Mixed and Mastered
Mixed and Mastered is the podcast where the untold stories of the music industry come to life. Hosted by Jeffrey Sledge, a veteran music executive and former VP of A&R at Atlantic Records and Jive Records, each episode dives deep into the journeys, challenges, and triumphs of the people shaping the sound of today. From label executives and producers to artists, songwriters, and managers, Jeffrey brings you behind the scenes to meet the minds driving the industry forward. There’s a gap in the marketplace for these voices, and Mixed and Mastered is here to fill it—one conversation at a time. Because the best stories are told by those who lived them.
Mixed and Mastered
Emil Wilberkin
This week on Mixed and Mastered, host Jeffrey Sledge sits down with journalist, tastemaker, and cultural force Emil Wilbekin for a deeply personal and powerful conversation. From his roots in Cincinnati to shaping the voice of Vibe Magazine during hip-hop’s golden era, Emil reflects on the journey that made him one of the most influential Black voices in media.
They talk fashion, identity, HBCU pride, and breaking barriers—especially what it meant to be an openly gay Black man in a historically homophobic industry. Emil opens up about the support that carried him, the resistance he faced, and the legacy he's building through Native Son, a platform created to empower Black queer men.
This is Mixed and Mastered with Emil Wilbekin.
Mixed and Mastered is produced and distributed by Merrick Studio, and hosted by music industry veteran, Jeffrey Sledge. Tune in to the discussion on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you catch your podcasts. Follow us on Instagram @MixedandMasteredPod to join the conversation and support the show at https://mixedandmasteredpod.buzzsprout.com/
This week, on Mixed and Mastered, we're talking with Emile Wilberkin, a cultural force who helped shape how we see fashion, music, media and identity. From leading Vibe magazine to becoming an editor-in-chief at Giant magazine and a New York Times bestselling author, emile's career has spanned everything from BET, essence, afropunk and beyond, bet, essence, afropunk and beyond. Emil is also the founder of Native Son, a platform empowering Black, gay and queer men, and a professor at FIT, shaping the next generation of journalists. This is Mixed and Mastered with Emil Wilberkin. Welcome to Mixed and Mastered, a podcast where the stories of the music industry come to life. I'm Jeffrey Sledge, bringing you real conversations with the people who have shaped the sound of music. We're pulling back the curtain on what it takes to make it in the music business. These are the stories you won't hear anywhere else, told by the people who live them. This is Mixed and Mastered. Live them. This is Mixed and Mastered. Mixed and Mastered with a big maca maca.
Speaker 1:Emil Wilberkin, how you doing, man, I'm good, jeff. Thank you for having me. Thank you for coming on. I really appreciate it, man, let's jump right into it. So you're born in Cincinnati, ohio, or born in Cleveland? Were you born in Cleveland or Cincinnati. So that's a great question. I was born in Cleveland, born in Cincinnati, ohio, or born in Cleveland? Were you born in Cleveland or were you born in Cincinnati?
Speaker 2:So that's a great question. I was born in Cleveland, raised in Cincinnati.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, my mom, that's a long story.
Speaker 2:Are you going to tell it? Well, I mean, so I was adopted. So I was born in Cleveland and then my adoptive parents came from Cincinnati to adopt me there. So I have a lot of love for Cleveland, but I was raised most of my life in Cincinnati, got it, got it, got it, got it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my mom's side is from Kentucky, so I would go down there and see her and we'd come up as a kid, we'd go to Kings Island or Kings the amusement park, yeah.
Speaker 1:I've been there. It's the great amusement park that would be the highlight of our summer. Exactly you might have crossed paths with kids that have not even known it exactly. So I was reading and I was reading and you, you got into the fashion side of things very early. Um, as a teen, I guess, like you know, kind of figured out that was one of your, one of your big passions. I wanted you to talk to me a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:So I have to give credit where credit is due. My interest in fashion solely was inspired by my mom. My mom was um. You know my mother was. She had her her undergrad and her master's in music. She was the minister of music at our church. She also was an administrative law judge for the state of ohio. So my mom had her doctorate in psychology. Like my mother was gangster.
Speaker 2:But my mother from Des Moines, iowa, met and married my dad in New York. So my mother dressed like a New York woman, like even back in Cincinnati. So she would go to work and have on like a Halston red, ultra suede wrap dress with like knee-high boots, big sunglasses, a wig and a mink coat on her shoulders, like she was killing it. So I almost didn't have a choice. This is how my mom's was dressing all the time and even if she was dropping me off of school she would have on like a nightgown and put a mink coat over it and have like this sparkly hat with red lipstick and big Christian Dior glasses. The kids in Cincinnati thought my mom was crazy. She was fly, but they don't know what fly is there like that.
Speaker 2:So a lot of my interests came from my mom, right, the big kind of my big, big falling in love with fashion really came through the movie Mahogany with Diana Ross and Billy Dee Williams, right, and it's classic. And just seeing that whole journey of her, you know loving fashion and studying fashion design and illustration, and then you know, not becoming a fashion designer but becoming a model, but being immersed in that whole world and then having her own collection. That really stuck with me. And then at the same time one of my cousins in St Croix was studying fashion in Miami at, I think at Parsons, and so she was showing me how to do fashion illustration.
Speaker 2:So it was all of those things together and I mean, at 12 years old I was reading GQ and Ebony man and I was like I just I fell in love with fashion. And then the last part was one of my high school teachers, mr Ferguson, was in the Ebony Fashion Fair. He was the fashion fair model. So he was in the Ebony Fashion Shows, he had been photographed in GQ and he studied painting under Picasso. So those were the yeah, so these were like all the things that just really got me interested in fashion. And then, I think too, coming of age when music videos were starting right, so it was all just seeing all of these things together. There was something I wanted to do in fashion.
