After about 20 years, 92Q DJ Porkchop is leaving Baltimore.

Monday was his last day on the air, said the station’s general manager Howard Mazer. The beloved rapper and DJ, whose full name is Johnny Doswell, is moving to Las Vegas to be with his family, Mazer added.

“I am retiring from radio. It’s been a wonderful trip,” Doswell said Monday morning during his final show, which he shared on Facebook Live. “Baltimore, I just want to say thank you. They’ve seen it all. They was here when my mother and father passed with me, you know, to do the mornings together. … It’s been a good trip and I couldn’t have did nothing without this city itself. The entire Baltimore City.”

“So for the next two hours? Let’s party! Porkchop retirement party!” he said with glee.

The journey started right around 2001, when Doswell was helping run the Club Queen record pool for DJ Khia Edgerton, best known as K-Swift.

“One day she asked me: Can I help her at the radio station?” Doswell said in an interview. “I was like: ‘Help you doin’ what?’ She tried to explain it to me. I went on over there, and I did that for like two and a half years, for free.”

At that time, Doswell, who grew up in the Edmondson Village area, was virtually homeless, couch surfing with friends like Edgerton to get by, he said. Then, the radio station hired him to be a producer for its show “Off The Hook Radio” with Reggie Reg, according to his biography on the 92Q Jams website.

Over the years, Doswell moved up the ranks. He became a co-host of “Rap Attack” with Rod Madd Flava, and later earned a spot on the station’s “Big Phat Morning Show.”

But in 2008, the station ended the show. The next year, Doswell decided to get his GED and start attending classes at Coppin State University, while he and DJ Squirrel Wyde hosted their new show “Animal House” in the evenings.

That show lasted until the coronavirus pandemic upended the business, he said. And in November 2020, Doswell and his family moved to Las Vegas. But about a month later, the station asked him to return and host a morning show “A.M. Click” with DJ AngelBaby. So, he moved back to Baltimore for one last year on the radio.

Doswell said the “family vibe” at 92Q always stood out to him. He would often linger after his morning show ended just to catch the next crew coming in.

“We just had so much fun at the station,” Doswell said.

Monday, comments from Doswell’s listeners and friends poured in on Facebook. A voice, once synonymous with Baltimore, was going off the air.

Meagan Buster, a DJ better known as Ducky Dynamo, said she grew up listening to Doswell, including his “Breakfast Flakes,” parody songs about all things Baltimore, from Ravens games to chicken boxes.

“When I was growing up, like in middle school, catching the bus to school, it was a highlight of the day if the bus driver had 92Q on,” Buster said.

Doswell, who said the “Breakfast Flakes” began with his predecessors on the morning show, said he remembers late nights after prime-time Ravens games, working in the studio to create a mix.

“I used to sleep in the studio. I used to sleep in our little office on the floor, brought my little blanket and stuff. But I used to love making them, because I’m a rapper at heart,” he said.

Buster said she’ll also remember Doswell’s live broadcasts on social media, which offered an opportunity for listeners and friends to chat with him while he was on the air.

“I’d go on Instagram and hop in the thing and be like: ‘Hi Porkchop’ and then a few seconds later hear him on the radio like: ‘Ducky Duck, what’s up?’ ” she said.

But perhaps most memorable for listeners like Buster was Doswell’s actions on the air after K-Swift’s tragic death in 2008, from spinal injuries sustained during a dive into a pool.

Buster, who worked with K-Swift as part of her promotional team, remembers standing outside the hospital after the accident, and seeing Porkchop emerge, distraught.

“This man was broken. I bring this up because he shared that vulnerability with everybody,” Buster said. “That’s one of the things about Porkchop that I always loved. He was always right there with us as the people in the community.”

For Doswell, sharing his grief on the radio, and producing a daily 15-minute “Swift Mix” full of her trademark club music, came without a second thought.

“I used to always think that, since we’re all people, and we all go through something, why not share your bad times on the radio?” Doswell said.

With Porkchop leaving the station, club music’s future on the radio in Baltimore feels uncertain, Buster said.

As for what’s next: A big project is on the way, although Doswell can’t say what it is just yet.

“Just know: It is not the end of Porkchop,” he said.

Buster, who created a podcast devoted to club music, said she worries that without Porkchop and his “Swift Mix,” the genre might fade entirely from the airwaves. But Porkchop’s influence on a generation of Baltimoreans isn’t soon to disappear, she said.

“If you hear Porkchop’s voice, that’s what it is: That’s what home means,” she said.