About Marcus

Music Journalist / Editor / Curator / Pundit / Author

Marcus J. Moore is an esteemed music journalist, editor, event curator, professor, and author of two books: The Butterfly Effect: How Kendrick Lamar Ignited the Soul of Black America (2020), and High and Rising (A Book About De La Soul) (2024), a blend of cultural biography, memoir, and critical analysis.

Marcus has been a contributing writer with The Nation and a senior editor with Bandcamp Daily, a platform he helped launch. He co-leads the jazz-focused "5 Minutes That Will Make You Love..." series at The New York Times. To date, Marcus has had famed musicians like Jon Batiste, Questlove, Meshell Ndegeocello and Thundercat write about their favorite jazz compositions. Elsewhere, his music coverage can be found at NPR, Pitchfork, TIME, Entertainment Weekly, GQ, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone and The Atlantic, among other outlets. In 2023, he had his own monthly column at TIDAL called "The Liner Notes," where he wrote about esoteric music and key figures from all eras and genres. In early 2024, Marcus conceptualized "A Night at The East," a special performance for New York City Winter JazzFest that featured younger stars like Shabaka and Julius Rodriguez playing alongside legends like Billy Hart and Gary Bartz.

Two years prior, Marcus was an associate editor on the Smithsonian’s highly-publicized Anthology of Hip-Hop and Rap. Then he was asked to curate an interview series for Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee, where he conducted various hour-long discussions with noted experimental musicians Moses Sumney, Dawn Richard, Saul Williams and others. He has worked with the Denver-based record club Vinyl Me, Please as its Hip-Hop Director, where he reissued classic rap albums, some of which had never been on vinyl before. He also co-executive produced Miles Davis: The Electric Years, a fully-licensed anthology of the musician's most challenging work.

Marcus blends music for local restaurants, bars, coworking spaces and cafés, and has been known to spin vinyl in Brooklyn, East Africa and the Washington, D.C. area. He has released two albums — one a compilation of obscure jazz and Black Liberation soul; the other a collection of downtempo gospel and soul — for indie label Paxico Records. He also guest-hosts radio shows and created the program "Energy Music" for the UK-based Worldwide FM. He has created globally syndicated playlists for Google, and has hosted live programs for Red Bull Radio and Sonos. He writes extensive liner notes for vinyl packages, and has written bios for Erykah Badu, Jhene Aiko, André 3000, and Chance The Rapper, among many others.

Before covering music, Marcus covered business, politics and education for the Gazette newspapers in the D.C. suburbs. He’s been an editor at WTOP-FM, the region’s top-rated station for news, traffic, and weather. In 2009, he created the website DMV Spectrum, where he covered independent music in D.C., Maryland and northern Virginia.