Speaker 1:Let me start by a quick question. Do you think Mahogany could be made again Like could that be a remake, or is it just two different time periods?
Speaker 2:No, I think there are definitely conversations that people want to do a remake of this two different time period. I think no, I think there are definitely conversations that people want to do a remake and, um, I think it could. These remakes scare me sometimes because they steal the moment. I think part of the moment that made mahogany so amazing was that time period right in the late 70s, early 80s, and the fashion and even how billy d williams is dressed, but her fashion and her style was just really off the chain yeah, I agree, I agree and and kind of mahogany, kind of exposing the european side of things and how they.
Speaker 1:yeah, it's kind of weird and stuff that we we know that a lot more now, but back then that was like seeing another planet. It was like, oh, we didn't even know it got down like that.
Speaker 2:And the racism and all that yeah exactly Racism and all that stuff. Yeah, it was interesting, man, wait, I don't want to know if I'm going to speak about it as an influencer.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean. That was my point. See, it would change and it would be that, and that's why I'm like ah, you know, a million followers on Twitter. I don't know if I'll you know. That's not what this was. That's not what that was. We're on the same page. We're both proud HBU grads I went to.
Speaker 2:Morgan, I went to Hampton. That's right HBCU.
Speaker 1:When you went, it was still HSU.
Speaker 2:No, no, no. I think the year before I went is when it shifted. Okay, jeff, what you're going to learn about me on this podcast is most of my influence is from my family. That's great. That's great. Yeah, no, it's great. So my dad went to Hampton, my older brother went to Hampton. I basically come from a Hampton family. I was the eighth person in my family to go to Hampton, so my aunt.
Speaker 1:You have legacy. You have legacy, kim. Oh, I Hampton, so I'm super legacy.
Speaker 2:My uncle was head of ROTC, my aunt met her husband, my uncle there. It's just I'm legacy. So when I was growing up, like we would go to Hampton for, like my father's you know, graduation anniversaries, when my brother went I would go and we would drop him off, so always going down there to pick him up. So I was raised in a super Hampton family and there was a joke that my mother would say, because my mother, you know, she went to Drake in Des Moines, so she's like I'm mad, I miss my HBCU experience. But her sister went to Hampton, right, so she would say you can go wherever you want, any school you want in the country, in the world, your tuition will be paid at Hampton. And so, you know, I was like, say less, like I'm going to Hampton Because I was raised in that world, like the Hampton choir would come to Cincinnati and would stay at our house and like we would have dinner for them with all the alumni.
Speaker 2:So I was really raised in that environment. So I actually wanted to go to Hampton and it was a beautiful experience. But it changed from Hampton Institute the year before I went. I got you, got you, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I went to visit Hampton's camp to like. Two of my best friends went there and this girl I dated in high school went there. So I went there one time and I liked it. It was, but it was very interesting because that camp is very isolated, yeah, like it's very kind of in its own world kind of thing.
Speaker 2:And in the country, right. So you know, I would call my parents and be like it's cool, but like everyone say hello to me, like what is going on, and they're like you're in the South, like you say hello back sir, and I was like, oh, okay, but it was great. I mean I met so many people from New York you know, because it's very DMV heavy and New York, new Jersey, tri-state, connecticut. I DMV heavy and New York, new Jersey, tri-state, connecticut. I met Angelique there, many of my. Jocelyn Glooper was my big sister at Hampton. Wow, Wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like. And I met her on the yard, like so by the time I graduated from high school. Now I'm like super fly, right, I'm wearing Willie Smith, I got a high top fade, I'm doing all the things right. So Jocelyn Cooper walks up on me on the campus and is like where are you from? And I was like Cincinnati. Like what an attitude. And she was like there's no way, you're from Cincinnati dressed as fly. And I was like I'm from Cincinnati, ohio. And from that minute on she's like I'm your big sister. And she took me under her wing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Beautiful, that's beautiful, and I read that when you, after you graduated, you spend a little time, you did the school newspaper correct and, hampton, were you part of the school in?
Speaker 2:the mass media arts department. So the fashion thing kind of got killed because my parents you know both my parents were lawyers. My father was also an architectural engineer. So they were like the fashion thing we're not so big on that. You know, traditional Black family, caribbean family they're like you need to do something practical. So I ended up studying mass media arts and so Hampton has one of the best. Now it's the Scripps Howard School. They have one of the best mass media arts and communications schools at HBCU them and Howard and so I studied that.
Speaker 2:I became the editor of the school paper and I figured that through internships at the Cincinnati Enquirer people were like you should probably go into magazines because you like fashion and style and culture, newspapers and fires and board meetings and all that may not be your thing. And then I realized I mean, I never thought about like I've been reading GQ. Like I said, since I was a kid I never thought about, oh, I could actually do that as a job. So I really leaned into that. When I graduated I was editor of the school paper, I was the official fly boy at that point and my goal was to move to New York and that was as a kid I wanted to live in New York because I would just see it on TV and go to family reunions and think about fashion. Everything was in New York.
Speaker 1:And then you spent a little time in London before grad school, correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So my goal was like, how do I get to New York? So I applied for jobs. So I was interviewing at Condé Nast, at Vogue, and I was interviewing at Rolling Stone and Newsweek and all these places. And then I applied to grad school. So I applied to NYU for American Studies. I applied to Columbia Journalism School, so I get into Columbia. But I was so busy focusing on trying to get to New York that I didn't have a plan for like, oh, I got into grad school, I don't have anything to do for the summer. So, as I said, my father's from St Croix, my mother's from Des Moines, iowa, you're going to work. This ain't. No. What do they call it? Skip year, jump year, whatever it is.
