MTV is known for lots of things: Downtown Julie Brown, The Real World, Yo! MTV Raps, and of course, Bill Bellamy. Yo! MTV Raps is commonly credited with ushering hip hop music into the mainstream, with the likes of Fab Five Freddy and his cohorts pumping Fresh Prince videos and L.L. Cool J muscles into living rooms coast to coast.

Good or bad, those early days paved the way for an explosion of hip hop programming at MTV. With multiple brands including MTV2, MTVU, MTV Hits, MTV Jams, & MTV News, Viacom-owned MTV is the undisputed leader in urban music entertainment.

Ever wonder who’s responsible for deciding what urban music videos and artists are supported at MTV?

His name is Buttahman, and he’s MTV’s director of Music & Talent.

It was his vision and creativity that launched MTV Jams, a 24-hour hip hop music video channel with national distribution. He’s also responsible for MTV Networks Monster Mix, the first nationally televised video mix show. Before coming to MTV he was On-air Talent and Music Director at WERQ/92Q Jams in Baltimore. Now he writes screenplays and finds artists for soundtrack placement for MTV Films. Oh, he’s also a stand-up comic.

In this installment of Industry 101, Buttahman breaks down how he got started in the industry, his role in the mega-machine that is MTV, and his new hit show hoodFAB, MTV’s first ever interactive hip hop Trivia game show.

HHDX: How has your radio background informed what you do now?
B: Basically, I started off, as an intern at the radio station, and I basically just drove the van around. That’s where I got the name Buttahman from because I used that word to describe everything (It was the late nineties). So basically they just liked my personality and they let me start doing other stuff, and I became the music director of the radio station in charge of deciding what got played and finding new music and making sure that the station was always on the cutting edge of what was happening musically. And that’s basically the capacity that I got hired for with MTV; except now I do music videos and label relations (which is working with the labels and MTV to break new music), and we both come up with creative ways to put their artist in front of the people. They’re really our partners, they provide the content; we provide the means.

HHDX: Ok, wait wait WAIT. You’re obviously a humble dude- you make it sound so casual like “yeah one day I started working at MTV…” It couldn’t have been that simple.
B: It was that random dude. It was like a phone call out of the blue. Because I really honestly was not expecting... it was one of those things that just happened… just the right place at the right time. Like, you couldn’t have told me how to get a job like that back then, like whatever, but yeah timing and pure preparation made it happen.

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.

HHDX: To be so successful at this point, where does your career go from here?
B: I definitely want to get into film. Hopefully more creative ideas for television and for all of the other platforms. I write screenplays, I do comedy… I’m the type of person who’s always looking for a challenge. If I don’t have a challenge I get bored easily. So I’m always trying to find what the next thing is going to be and where the next opportunity is. The great thing about MTV is that it’s very roll-up-your-sleeve and jump in where you fit in. Like, we all have a job to do but at the same time we all have opportunities like film and wireless and learning how shows get made, and the VMA’S, and all the other things that are so great to be apart of in music culture.

HHDX: Give me the details on the show.
B: hoodFAB comes on MTV Jams and airs in between the music videos. You can text fab to 66333, and you’re given a series of hip hop trivia questions, and if you get them right then you qualify for prizes. You can also log on to MTV.com to play there as well.