Donnell Rawlings on Ebro Firing Him from Hot 97 as Morning Show Host

Comedian Donnell Rawlings is a multi-talented performer who also has a long history of being an on air radio personality. Most people know him as "Ashy Larry" on the Dave Chappelle Show. Many fans of The Wire enjoyed him as the bag man and limousine driver, Damien "Day-Day" Price, the connection between the politicians and the streets.

But in the mid 2000's Donnell was one of the hosts on Miss Jones Morning Show with DJ Envy and others. New York morning radio was wild back in the 2000's for sure. Those antics would never go over today.




In the interview above, Ebro and Donnell talked about the controversial radio bit known as "Smackfest"hosted by Ebro. Still can't believe they got approval to do this and air it on the radio! This is what it looked like.



At the time Ebro worked mainly behind the scenes as the program director for the Emmis Broadcasting station. But after a long list of controversial hosts, Ebro took over the microphone as morning host. With responsibilities as PD and Morning Show host, upper management forced Ebro to choose between the two jobs. He chose mornings.

But in the 2000's listeners craved controversy in their radio hosts. At the time Wendy Williams was on the air. New York radio was coming out of an era that had Howard Stern and Wendy as the top two radio personalities in New York in the 1990's. 

Miss Jones was the morning host on Hot 97. Here's the on air banter over the controversial Tsunami Song with Miss Jones, Miss Info, and DJ Envy. The playing of that song led to Miss Jones' firing.




Here's Star (Troi Torain), the morning show host at Hot 97 before Miss Jones, on the radio with Paul Mooney.



Ebro has definitely brought some stability to mornings at Hot 97.


What happened to Donnell's radio career after Ebro fired him from Hot 97. Donnell joined forces with Ed Lover and Egypt Sherrod. Ed exited the station and what remained was the "Egypt & Ashy Morning Show" on Power 105.1. Here's a clip of that program below from 2007.