Speaker 1:You're going to work.
Speaker 2:So I found an internship program through Boston University where you could study British media and advertising in London and intern at a magazine. So I got the internship, which was great, wow. And Jeff, let me tell you something, because you're a music person, a culture person this is the Batman rave summer. This is the summer when soul to soul is at its height, and I'm in London at that moment in time, right, and I'm in London at that moment in time. So it's like it's cool to be black and it's like all these raves and ecstasy and all this stuff.
Speaker 1:And that's the fly you know fly.
Speaker 2:I mean, it was an Afrocentric thing was happening with hip hop, so it was a really, really great time to be in London, so I studied there and that's how I spent my summer before I came to great time to be in London, so I studied there, and that's how I spent my summer before I came to New York to go to Columbia.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. That's amazing. It's like you hit London at the perfect time, right, yeah, it was a setup. It was a setup, yeah. So then you come back and go to Columbia, yeah so then you come back and go to Columbia.
Speaker 2:Yeah, go to Columbia and study magazine journalism, journalism and magazine journalism. So it's a one year program. So I get my master's and I just meet all these amazing people because I'm my friend. His mother was like I think she was head of either programming or advertising at BLS at the time, so I was able to go to all these like parties. I remember going to a party in the village for Heavy D. I remember going to Red Alert's, like big birthday party at the Red Parrot, like. So I'm doing all this while I'm in grad school. So my professors are like, what are you doing? And I was like I'm outside, like I'm young.
Speaker 1:I'm outside.
Speaker 3:I'm young.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm in New York City. What are?
Speaker 2:we doing, you know. And then I was friends with from Hampton Wendell Haskins and Jack Benson, so they were putting me on and so I was just like going to all these fly parties. And so I had a cultural affairs reporting professor named Samuel G Friedman. He's still at Columbia. He said why don't you write about hip hop? He's like you're going to all these parties, like why don't you write about it? And that changed everything, because at that moment I just started leaning in and because I had so many plugs in the music industry jocelyn, everybody, I would just they would hook me up to do interviews with people. So I'm like writing all this stuff as a grad student new to new york from cincinnati, by way of anthem, and that literally changed the whole trajectory of my career.
Speaker 1:That's incredible, man. That's you've been in the right places. You've like been in the right place at the right time. It kind of keeps working in your favor. That's a beautiful thing. I'm going to skip forward just a tad because I really want to hear. I know you were part of the initial core group for Vibe magazine and I want to hear about that.
Speaker 1:But I also want to hear about, like the conversations you guys were having in developing Vibe and like what the mission statement was, what you wanted it to be. I want to hear about that, okay. And the conversations with Quincy.
Speaker 2:And the conversations with Quincy as well, of course, of course. So I mean. So basically it was Jonathan Van Meter who was chosen to be the first editor. It was very controversial because he was a white gay guy, but he, I had met him through a bunch of folks who worked in magazines and there was this thing called the Last Thursday of the Month Club and we would go and just have drinks and we were all young and like someone worked at Rolling Stones, someone worked at Vandy Fair, a couple of people worked at the Village Voice, and in that group we were also going out to clubs because, you know, early days of hip hop, club music is thriving, all this thing, dj culture, and so we would just go out and we were like, wouldn't it be dope if we had our own magazine that focused on music and fashion? And that was really how it started. So that's us going to the Roxy and then all these other places, and then we would go back to his place and like order breakfast and just chop it up. And that's how the idea of us creating our own magazine, parallel Path, time Warner, forms, their merger and they're developing new projects. They have a magazine wing, so they develop Martha Stewart Living out of that. So they had a call out to start new magazines and then Quincy and Russell together went to them and said we want to do a magazine that focuses on Black music and culture and specifically hip-hop. So then it gets all politic right with white business folks with Black culture and all the things, and so they're like, yes, we want to do this magazine, but they start looking for editors. And then it's Time Inc. So they want somebody who's like super duper, dope editor. And they end up landing with johnson. So then that is kind of controversial because it's like a white gay guy is going to edit this hip-hop magazine. So russell's like I'm out. And then quincy's like I really believe in this. And so johnson said, well, I have all these friends that work in different places and they're super talented and this and that, can they come work here? And they said, well, they have to go through the editorial process and hiring and interviewing like everybody else, but if they're qualified, let's bring them in vibe. With the addition of Scott Polson, bryant, joe Morgan, kevin who else? Kevin Powell, greg Tate was brought on to write and a lot of other folks, right, a lot of other iconic folks. So that was how it started.
Speaker 2:The initial idea was hip-hop was the center, and then how did it touch film, fashion or all these writing, literature, all of that? But hip-hop and r&b were the core, and so that was really interesting, even on like trying to pick the first cover because we knew it had to be hip hop but we didn't want it to be like commercial out the gate and hip hop was kind of borderline commercial at that point. And so the idea I think, talking to Tommy Boy Records and stuff like that, the idea came about about Tretch, about about tretch and somebody that was really hard on the streets had not fully blown up yet, but it was kind of the perfect storm as well. Opp was bubbling, so that's how we landed on the track.
