Marcus Reeves's Biography

Marcus Reeves has been called "one of the most compelling writers" of his generation. He is the author of Somebody Scream! Rap Music’s Rise to Prominence in the Aftershock of Black Power (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), which was nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award and has been adopted as a course text at colleges/universities across the country. The book examines the rising power of rap artists following the demise of the black power movement, to become the all-encompassing socio-political voice of young America. In the context of hip hop's history, the book covers the evolution of America's racial and gender politics over the last 35 years. Marcus is also the host of a biannual radio show, titled after his book, on WBAI 99.5 FM.

Over the past 17 years, Marcus has written on youth culture and politics. His writing has appeared in such publications as The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Village Voice, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Vibe, The Source, The Utne Reader, Black Enterprise and The Amsterdam News.

He is the former associate entertainment editor for Russell Simmons’s One World magazine and the former deputy music editor for The Source.

Marcus's writing on youth and popular culture has always been recognized for its keen incite and frank analysis. His first news piece, published in The Source in 1993, about the Newark, NJ dance phenomena the “lock-it-up,” where dancers mimic car jacking, was cited in Dr. Tricia Rose’s groundbreaking book Black Noise (University Press of New England, 1994). His work has been also been cited in other books like Jonathan S. Epstein’s Youth Culture: Identity in a Postmodern World (Blackwell, 1998), Henry Giroux’s Channel Surfing: Race Talk and the Destruction of Today’s Youth (St. Martins, 1997), and Breaking into the Movies: Film and the Culture of Politics (Blackwell, 2002).

Marcus also published TellSpin, a national literary magazine, which combined the worlds of fiction, politics and urban culture. The publication garnered a reprint in the Utne Reader of its humorous essay, “Fear of a Latin Planet,” that he authored.

At the start of Marcus’s writing career, he was the Entertainment Editor for The College Entertainment Revue (CER), a national magazine geared toward college students. While at the CER, he wrote cover stories on such notable artists as Sean “P. Diddy” Combs and the Notorious B.I.G. He was also the political editor for Vibe New Media, developing the national political coverage for the magazine’s website.

He is a contributor to the books Souls of My Brothers (Plume, 2003) and Vibe’s History of Hip Hop (Crown, 2000). A map he compiled of New York’s hip hop historical landmarks was featured in the exhibit, The Hip Hop Nation: Roots, Rhymes, and Rage at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 2000.

He graduated from Rutgers University and was born in Newark, NJ.