Covering hip-hop, R&B and popular culture for over 20 years, Jayson Rodriguez has interviewed some of the biggest names in music during his distinguished career, including Drake, Mary J. Blige, Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Queen Latifah and Dr. Dre, among others.
In 2007, his sit down with Jay-Z earned him recognition by MTV as one of the network’s 10 best interviews of the year, where his work was highlighted among peers Sway Calloway, John Norris and Suchin Pak. As a reporter at MTV News, Rodriguez also covered Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration, Michael Jackson’s funeral and Shyne’s release from prison after nine years.
Rodriguez also exercised his talents beyond news gathering, by producing broadcast and video content, including 2009’s “Chris Brown: The Interview” (MTV), 2016’s Keep It 1600: Wale at the White House (Revolt TV), the 2017 Live Nation documentary, “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A Bad Boy Story” (Apple Music) and he contributed freelance pieces to a number of media outlets, such as Billboard, NBC News and Rolling Stone (“Drake’s Big Break“).
More recently, he’s guided various high-profile, multi-media projects as an executive producer or showrunner, including The Breakfast Club on BET, a partnership between iHeartMedia’s Power 105 radio station and Paramount’s BET network; Spotify’s The Bridge: 50 Years of Hip Hop, hosted by Grammy-winner recording artist, Nas, and veteran journalist Minya “Miss Info” Oh; and presently 7PM in Brooklyn with Carmelo Anthony & The Kid Mero.
From 2011 to 2013, he served on the staff of XXL magazine as its executive editor, where he penned four cover stories (50 Cent, Rick Ross, etc.), supervised the editorial, art and photo staff and contributed to the brand’s digital strategy.
In 2014, Rodriguez was appointed the first editorial director of Revolt Media & TV, the start-up music network, where for two years he oversaw the network’s music and culture coverage online and contributed to its social media and linear news strategy.
Rodriguez was later a senior producer and on-air talent at Vevo, where he directed digital shorts on Pusha T and GoldLink and hosted “Live At Vevo,” a hip-hop performance and interview series that featured guests such as Nipsey Hussle, Tech N9ne, A Boogie, A$AP Ferg, Fabolous and Jadakiss.
Pursuing independent passions throughout his career, Rodriguez created the streaming series The BQE (co-hosted by Shaheem Reid) with PNC Radio (2012-13), managed an upstart recording artist (Mike Jaggerr’s The Eleventh Hour) and currently publishes his popular Backseat Freestyle newsletter, while also developing multi-media projects under his Smarty Art production banner.
An avid social media enthusiast, Complex named him one of the 25 must follow music writers on Twitter.
Rodriguez graduated from the University of Delaware with a B.A. in English and obtained his master’s in journalism from N.Y.U.
Although he no longer lives in his beloved borough of Brooklyn—having moved to the suburbs with his wife and their daughter—he still thinks Biggie Smalls is the illest.
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