Speaker 2:He was a great looking kid. He was a great looking, great looking kid, yeah, yeah, and it was, you know, and he kind of represented hip-hop. But he, like black american man and and the the secret sauce of vibe, was really the great talent that we were covering. But it was also the photography, the graphic design and the writing and that's what this. This moved us out of the way from everybody because quincy wanted it to kind of feel like Rolling Stone means Vanity Fair, but through this black lens, and that's. That was kind of the formula. Yeah, I remember, I remember that.
Speaker 1:I remember how the magazine was bigger, like it was actually bigger than like the source. It was like bigger and they and it was very Vanity Fair-ish, it was very fashion-y. You could look through it. It was like you would look through it and then you would go back and read the stories, right, right.
Speaker 2:You would look at the pictures and you know the thing is the great writing, a lot of that was taken from the work that was done at the Village Voice with you know, with Greg Tate and with Joan Scott was writing there so many brilliant, brilliant Barry Michael Cooper, like all these amazing writers. And so having that type of sensibility with the writing and then really bringing in like new writers and just kind of having something that was different, including dancehall, reggae into it, underground club music, but it always had to be from the center point of like hip hop and black music.
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Speaker 1:So now I read that you were the fashion person when it first started. No, am I wrong? Okay, okay, correct me, correct me.
Speaker 2:So I started. This is going to be funny. I started as the news editor. I was really because I've gone to columbia and I've been writing for, like the new york times, chicago tribune ap. I had like I was really into like news.
Speaker 2:So, okay, the very first issue I did the front of the book news section and the back of the book news section and then, right time, me and my right time, Lisa Cambridge sends over a cassette tape of what's the 411. And I get it and I had like a little mini boom box. I am running through the office playing it so loud for anybody to listen. I was like I don't know who this woman is, I don't know what this is, but I've never heard anything this amazing before in my life. And everybody was like you're right.
Speaker 2:And we ended up and at the time Scott Poston Bryant was doing the new talent section, so he assigned it to John Morgan to do Mary for the very, very first in the next section. And something happened where Joan and Mary they couldn't do it on the same day and I got to do it and everybody was like she don't like nobody and she loves you, Like what is going on? And we just bonded and so when we launched the magazine so that was the first issue Then we had like all this testing and consumer marketing and stuff. When we launched the magazine they asked me to be the next editor.
Speaker 1:I was about to say Mary's reputation back then was like you said she didn't like editor. I was about to say Mary's reputation back then was like you said she didn't like nobody, she was trying to fight people. You know what I'm saying. It's incredible that you connected with her like that because she was a rough cookie back then. Yeah, uh-oh, yeah, we got it. It's cool. She was a tough cookie back then, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So then that changed my whole trajectory as well, because I then became the new talent editor. So when I'm new talent editor editing the next section, I did everybody Maxwell before he had a record deal right Usher, brandy, swv, destiny's Child, outk outcast all of those people are great and and now that was a really again right place, right time because having my ear to the ground but but they trusted me to choose those people and all those people end up miss the elliot. Everybody blew up and it was really, really dope because that would lead to later down the road a really great situation for me because everybody knew me from the beginning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you were kind of an A&R person before magazine. I was, you were I was yeah, you were finding the talent and picking it early.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Tell me about your path to getting to becoming the editor-in-chief.
Speaker 2:So that's where the curve happens that you thought. So that's when I. So then I decided I want to go into fashion. I still love fashion.
Speaker 2:I didn't love any of the fashion I didn't. I wouldn't say I didn't love them, but I just knew I could do better. And so I went into Jonathan's office and I was like I want to be the fashion director because the fashion director just left. And he was like you don't know how to do that because there's all this stuff that you have to do when you're a magazine fashion editor. And I was like I'll figure it out. Like I'm black, I'll figure it out. And so they were like why don't you create your own title and your own, whatever you want to do to be the path to become the fashion director?
Speaker 2:So I came up with this title of style editor and I wanted to bridge music and culture and fashion together, because I thought there was a great opportunity at this time, with music videos happening, with new artists bubbling up, and then just the style, the innate style of hip-hop and R&B, like let's do it. So the first shoot I styled was Tyson Beckford when he signed his deal with Polo. Wow, that's. That's an easy layup, because it's Tyson plus Polo. That's easy. The first cover I style is Biggie and Faith in the Convertible. You did that, I did that, damn.
Speaker 1:Damn bro. That might be the most memorable cover vibe.
Speaker 2:There's plenty of them, but like that one is like man and basically the dude they hired to be the fashion director, didn't want to do Biggie because he's like he's too big. And I was like what Are you crazy? And I was like what, I will definitely do that. And so, right place, right time, I had shot Faith style Faith the week before for her next piece, because I was doing her for next and because of that. And then she started bubbling. They were like, well, let's do them together. And so, yeah, it was the theme of the shoot. Stylistically, the mood board was Bonnie and Clyde meets Pulp Fiction.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And craziest shoot of my life probably I can imagine, Can you?
Speaker 1:give me one mini spicy story, without incriminating anybody or something like that, about that shoot.
Speaker 2:I'll say the spiciest thing about the shoot. I'll tell you a good story. So you know, vibe was still young, so we didn't have proper permits, all this and that. So we're shooting under the Brooklyn Bridge and the cops pull up. They're like because we got like a location van and it's all these, you know, it's tons of people and cars, and they're like what's going on? And so we tell them and luckily the cop was like the biggest biggie fan and he was like yo, y'all, good, y'all can stay here all night, I'll cover for y'all. Like. So that was the energy of that shoot, right, and I was so happy because I had never styled a cover before. And then everybody has your reaction when I tell them like, they're like, wait, you did that. Eric Johnson was a photographer. It was just amazing.
Speaker 1:That's amazing, that's that's special.
