week. He hosts Falcons tailgate parties for the station. On a recent Saturday night, he visited a friend’s music studio before making an appearance at another friend’s nightclub for free just to help him out.
On air, Street is upbeat and effortlessly efficient. Unless he’s doing an interview, he rarely speaks for more than 40 seconds at a time. At the Falcons pep rally, he needed no notes or guidance as he encouraged listeners to show up at Atlantic Station and touted T.I., who was performing later that night.
“He keeps it tight,” his boss Caffey said. “He’s one of those talents who gets more out of saying less. For him, it’s about the listeners, the music and the guests, not himself.”
Credit: COURTESY
Credit: COURTESY
Generous heart
Street is nothing if not generous with both his time and his money. He sets aside a bulk of his endorsement and appearance money for charity. Within a month after arriving in Atlanta, he began doing backpack drives for inner city kids and started his own organization in 2005, WeNeed2Read, giving away monetary prizes to elementary and middle school students who read the most.
Over two decades, out of his own pocket, Street estimates he has given away more than $500,000 to hundreds of students. (“I wish I had more,” he said.) Every week during the school year, he’ll drive to multiple schools handing out paper checks to winners and encourage them to get a savings account if they don’t already have one.
Because he now works afternoons, he misses school assemblies and pep rallies so he came up with a new idea: DJing cafeterias during lunch instead.
“I would bet he knows the names of every principal in Atlanta Public Schools and Clayton Public Schools,” said Frank Ski, a former V-103 morning host. “He remembers coaches’ names, teachers’ names.”
He often brings students and educators into the V-103 studio at Colony Square in Midtown.
“He treats them like celebrities,” said Sonia Murray, who worked at V-103 in the digital department from 2009 to 2018. She was also a former Atlanta Journal-Constitution music writer who wrote the first profile on Street in 1995.
Authur Washington, principal at KIPP Atlanta Collegiate, a tuition-free, public charter school, said that by showcasing the school on air, Street has helped raise more than $80,000 over the past 15 years for his students to take trips to South Africa and Trinidad.
“He holds readathons where scholars stay overnight in school to read,” he said. “He provides money for us to buy books and help students go to college. Any time I call Greg Street, he shows up.”
Call him Gregory KP
Born during the tail end of the Jim Crow era, Street grew up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, the son of a nurse’s aide and a vehicle maintenance manager, a happy accident born 10 years after his youngest sister.
Credit: COURTESY
Credit: COURTESY
By age 16, he was already DJing and promoting parties as Gregory KP. A Hattiesburg radio station hired him after he came in to buy advertising for his parties. He began reading radio trade publications in the office and became inspired by radio legends like Russ Parr and Tom Joyner.
Tony Brown, a fellow DJ, admired the teen’s pluck. “He had his own van,” Brown said. “It had his name on it. He owned the teens in the market.”
Street said he learned a lot working for a time at a pop station geared to the white audience in Hattiesburg. “Radio’s real job was community, not music,” he said. “I also picked up the formatics of radio and how to get people to keep listening.”
When Brown became a program director at a station in Mobile, Alabama, he hired Street. And when Brown moved to Houston, he brought Street along. That’s where Gregory KP officially became Greg Street.
In 1990, he moved to Dallas while Brown nabbed the program director job at V-103. When Hot 97.5 debuted as the first full-fledged hip-hop station in Atlanta five years later, V-103 needed a response. Brown instinctively knew who to call yet again: Street.
“I had never been to Atlanta in my life, not even for a layover,” Street mused. “I had no dreams of coming to Atlanta.”
Credit: TAIMY ALVAREZ
Credit: TAIMY ALVAREZ
Credit: RODNEY HO/
Credit: RODNEY HO/
But he quickly learned the city by going to events almost every day. Among his early remote appearances: Main Street in East Point, a Luther Vandross concert, the library at Bowen Homes.
In an interview with the AJC at the time, he emphasized his role with a clarity that resonates today: “I don’t play that celebrity role. I’m on the street, with my people, and we’re just hanging out on the air.”
One key way Street branded himself starting with his job in Mobile was to create the 6 o’clock Greg Street theme song sung by major rappers such as Scarface, Notorious B.I.G. and Craig Mack. “It’s 6 o’clock, 6 o’clock, it’s time for Street to rock!” became a daily mantra.
Credit: Hyosub Shin, hshin@ajc.com
Credit: Hyosub Shin, hshin@ajc.com
Jumping for talent
Street has an ear for talent. He is renowned for championing young musical talent before they broke it big.
Legendary Atlanta producer Jermaine Dupri recalled first meeting Street when the DJ was working in Houston in 1990. Dupri was promoting Kris Kross. “I think he played ‘Jump’ 10 times in a row,” Dupri said. “What he was doing in Dallas wasn’t happening in Atlanta. I remember saying to myself, ‘Man, we need this type of energy in Atlanta that’ll break records like this.’”
