HHDX: Talk to me about the many brands that MTV now has, and your role in determining what content and programming gets put on which brand.
B: Well I work with MTV Jams which is our digital channel. It’s very much straight up hip hop and R&B music video based. That’s how the hoodFAB gameshow came about. We were coming up with ideas about how we could we enhance the viewers experience; not just music videos but short pieces of content that could live virally, that could live online. It’s not just about TV any more. Kids are texting on their phone…you know? We’re just trying to get to where the culture is. That’s how we veered off into the multiplatform programming that we’ve doing. My role has evolved, as we’ve expanded into all these other areas. My role is to maintain that eye and ear to the street in terms of musical trends and then to come up with news ways to deliver it.

HHDX: I’m actually a huge MTV Jams fan, for real. I haven’t seen it in a minute cause I moved, and now I got this DirectTV situation and they don’t carry it.
B: You need to call DirectTV up and be like “Where’s MTV Jams?!” (laughs)

HHDX: I know right.. I used to wake up to MTV Jams man, you’ve got good stuff over there. I miss it.
B: We appreciate that. It’s very fresh, and even though we’re in a limited number of homes we’re still very much on. The people that have it love it, and we got multiple platforms… so you can watch it at MTV.com, you can play on your cell… wherever. You can text fab to 66333 and then you get a hip hop trivia question and go from there. The show is really about hip hop trivia, I basically go on the street and try to gauge fans’ knowledge of hip hop trivia. We challenge their knowledge of hip hop and then give prizes like iPods, and stuff. But it’s a cultural thing because it’s the first ever hip hop trivia show, and it’s highly interactive.

HHDX: I know whenever you go out and meet people on the street you’re bound to get some interesting stories…
B: We’ve been doing this thing where we’ve had contestants be surprised by their favorite rappers. Like we recently had this kid in Brooklyn who was like “I know everything about hip hop I only listen to real hip hop blah blah blah..” then we bring Common out of his trailer. That kid was talking all of this shit, and then he was like “Oh shit that’s Common” and he totally fell apart. So we basically just take hip hop to the streets, and try to continue in that tradition of the classics like Yo! MTV Raps. It’s been a lot of fun. Continued on page 3 »