Speaker 3:That's special.
Speaker 1:How did it? How did it, I guess, how did it, how did it feel, I guess, to become the editor-in-chief of this massive cultural magazine, and how did your life change? Of course, I'm sure you made more money and stuff like that, but how did your life? Change, being at that high level.
Speaker 2:So, real quick, after I became style editor, I became fashion director. So the fashion director you get to go to Europe, to the shows. All this stuff is all long, complicated. I won't go into the details, but you're sitting front row at the shows in Europe. You've got cars and drivers, you're flying business class.
Speaker 1:So all of that really changed.
Speaker 2:That was my come up right the first time I got to go to Milan for the fashion shows as fashion director, quincy came with us. So, again, right place, right time, because Quincy's with us. I'm sitting having lunch with Tom Ford and Quincy, I'm at the Missoni's house for dinner in Lake Cuomo, I'm sitting with Donatella Versace and Quincy. I'm in right. So I was really knighted in a way, and so all of these things again work for my benefit and my favor. That when I so, I was in parachuting a story and I got a call from danielle smith, who was the editor-in-chief, who was one of my mentors, she I wrote the first mary cover for, um, my life. So that's the other thing. It's like the journalism and the fashion and the styling all come together and danielle called me and said I quit, um, and I was like I'm quitting too, I'm tired of this, it's too many changes. She's like no, no, no, no, no, no, no, do not quit. I put your hat in the ring, I mean your name in the hat to succeed me. So it was kind of interesting, like because she gave me a heads up, I had a chance to write everything down In my mind. I always wanted to be an editor of my own magazine. I think, having worked at all the different parts of the magazine, I knew all the things and I also was, at this point, kind of high profile because of the fashion part and a lot of people forgot that I was a journalist first and so when I became editor-in-chief, my whole life changed. I was a journalist first and so when I became editor in chief, my whole life changed. Like I had a wardrobe budget I had, I was flying everywhere. Suddenly, I'm invited to everything, right, I'm going to every record release, every big party, every you know anything in Miami, la, I'm at the Grammys, it's like all the different things, and then I'm sitting front row at all the shows. So my whole life changed. It was really it was like the Devil Wears Prada in a way, but it was also different because it was hip hop right. So the ability to go to the hood to hear a new artist and then be sitting front row at a fashion show during fashion week made it a big difference.
Speaker 2:It was hard for my friends because it was just different. When I would go out, people were pulling on me and wanted me to listen to stuff and handed me tapes and CDs and wanted to take pictures. And my friends were like, yo, this is not fun for us. And so I had to work with my friends to be like, okay, y'all, come to the party with me, I'm going to be over here working, y'all have fun. We're going to have a signal. Be like, okay, y'all, come to the party with me, I'm gonna be over here working, y'all have fun. We're gonna have a signal if I need y'all to come get me. But I wanted or I had to stop people like yo, these are my people like you, gotta be cool. It was. It was a hard adjustment but it was also a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:It was in the golden era of hip-hop like it was the best time to be editor-in-chief of that magazine and then to have access to quincy that way, right. So now I'm like quincy's calling me, I'm having meetings with quincy, I'm like it's. It was incredible. It was the biggest love affair of my life was having being the editor-in-chief of vibe. And then, on top of it, we won the national Magazine Award for general excellence and beat out the New Yorker Wire, jane and Gourmet. And no black magazine ever had won that award. General excellence, never won. It Beat out the New Yorker. Never happened before. And again, my family, my mom and my grandmother I had them come with me to that award. I didn't know if I was going to win or not. Like they don't tell you until you're in the room and you know. Like Susan Taylor was there, gayle King was there, like all these people you know and they're like yo, he won. It's like Vibe won.
Speaker 2:And the Beyonce face, like at the Grammy's, like vibe one, and the beyonce face, like at the grammy's, like what right? Yes, it was definitely the beyonce face of the gram and so, yeah, so it was. I mean it's you know, I'm so grateful for the opportunity but also to be able to lift up black people, black music culture, black style, black joy, in a way that we had never seen before. It was amazing.
Speaker 1:That's incredible. Wow, I always wanted to ask you that how does it feel to be at that rare air? It's got to just be for lack of a better term just a mindfuck, Just to be all these people coming at you and people calling you. This must be a lot to process.
Speaker 2:It was a lot to process. The biggest thing is that I didn't really have a lot of role models who had been editor-in-chiefs of magazines that could tell me A lot of it. It was run and gun. It's like you're dealing with all these power broker music label heads because at that time it was really, really bad and then you're also dealing with, like these fashion houses. You're dealing with heads of film companies and tv divisions and a lot of advertising stuff, and then you have to keep it real too, right like, right Like. You can't get too flomp, flomp flomp because the streets ain't going like that, and so it was a lot of pressure. It was a lot of pressure, but it was.
Speaker 1:It was fun. It's funny because I mean talking about it. It's kind of like also reminds me a bit of Mahogany, because she went to paris and and just got italy, or she just kind of got caught up in that world and you said, unlike you, she didn't. Then she had to go back home to chicago and be regular. You know, it was kind of just right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's amazing but I think the difference is you had to stay real, you had to stay home in it because of hip hop Like hip hop is not going to let you get too, dom Perignon because it's like you know, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So then you're going to become the editor-in-chief correct me if I'm wrong of Giant Magazine.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, so I left. I went to work with Mark Echo for like a year, worked on his cut and sew, did marketing and all that, okay. Then I went to Giant Magazine, yeah. And then I went to Essence.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I want to get to the Essence part, but there's a question I do want to ask.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess I'm trying to.
