If you watched “Yo! MTV Raps” in the late ’80s or early ’90s, you might remember host Fab 5 Freddy giving out his e-mail address live on the air. Now, he still wants you to “holla” at him.

Freddy said he was one of the first to give out an e-mail address on MTV, back when the World Wide Web had not yet consumed everyone’s lives, and he would receive 50 to 60 e-mails a day, mostly from college kids.

“[Colleges were the] first places completely wired and had access to the Net,” Freddy said in a conference call. “You guys have the ability to do your thing and the publications that you do, a lot of this stuff is going to be on your school Web site.”

Promoting the month-long celebration for “Yo! MTV Raps” 20th anniversary, he said college media has influenced the industry and other generations.

Back in 1988, MTV unveiled the first episode of the series, featuring Run-DMC and introduced hip-hop music to a more mainstream audience.

The show brought the essence of hip-hop and the legendary pioneers of the genre to a TV audience first unfamiliar with the music.

Fab 5 Freddy hosted with Doctor Dre and Ed Lover. Freddy wanted to do something different, and he embraced the show’s concept and took his hosting gig to the streets versus a cramped studio.

Soon, the idea of hip-hop videos and artists featured on TV caught other channels’ attention, but Freddy doesn’t mind the copycats.

“It really was the beginning of a cultural revolution. Young black men being able to scream into the camera and microphone how they felt,” he said. “We had never seen anything close to that in mainstream America.”

“Yo! MTV Raps” introduced many artists to America, such as a then-unknown dancer named Jennifer Lopez, and raised the popularity of others such as Snoop Dogg and MC Hammer. Tupac Shakur even gave himself away to authorities when during an interview, he admitted to assaulting the Hughes Brothers [directors].

The show ended in 1995. Some blame the pulling of Public Enemy’s violent “By the Time I Get to Arizona” video, but Doctor Dre doesn’t agree.

“I honestly never felt like there was a decline in ‘Yo! MTV Raps.’ We worked very hard to get videos the focal point,” Doctor Dre said.

“It was a decision of upper management, and we have the opportunity to do a retrospective of it, and we’re doing it.”

The tribute lasts for the entire month of April with various specials highlighting the top artists, videos and moments from the series on MTV.

On all its sister channels, such as MTV2 and MTV Hits, there are more celebrations.

“It’s a really fun time for people to revisit and for you guys to figure out ways to move things forward,” Freddy said. “We can be more creative, we can take chances, we don’t have to make records and sound like the guy next to him and next to him.”

With scrutiny on MTV’s new reality-based programming rather than musical affiliation, Freddy does not have hard feelings.

“Change is inevitable. Nothing is going to stay the same,” he said. “MTV stepped up and made a great move. We had control over what we played, what we aired.”

“It would be great to have good and interesting videos, but they have had to grow up and move on.”

Freddy looks to the Internet for his current listening pleasure and finding new artists, especially the new social networking site www.zude.com.

“People just want to cash in really quick, talk about any nonsense that will help them make money,” he said. “Those original artists are pretty much living on the Web right now. It levels the playing field.”

However, Doctor Dre is not as excited about the new MySpace.com era of artists trying to make it in the industry.

“Everybody is a MySpace superstar, there’s no minor league that builds up,” he said.

“I think the exposing of the business now is really hurting the artist side of doing the business. We don’t have artists anymore. We have sound machines.”