Rhythmic contemporary

Rhythmic Top40 is a contemporary hit music genre where the music, direction and makeup of the audience differ from the more mainstream Top 40 format.

The musical makeup of Rhythmic Top40 is concentrated mostly on current R&B, Hip-Hop, Dance, and upbeat Pop product. They will not anything that has a harder Rock sound(like guitar-sounding Rock/Pop acts) or songs that too Adult for their taste, leaving that stuff to the conventional Top 40 stations. Although most stations will opt for Hip-Hop and R&B product, some will play the Dance and Rhythmic Pop fare.

Another factor of the format is like mainstream Top 40, they too also attract a broad based audience. However most of its core listeners makeup a multicultural mix of African-Americans, Hispanics and Asian-Americans as well as a core group of teens, young adults(Mostly 18-34) and young females.

The origins of Rhythmic Top 40 can be traced back to the 1980s when several Urban Contemporary outlets began adding artists from outside the format onto their playlist. But it wasn't until January 11, 1986 that KPWR Los Angeles, a former struggling Adult Contemporary outlet, began to make its mark with this genre by adopting this approach. It would be known as Crossover because of the musical mix and the avoidence of Rock at the time. Billboard Magazine took notice of this new format and on Februrary 15, 1987, it launched the first Crossover chart. But by December 1990 Billboard eliminated the chart because more Top 40 and R&B stations were becoming identical with the Rhythmic-heavy playlist that were also being played at the Crossover stations at the time. Billboard would later revive the chart again in October 1992 as the Top 40 Rhythm/Crossover chart. On June 25 1997 it was renamed the Rhythmic Top40 chart as a way to distinguish stations that continue to play a broad based Rhythmic mix from those whose mix leaned heavily toward R&B and Hip-Hop.

Over the years since its inception the genre has grown and evolved, but not without critism. Tranditional R&B outlets claims that the Rhythmic Top 40 format doesn't target nor serve the African-Americans community properly, while traditional Top 40 stations claim that the format is too Urban for be a Top 40. However those claims has since been all but quieted with both R&B and mainstream Top 40 stations taking cues from the format they critized.

In recent years the format have managed to carve its own niche by breaking such diverse acts such as Gwen Stefani, Britney Spears, Natalie, Baby Bash, Sean Paul, Eminem, Christina Aguilera, The Black Eye Peas, Frankie J, Jennifer Lopez, The Pussycat Dolls and Jojo. It has also embraced other sub genres as well with the emergence of Dancehall and Reggaeton acts like Daddy Yankee and Nina Sky.