Speaker 1:I don't want to be a dickhead, because I know you've talked about this a lot. How were you able to deal with the homophobia in hip-hop during that era?
Speaker 2:Let's definitely not skip over that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I didn't want to skip I got it on my list.
Speaker 1:I was like I got to talk to him about this Okay.
Speaker 2:So this was the other part. So I'm openly gay, so that's the thing. So, but becoming editor in chief, like that was. When I'm processing, like I'm like yo is people, are people going to come after me because of that, like, is it going to be cool? So it was this weird thing of like and I just recently started talking about this I was always afraid that somebody was going to hurt me, that somebody was going to attack.
Speaker 2:I was always like looking over my shoulder because I didn't know right. The other part was it was a really great opportunity for me as an openly Black gay man, to educate the community. So there were moments where I'd be in the studio with artists and they would play the music and it would be like these crazy lyrics that were homophobic and misogynistic and stuff like that. And I was sitting there and I'm like yeah, nah, that's not okay. Y'all it's not okay. And I will say this to the credit of some of the A&Rs, some of the label heads, some of the artists listening and having that conversation with me changed culture, right, and it wasn't always easy Break that down, break that down, break that down.
Speaker 1:I would change culture. I want to hear that.
Speaker 2:Well, because, first of all, there's a whole bunch of black gay men in the music industry and women Right gay men in the music industry and women Right, and so and I knew they were that was also in the whole DL. Who's the gay rapper, wendy Williams, all that stuff was going on. And so that witch hunt made it even more crazy. And for me to be sitting in the seat of power and to be the person deciding who's on the cover, who's in the pages of the magazine blah blah, it changed the power dynamic Right on the cover, who's in the pages of the magazine blah blah, it changed the power dynamic right. And so when I heard people rhyming about beating up faggots' asses and da-da-da-da-da and all this stuff, or killing women and crazy stuff, and then to say, y'all, let's have a conversation around this. Let me tell you why this is fucked up, right. Let me tell you why we're not going to kill each other as Black people. And some people were having it, some people weren't.
Speaker 2:There were fights on set sometimes and disagreements about people thought I was trying to make them look gay, and that I think a lot of the articles that we did about DL culture, about HIV and AIDS, about aggressive lesbian culture, trans artists, all that stuff. This was way back then, right. So this is all the stuff now. That's like normal. We talk about all this stuff now. We identify people by their pronouns, we're fighting for our trans sisters, but this is stuff that I was doing in the 90s, right, yeah, 30 years ago, right.
Speaker 2:So I think that's how it helped shift and change culture. Because, you know, billy Porter tells a story now of when he was in Next and was scared to do the shoot with Vibe because he thought it was going to be homophobic. And then when I show up at the set, he's like exhales and then thought he was going to do all the most. I was like, brother, trust me, you're going to look fly. And so that stuff means something. Kevin Avianz, right, featured on Renaissance. All this and that was in vibe because of me, right. And so that's what I mean. It's like I was. I'm grateful that I had the foresight to push for all of that stuff early so that we then have language that we can understand diversity, equity, inclusion within the Black community and all our intersections.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean I don't know if fortune is the right term, but like coming up. I grew up in this big, big apartment building 12 floors, 12 apartments per floor, and it was you know, plus the block.
Speaker 1:So there were, you know, gay kids around, I think, the woman who should take care of me at the school, one of her sons. So I never tripped, I never. I never tripped Right. But I know that I'm an anomaly, right, you know hip hop, I'm not an anomaly. So I was going to ask you how you dealt with that, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there were people that really had my back and really covered me, Right. And I will say, and two people I will call out specifically, Kevin Lyles would meet with me at least once a month to make sure I was good mentally, emotionally, psychologically. He was like I just, and it was no real agenda. He's like I can push my artists, but you got music editors and I'm going to send you the stuff. Julie will send you the stuff, all the things, but are you good, Right? And the other part, Sylvia Rohn, would do that too, Right. And the other part, Sylvia Rohn, would do that too and that.
Speaker 2:So, between those two and Quincy, you know people have my back and I think they knew it wasn't easy. You know it wasn't. I remember, you know, having a fight argument on the phone with Chris Lighty, because he said I was trying to out Q-tip one time and I was like what are you talking about? And he's like no, but you put him on the cover in this article. I said, but Chris, did you read the article? And he said I hadn't read the article. I said, bruh, get off my phone, read the article, call me back. But those are the things that I was dealing with on top of everything else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, well, everything else, yeah, wow, wow, I'm glad. I'm glad there was a support system there for you, though, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no.
Speaker 1:I'm grateful, tell me about Essence.
Speaker 2:All right. So you know, I've been working on my own. I've been working at these smaller magazines and publications, and Angela Byrne Murray was the editor-in-chief of Essence when I went there. She went to Hampton so we would be judging at the National Magazine Awards and then we would just be talking about like Chris Brown and Rihanna and just different things, and like I have my ear to the ground and she's, you know, she's like black, middle-class woman working at Essence and living in New Jersey with her husband and two kids. So I'm like here's what's going on on the streets. So she was like, would you consider coming to Essence? And I was like, hmm, let me think about that. I was like, so what's the deal? And she's like, well, you would come and oversee the website because we need somebody that understands younger culture, younger women, what they're into, music, all the things. And you have the pedigree and the knowledge and I thought about it and I thought you know what it's a legacy brand? It's a brand obviously I grew up with.