Credit: Hyosub Shin / Hyosub.Shin@ajc.com
Credit: Hyosub Shin / Hyosub.Shin@ajc.com
After Street came to Atlanta, he promoted everyone from Goodie Mob to 2 Chainz to Gucci Mane. He was the first DJ to play Clifford “T.I.” Harris in the early 2000s and they remain close friends.
When Big Boi and Andre 3000 of Outkast were considering solo albums, Street suggested they create a double album so they wouldn’t be competing with each other. The result: 2003’s “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below,” which sold 13 million copies and won three Grammy Awards.
“He was one of the first to play me on the radio,” said Atlanta hip-hop artist “Killer Mike” Render. “He even championed me when I went independent. He encouraged people to hear my music.”
Street has dabbled in producing his own music, including a 2001 compilation album and a version of “Good Day” with Nappy Roots. But he found the process too political and arduous for his taste. Since 2010, he has stuck with radio.
Credit: COURTESY
Credit: COURTESY
Trio of hobbies
In his off time, Street has no shortage of hobbies. He is a well known sneakerhead who began collecting in the 1980s before it became a true phenomenon. He now owns an extensive collection of vintage Jordans, Nikes, Adidas and more. (He doesn’t sell or trade. He’s a true collector.)
Earlier this year backstage at State Farm Arena, members of Wu Tang Clan signed Street’s rare bright yellow-and-black Wu-Tang Clan x Nike Dunk High. Only 100 pairs of them were made in 1999. Street procured them from another collector in 2009.
“Those are considered the Holy Grail of sneakers,” said Larry “Nuface” Compton, an Atlanta hip-hop historian and collector. “Even without the autographs, they could be worth $15,000 to $20,000. Greg is truly the king of sneakers in town.”
His other hobbies couldn’t be more different: the thrill of riding Harley Davidson motorcycles and the Zen of fishing, both loves that go back to childhood.
He’s part of a Black Harley club with 80 or 90 members. In 2019, he drove cross country to Los Angeles to see the BET Awards and did his V-103 show live from the Grand Canyon.
“It’s an incredible rush,” Street said. “We call it wind therapy.”
Credit: COURTESY
Credit: COURTESY
Fishing, which he tries to do on his days off, is a legacy of his father Frank Sr., who owned boats all his life. For a time, Street owned a home by a lake in Stone Mountain.
“That’s his relaxed period,” said Bruce Griggs, a friend for 30 years who has fished with Street and works with him on his charity work. “He’s a Mississippi country boy at heart.”
Sustaining for the future
Street is smart with his money. He negotiates his own contracts with V-103 instead of hiring an agent. In 2002, he was paid handsomely to return to K104 in Dallas but kept a weekend gig at V-103, flying back and forth between the two cities for three years until he decided to go back to V-103 full time.
When he signed an endorsement deal with Jim Ellis Automotive Group in 2020, Street recommended that then-General Manager Ralph Sorrentino sell the limited edition $100,000 Fox Factory Silverado 1500 Black Widow truck.
“He has incredibly good marketing instincts,” Sorrentino said. “Thanks in part to Greg, we sold more than half of the Black Widows in the entire state of Georgia over two years.”
Sorrentino, now a vice president at Jim Ellis, said, “Greg would stop by the dealership at 9 p.m. while I’m closing and create some content. He’s there early in the morning before anybody gets there. It’s fair to say he’s overdelivered.”
One cool perk Jim Ellis provides Street: He gets to drive a new car every 5,000 miles. (His current ride: a 2025 Chevy Silverado 1500 Trail Boss pickup truck.)
Street’s biggest issue, he admitted, is overcommitting himself. The result: He is chronically late to events.
“It’s kind of a flaw,” he said. “I’m the person everyone knows, and I have a hard time telling you no. I’ll book three events back to back to back.”
He assiduously keeps his private life private. He has no kids. He was briefly married when he was younger before he got to Atlanta but provided no details. He doesn’t take lady friends to work events.
“I’ve been pretty lucky with the choices I’ve made when it comes to women,” he said. “I haven’t dated high maintenance girls. Most of them are really private.”
Credit: RODNEY HO/AJC
Credit: RODNEY HO/AJC
With 30 years at V-103 in his pocket, Street has no plans to leave. For him, this is less a job and more a calling.
“I’m not pouring concrete or driving trucks,” he said. “This is a cakewalk, a blessing. I try not to put myself on a pedestal. I don’t do red carpets. A lot of the celebrity stuff is corny to me.”
His friends don’t see any signs of him slowing down.
“I’ve always said this is a young person’s game,” said Killer Mike. “But more importantly, it’s a cool person’s game. Greg is cool. He wears cooler shoes than younger DJs. He drives cooler cars. You can’t put an age on cool.”
― DeAsia Paige contributed to this story
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