00:00You've been in the entertainment industry for, what, at least 30 years, maybe longer than that.
00:03Yes, 30 plus years.
00:05And for those who don't know, I mean, kind of your claim to fame, you manage some big artists like
00:09Missy Elliott and Busta Rhymes and I think L.O. Cool J.
00:12L.O. Cool J, 50 Cent, Mariah Carey, yeah.
00:15Mariah Carey, not the brand.
00:17My late partner, Chris Lighty, and I had a very successful management company called Violator.
00:22Yeah, but I am curious, though, when you got into that business, was that the business you wanted to go
00:28into or was that just happenstance?
00:29That's an interesting question because I am always so honest about saying I was not a music buff, barely listened
00:36to the radio, did it strictly for entertainment purposes, had no real aspirations.
00:40But what I've always been is someone who recognized opportunity and I had a clear sense of kind of what
00:47my skills were, right, my gifts.
00:48And it lent itself to, one, working with talent and being able to understand how to reach them and how
00:56to motivate them and how to help them build on whatever it is they wanted to do.
01:01And that was a natural, you know, extension to management.
01:04But I do want to talk about just the idea of hip-hop culture and, for that matter, black culture.
01:08I think we're around the same generation.
01:10And, I mean, there was a time where rap music was looked down upon by the mainstream.
01:14It was not marketable, if you will, certainly not outside of the black community.
01:18A lot of that changed in the 90s.
01:19Oh, a lot of, yeah.
01:20The 90s was kind of the explosion of hip-hop becoming mainstream.
01:24Why do you think there was such an uptake of that culture by people who weren't part of the culture?
01:31Because hip-hop became pop culture, right?
01:34The look, it was a lifestyle.
01:36Everything about it, the swag, the wardrobe, it just became the cool factor.
01:43And I think we've seen that over the, you know, course of music and culture where black culture, right, whether
01:52it be the music, the fashion,
01:53the fashion, always led kind of the fads and the crazes.
02:00And we saw in the 90s where you had all these different genres of music that were more popular.
02:06But because hip-hop was a lifestyle, I think people were subscribing to the lifestyle in its entirety.
02:12And along with that came the music.
02:15You managed to sort of segue from that into reality television.
02:19Some people know you from Love and Hip-Hop as the producer of that.
02:22I am curious, though, just about the idea of those shows and my understanding of how that show evolved.
02:28It wasn't even really around the spouses and girlfriends.
02:31It was supposed to be around the artists themselves, right, Jim Jones.
02:35But at some point you realized there was maybe a bigger audience for that.
02:38And I am curious about how that evolved and how that effectively became the template for so many other reality
02:44shows,
02:44not just black reality shows, but from the other cultures as well.
02:48I mean, I think when you go back to talking about pop culture and talking about the fascination with the
02:53lifestyle
02:53and, you know, the cool factor of any given world, hip-hop was that at the time.
02:59And what we were doing was pulling the curtain back and giving people kind of a front row seat and
03:05insider's view of all of the things behind the scenes,
03:08the things they weren't aware of, familiar with, and specifically the relationships that existed.
03:13We were seeing a, you know, rash of these female ensemble shows that were showcasing different elements of worlds and
03:22relationships and lifestyles.
03:23And here was one that I was very familiar with, having navigated it with my clients and being, you know,
03:31bearing witness to those relationships and just the heartbreak of being with someone who's, you know,
03:39a forward-facing persona was such that they weren't, you weren't on the red carpet with them
03:43and you didn't have an opportunity to, you know, be front and center in those relationships.
03:48And understanding that here was an opportunity to not only, like I said, pull the curtain back and give people,
03:55you know,
03:56a peek into this world, but potentially provide an opportunity for these women as well to pursue their own goals.
04:03What are the opportunities out there for other Mona Scott Youngs?
04:06And I ask that because when you look at the proliferation of reality shows involving a black cast,
04:12so many of them are produced and to a certain degree owned by non-black people.
04:18Is that improving?
04:19Are we getting more representation, not just on the screen, but also behind the camera and more importantly in the
04:24executive suites?
04:25Listen, that's a tricky question because we're looking at some unprecedented times in the world that, of course,
04:32you know, impact what we're seeing in terms of the representation on screen.
04:37For me, the opportunity that provided me was not just to leverage everything that I had done and the world
04:44that I knew
04:44and the people that I had, you know, access to into a television program that allowed me to produce
04:51and eventually form my own physical production company, but it was a gateway into, you know, film, scripted,
04:58and all the things that I'm doing now.
05:00So are the opportunities out there?
05:03Sure.
05:03Are they as prevalent as I would love to see them?
05:07Not necessarily, but that's why a big part of what I try to do is provide those opportunities,
05:12especially for women who aren't coming up, you know, on that trajectory.
05:16I made a very, um, what is the word?
05:20Was it a lateral move?
05:21You know, I just came from the music industry and moved into television.
05:25Right.
05:25So it wasn't, you know, I didn't come up in the television game,
05:29and I try to provide those same kinds of opportunities for other women, women of color,
05:34who want to explore other areas and other career goals.
Comments