Speaker 2:One of my first writing pieces was in Ebony. It was, in essence, under Harriet Cole. Okay, gordon Chambers was their kind of new talent editor, so he would write for me, I would write for him. But I just had so much respect for Susan Taylor and what she and the owners had created right, what these Black men and this Black woman created and I thought you know what? Let me do it, I'm going to go there, let me learn. And I thought you know what? Let me do it, I'm going to go there, let me learn. And it was great. It was great being there Again another golden era of the Essence Festival.
Speaker 2:So I started working on the website. We did three makeovers of the website, redesigns. I'm the one that launched their Twitter account and their Instagram account, because that was happening at that time and they weren't on. Let's go, black women are over indexing on Twitter. Let's get it. Yeah, all of that Exactly. And so I did that stuff.
Speaker 2:And then they realized I didn't have all the talent connections. So they were like would you consider moving to the magazine? And I was like what's the role? So Mickey Taylor had just left and they needed someone to book the covers and oversee all the covers, but also to manage celebrity relationships across the brand. So that included the magazine, the covers, exclusives for the website, work on the festival, work on Black women in music and Black women in Hollywood. So I was like let's go, it was wonderful, right, let's go, it was wonderful, right. And I Michelle Ebanks was really my mentor there and really took me under her wing and taught me so much about business which then enabled me to, once I left Essence, to build my own business and my own brand.
Speaker 1:Wow, Wow, Okay. And I saw you went to India, did a little little. You pray love in India. How long?
Speaker 2:were you in India?
Speaker 1:He prayed love in India. How long? How long were you in India? I was there for six weeks. That's a nice run.
Speaker 2:That's a nice run. My Indian friends are like we can't believe you stayed there that long. But it was transformative and it was a moment that I needed to reach. I needed to just a readjustment in my life and I got it there and I came back and was a new person.
Speaker 1:Well, just give me a little bit like this what was it like in India? Like I've never been, like how was it? It's so.
Speaker 2:India is very my Indian friends say this, so no one will attack me they say it's very confronting the culture and the environment there. So it is very, very rich and it's very, very poor and the poverty is abject poverty, Like it's nothing you've ever even can imagine in New York right, or in the US. And so it's walking between those worlds, but it's also deeply spiritual, so it's I don't know, but it's also deeply spiritual, so it's I don't know. It's almost like being in a movie, bro. It's like it's so beautiful. The people, the culture is so old, the history is so old, they know who they are and it was. It's very family oriented, but then it's the music, the culture, the colors, the fashion. People are like doing big technology, like all this stuff is really happening there. So it was just really for me it was like seeing the world through a different lens and reminding myself that I could do whatever I wanted to do. Right, I just had to like really dream.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and when you get back from India again. Correct me if I got the timeline wrong. You work at Afropunk.
Speaker 2:So I started Native Son and then I go work at Afropunk and so that was at Afropunk from 2018 to 2020. And then COVID hit, and then that was the end of Afropunk. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Afropunk was great. It was great, great. I went in 2018. It was brooklyn. It was crazy. I was like this is crazy, this is amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah and it's just to organize a community who loved punk music, who loved rock and roll, who loved black music and black culture and were freedom fighters, right, and about equity and inclusion and diversity before all. That was the thing around the globe, right? So we were brooklyn, london, paris, atlanta, johannesburg, and I would get to go to all those spaces. So then, to be with black people in all those spaces in one year, it was amazing.
Speaker 1:It was incredible. That's yeah, yeah, that's crazy. Tell me about native son.
Speaker 2:So, native son, I'm in India, I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do and I thought about all the black, gay and now you say queer men who came before me that didn't have the privilege to live out and be who they authentically were, a lot of them who died during the AIDS crisis. And then I could be like Edwin, chief of Vibe, right as a black gay man. And so I thought what I learned at Essence was seeing Black women support other Black women. I wanted something like that for my community and that didn't exist. So I kind of took like what I learned at Essence, what I learned at Vibe, what I learned at Afropunk, and use all of that the marketing, the organizing, the principles, the mission of it.
Speaker 2:Who just won the Tony and the Oscar for Wicked? Derek Adams, dr David Johns, phil Wilson, all these men right, and we had Duran Bernard perform and it was amazing and it went to our surprise, coleman Domingo with his award, but we had 3.6 billion media impressions, damn. So it's a thing. It's a thing thing and it's about to be a real thing.
Speaker 2:I'm about to say I know you're about to ratchet it up even further Yesterday's price ain't today's price To think that there's a community out there that didn't feel seen, that didn't know kind of who they are and had to hide in the closet for safety and for their lives, that now they don't have to do that and that it could be this big it's a blessing, man.
Speaker 1:It's a blessing. That's great. That's great. Now, did you do something with the Met Gala this year?
Speaker 2:Were you involved with the? We did. We did like a brunch the day before where we invited all these Black queer influencers and stylists and stuff like that. And then I still write too. Like I still write for different magazines and stuff like that. You know, I'm just I'm really focused on telling amazing Black stories for different magazines and stuff like that. You know, I'm just I'm really focused on telling amazing Black stories and amplifying them and supporting and uplifting Black creativity and culture and our history.
Speaker 1:And now you're coming full circle. You're a professor at FIT, I'm a professor at FIT.
Speaker 2:That's crazy. Listen, I'm West Indian Ten jobs, but I teach journalism. I teach journalism, I teach magazine feature writing, public relations work. I'm full-time faculty. I have four classes. I have like 80 students. I'm there three days a week and I love it. I love being around young people and I learn stuff from them. They learn stuff from me.
