Scoop Jackson on Chicago Roots, Slam Magazine, and the Birth of XXL
Today's guest is Scoop Jackson — writer, cultural critic, and one of the most distinctive voices at the intersection of hip-hop, basketball, and Black identity.
From the South Side of Chicago to the halls of Howard University, Scoop came up studying hip-hop as a communicative force before most people were taking it seriously — and turned that lens into a career that would reshape sports and culture journalism.
As a founding voice at Slam Magazine, he helped document basketball not as a game but as a culture. He was in the room — literally at a bar on a napkin — when the concept for XXL was born. And through ESPN, he brought that same perspective to a national stage.
Now, he's telling the origin story of hip-hop itself, co-writing the Grandmaster Flash memoir that puts Flash, the Bronx, the DJs, the breakers, and the writers all in one place for the first time.
This is Mixed and Mastered with Scoop Jackson.
