When R&B crooner Raheem DeVaughn opened the mic on Majic 102.3 WMMJ Monday night (Oct 12), he went on the air at 7 p.m. That is a half hour earlier than the slot he filled for the previous two years at 96.3 WHUR, the Howard University station where Melvin Lindsey built the Quiet Storm format in 1976. His new program, The Garden of Love, comes from Urban One's Reach Media and Radio One and runs Sunday through Thursday until midnight. It puts the Love King on a competing frequency in his own home market, playing slow jams for many of the same Washington listeners who used to find him on WHUR.

The show launched as a syndicated R&B night show rather than a local one. Beyond WMMJ, it airs on WAMJ in Atlanta, WPPZ in Philadelphia, WWIN in Baltimore and WKJS in Richmond, according to Urban One's announcement. The company promises soulful slow jams and romantic R&B mixed with listener calls, dedications and what it describes as real talk. The release went out Tuesday, a day after the premiere, and neither the announcement nor the long biography attached to it mentions WHUR by name.

WHUR hired DeVaughn in October 2024 to host The Original Quiet Storm weeknights from 7:30 p.m. to midnight. Lindsey named the program after Smokey Robinson's 1975 album A Quiet Storm, and the format he started there spread to Black radio stations across the country over the following decades. In the station's announcement at the time, DeVaughn called being chosen as the show's new voice "a dream come true." WHUR assistant program director Traci LaTrelle signed on as his executive producer.

WHUR has spent years leaning into its claim on the format. In 2020, while John Monds was hosting the nightly show, the station turned its HD2 signal into The Quiet Storm Station, a round-the-clock stream programmed by LaTrelle, as it prepared for its 50th anniversary the following year. Hiring a working R&B star with Washington roots extended that strategy. The trade site RadioInsight, covering the Urban One launch this week, described the WHUR job as something DeVaughn spent the past two years doing.

His own statement in the new release is brief and points forward. "Grateful to everyone who has supported my radio journey!" DeVaughn said. He added that the Urban One deal is about "building a new nighttime syndicated tradition" and closed by saying he and the company are just getting started.

The executives who signed him were more effusive. Eddie Harrell Jr., co-president of Urban One's audio division, said DeVaughn brings a connection to the company's audience that is "second to none." Colby Tyner, senior vice president of programming for Radio One and Reach Media, said he wants listeners to "unwind, feel heard and end their day with Raheem."

The format leans on the audience as much as the host. The show's page on Black America Web, Urban One's national platform, lists recurring segments called Garden of Lovelines, Affirmation of the Week, In Full Bloom and the Midnight in the Garden Mix. Listener calls, voicemails and social media posts feed the conversation between records. The biography attached to the announcement is direct about who those callers are expected to be, naming his most devoted following as Black women between the ages of 24 and 54.

Radio has been part of DeVaughn's work for well over a decade. WHUR's 2024 announcement noted that he had hosted his own self-titled show since 2012. In 2013 he told the Amsterdam News that the show let people see him on an entrepreneurial level and gave his peers a platform. Speaking with the Fairfax Times this summer, as he approached two years at WHUR, he called the job "a new career path for me." He said other artists had started sending him their new songs for his input.

The music side of his year has run in the same direction. Earlier in 2026 he released his tenth studio album, The Quiet Storm Lover (Tome Un), through a direct-to-consumer partnership with EVEN.biz, a platform he has also invested in. The album is available on every major streaming service except Spotify. He spent part of the year co-headlining the 30-city Say Yes tour with Floetry and Teedra Moses.

A 20th anniversary reworking of "You," from his 2005 debut The Love Experience, gave him what Urban One counts as his second No. 1 on Billboard's R&B charts. The company also says his version of the Isley Brothers' "Let's Fall in Love" reached the Billboard Top 10.

His first No. 1 came with "Woman," the lead single from 2008's Love Behind the Melody, which topped Billboard's adult R&B chart and earned a Grammy nomination for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance. The same album produced "Customer," nominated for Best R&B Song. His third album, The Love & War MasterPeace, was nominated for Best R&B Album, making DeVaughn a three-time Grammy-nominated R&B singer. He went independent after leaving Jive Records and has released his albums on his own terms since 2013's A Place Called Love Land.

Away from the studio and the booth, DeVaughn runs the LoveLife Foundation, which focuses on the health and well-being of underserved communities of color, with particular attention to HIV and AIDS awareness. That work earned him the 2023 Presidential Volunteer Award and the Key to the City of Washington. In 2024 he performed at the White House Juneteenth celebration alongside Patti LaBelle, Charlie Wilson and Kirk Franklin, and Urban One notes that he was named the No. 1 independent artist on radio in 2019.

The five stations trace a stretch of the East Coast that DeVaughn has worked for most of his career, running from Richmond through Washington and Baltimore up to Philadelphia, with Atlanta added to the south. He was born in Newark and raised in Maryland outside Washington, and he was booked this fall to headline Pier Six Pavilion in Baltimore. Each broadcast ends at midnight on a work night, which leaves his Fridays and Saturdays open for the stage.

Urban One has not said whether more markets will be added, and its announcement lists the four outside Washington only as additional markets. DeVaughn is represented by Jason Riley of Riley Entertainment Group, and The Garden of Love is back on the air tonight at 7 p.m. on Majic 102.3.