Speaker 2:There's not a lot of Black professors there and in academia across the industry, I think less than 3%. So what's happening, which is kind of cool, is most of my students are POC or LGBTQ and they feel safe with me. I bring in other Black and people of color professionals and media to talk to them and they feel safe with me. I bring in other Black and people of color professionals and media to talk to them and they love it. That's dope man. So tell me what's next? I'm in Mexico City writing a book and that's the next big thing is, you know, I've never written my own book. I've done four words for people and other things, so I'm doing that. It's hard because it's a lot of stories that people don't know about my journey, about my life. So I'm going to bare my soul and I think it's important because, again, I just want to keep inspiring the next generations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yo, I really appreciate it. This was good. This was good. I learned a lot. Even my research. I still kept learning shit.
Speaker 2:You had good research, though. You had good research, yeah.
Speaker 1:I always like to research. I don't like to. I notice a lot of podcasts. People just kind of talk and I'm like I want to have a focus, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I don't want people to be like damn, you didn't know that it was kind of more basic stuff. Like you being from Cincinnati, how do you not know that you went to Hampton, we went to black schools. We know that type of shit. Got two things Give me one more spicy story and then I got two or three quick shot questions. Again, don't incriminate nobody, don't hurt nobody like that. It could be anything you know. Again, don't incriminate, nobody, don't hurt.
Speaker 2:You don't know that. You know it could be anything. I'll say, when I was in Milan with Quincy, one of the best moments was we were at the Masoni's house for dinner and Naomi and I are running around hanging out and then she's like come into the bathroom with me and I was like okay, girl, like what's happening? And then she sits down to use the bathroom and is just straight talking to me like I'm her girlfriend.
Speaker 2:And I was like yeah, and I was like this is crazy and will definitely be in the book. I mean it's silly, but it's a little spicy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, okay, that's cool. Okay, these are the three quick burns, and then we're done. Give me one or two of your favorite artists of all time. Ooh, okay.
Speaker 2:I'm going to say Mary J Blige. Okay, like my life, to me is undisputable, right Cover to cover undisputable. So I'm going to hands down ten toes down. Mary J Blige is one. Wow, can we say Quincy's an artist.
Speaker 1:Say anything, it's your call, your list.
Speaker 2:I'm going to say Quincy, because what I think is amazing about Quincy is his ear right To think about, you know, soundtracks from movies to think about. We Are the World to think about Michael Jackson, to think about his own accused juke joint, all Right, and the fact that he also was humanitarian was about community and culture and lifting other people up. Even so, he died, was still discovering new talent. I have to give it up to Quincy new talent.
Speaker 1:Um, I have to give it up to quincy, okay, okay and and I agree with you, 100, I'd say 10 tones down. My life is the best produced album puffing them ever did. Period. Top to bottom. Top to bottom, you know, and that's great they done. They did a lot of great albums. Yeah, top to bottom. That is that's my pinnacle. Like this is the best thing they've ever put together. Yeah, give me one or two of your favorite authors, oh well.
Speaker 2:James Baldwin. So native son is named after James Baldwin's notes of a native son. So that was his first collection of essays. That's the type of book I'm working on is a collection of essays so kind of inspired James Bond went to me for sure, and then I'm going to say Maya Angelou.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay. Yeah, he probably lived in Harlem and a lot of people didn't know that.
Speaker 2:I know which is crazy, that people didn't know that. People did not know that.
Speaker 1:I found out I was on a video set I can't remember who it was, but it doesn't matter and I was talking to one of the guys in the production, white Cat actually, and he lived in Harlem. He lived on that block on 120th, and he said that when he went to look at the apartment, the realtor told him okay, you know, they made it, he made off with it, they accepted and he said okay, listen, you have to be cool and quiet because my angel lives on this block, so you could literally walk out your door and see Oprah coming up in a car and all those kind of luminaries coming up in a car, but you can't trip out. You got to be cool. And that's what I found out that she lived on that block.
Speaker 2:Amazing yeah.
Speaker 1:Last question Give me one or two of your favorite designers.
Speaker 2:So you know, I listen to your podcast, so I'm trying not to relish. I'm not going to try to relish, it's good. So I'm going to steal one of his, which was Tom Ford. I think tom ford, you know just the pinnacle of luxury understands the assignment, understands how to create something and make it go viral. Basically, um, I would say coco chanel, because to create something that was really created for women, by women, like by a woman for women, but to grow it out of that era like post um, nazi Germany and all this and that, and really grow her own brand as a woman and the way that it stands up now I would say her.
Speaker 2:And then, third, trying to think of who I want to crown for the last, okay, I'm going to say Virgil Abloh. And I'm going to say Virgil Abloh because, just, I mean the fact that he could take fashion and culture and art and commerce and put it all together, and the fact that it took them so long to even get to Pharrell to replace, because they were like, who do we get that? Can understand this assignment? You got to give it up for Virgil Abel. And to be the first black designer, the head of creative director of a European fashion brand like that. That was cool, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I still marvel at how he did so much in such a short period of time Incredible, really incredible. He was doing OV, he was doing the Nike stuff, he did all the white, he was DJing. It was like how did you do this stuff, bro, here? Thank you, thank you, man.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that. Thank you, brother.
Speaker 1:Yes, I really enjoyed that. I really enjoyed that Good, good. Thank you, jeff, for having me. This is good Thank you man. Have fun in Mexico City. Good luck with the book. I can't wait to read it. Yes, it's going to be. You can catch Mixed and Mastered on Apple Podcasts, spotify, iheart or wherever you get your podcasts. Hit that follow button, leave a review and tell a friend I'm your host, jeffrey Sledge. Mixed and Mastered is produced and distributed by Merrick Studios.
