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Author Serial entrepreneur Publisher Business executive Certified business coach and more....

Dr. Jameelah “Just Jay Wilkerson, aka the Digital Promo Genius, is dedicated to utilizing all of her resources in aiding the advancement of businesses large and small. Just Jay is a loyalist who believes excellent character and values are at the core of every relationship. On September 3, 2019, Lagos University International honored Jameelah with the title of Doctor Honoris Causa. Born in Muncie, Indiana, Dr. Wilkerson has showcased her skills as a business professional, certified business coach, marketing consultant, web designer, graphic designer, and songwriter for over two decades.

Dr. Jameelah “Just Jay” Wilkerson is a partner at THM Media Group and Kannon Entertainment “The Home of the Bomb Music”, the President of Marketing for Palm Tree Entertainment (www.PalmTreeEnt.com), whose artists include Soulja Boy, I Love Memphis, Buck Nasty and more. She is also the CEO/Publisher of Raynbow Affair Magazine (www.raynbowaffair.com), and The Hype Magazine (www.thehypemagazine. com).

Founded in 2002, Just Jay grew The Hype Magazine from a one-page newsletter into a major print media outlet, adding retail print outlets in 2013. Within the first few years on shelves in major retailers in the United States and Germany, Hype has captured “Magazine Publication of the Year” at multiple award shows. Covering “News from Hip-Hop to Hollywood, The Hype Magazine’s diverse content has made it an entertainment industry powerhouse on multiple continents. Jameelah Wilkerson is an author, serial entrepreneur and business executive that has carved a niche for herself in the entertainment industry. 2022 has been a particularly great year for “Just Jay” and she is still pushing her initiative Self Esteem through Entrepreneurship. The aim of the program is to help attendees develop the necessary knowledge and skills needed to attain and maintain a strong presence in a competitive marketplace.

“Just Jay” also released two books on Amazon entitled How To Get Maximum Results In Minimum Time and Ignite Your Lyfe.

It's your girl Ladychelle and I'm so excited to be sitting here with Just Jay from The Hype Magazine, the gear alone introduces itself, but go ahead and let everyone know who we're in the presence of right now. I'm Jameelah "Just Jay" Wilkerson, CEO and Founder of Hype Magazine.

Being a brand that interviews others, does it ever feel weird being the one interviewed? All the time, I don't like it.

(laughs) Me neither, but tell us about The Hype Magazine, for those who might not have heard of it or know the history of it. I started in 2002, just as a newsletter, just getting the word out. Going into the end of that year, going into 2003 it's when we really started to go ahead and get ready for the print side of it. And it's been stressful ever since. Lil John and Eastside boys were one of our first cover so it was awesome to see how they've grown over the years.

Being a platform that's here to share news, what are some the qualities for someone in the magazine world to figure out who's who, who's next, who has flavor? You gotta have your ears to the streets definitely, you have to be involved, and personally invested in going to venues, and seeking talents, just like the A&Rs at the labels, you've gotta really be invested to find that real raw talent. If you're not willing to get out there, and be in the streets and really look at who's moving, and solidify that with a stamp from your publication, it's gonna be kinda hard because you'll always be the second fiddle, getting the second hand of it. And not the first.

With us being in a digital world, 2022, do you feel like publications like books and magazines are becoming obsolete? Are they becoming a dying art? Or are they still very much alive? Maybe the print side of it is, but content is always needed. Without content, there's no energy. Like if we didn't have a scandal or a story, or something to get you excited every day people wouldn't have anything to talk about, there woulnd't be nothing on your timeline, and alot of that energy and the content comes from magazines. So when they say magazines are a dying source and are a thing of the past, well the Will and Jada situation you guys are so crunk about came from through a media outlet. If there wasn't a photographer there, or media outlet to publicise it, you wouldnt know about it. The stuff that's going on with the war, we wouldn't know about it if it wasn't for the press, or the print publications or people writing about it. So content is still King. Doesn't matter how it's pushed out, digital radio, television, content is still king.

Would you say media shapes the art world, or just there to report on it. It definitely shapes it.

Why should an artist consider the blogs and magazines to be an important part of their music journey? At some point in the game, that was the only that mattered. I mean to grace the covers of some these magazines or to have your add in XXL or something, years ago before I even came around, it was the thing. You go to store, you look in that magazine and whatever was in it, you go buy it or you go listen to it. That was like the guide, and I don't think alot of artists realize how powerful media is. If we're out there, you have your demographic for the magazine to a standpoint, Hype has its own demographic, Makin'it Mag has their demographic, The Source, everybody has their own demographic but if we push that button at one time to say this artist is hot, the world says "it must be hot, because every body's talking about it." We have a reach. Artists sometimes say "I have this and I have that," yea you have your fanbase,

but you don't have 15,000 subscribers, you don't have 500 thousand subscribers that subscribe daily to that instant activation of content. So I think sometimes the artist, they don't think they need a lot of things, but it's a wagon wheel, its a turning thing here, you need all of those things to make it make sense. So blogs, magazines, any content providers very well much so needed.

As someone who always who always has their hand on the pulse of what's going on at all times, do you ever wanna shut it all off like "ENOUGH!" Everyday! Everyday! And as I get older, it starts becoming harder for me to want to get out and engage. When I was young, it was like I gotta go to this club, that club, I can do 5, 6 clubs in one night, turn up, be there, get news, go to sleep, wake up in the club and keep it moving. But now, I'm out of there, 8:30 I gotta keep it moving.

How do you find the motivation to keep going, and that passion fresh? I think from my perspective, I gotta motivate myself.

As time goes by, as someone who's also in the magazine world, things get old. You start meeting the same people. How do you keep that passion fresh and that motivation lit? It's difficult sometimes. Like today I woke up and all I wanted to do was lay in the bed. But I know I probably have 5000 email submissions from people saying when can I, how can I, what time can we talk, when can we talk. So the motivation really comes from getting that spark, maybe some sun, it might be a call, just simple stuff now get you motivated whereas back in the day I used to wake up motivated. But it's our job, it's something we've committed to.

Tell me about Just Jay and why you personally do what you do? It's so many things, when I first started this magazine, I wouldn't classify myself as a bum, but I would classify myself as a no-work zone. I would work my job for 6 months, 2 3 jobs and then I wouldn't wanna work 6 months. So getting into this thing I call it, this massive thing, I honestly did it to make my mom happy. She wanted me to go to college and I was like, I ain't doing that. So I started this magazine and I was look, I started a business, it's all good. And then when it started to grow, I was like wait a minute, I gotta commit to this thing every day, all day. It's like feeding a monster every day. It's sometimes overwhelming.

Being an insider, being able to walk through these different doors, we actually get a behind the scene perimeter view of everything that's going on, what would you say is the key ingredient to success in this game from your perspective? Relationships and your personality. For me, I've built a lot of relationships with people, and based on how they treat me, and how I treat them we have a long-term relationship.

Is there a line in media you choose not to cross? Certain subjects you won't entertain? We drew the line when I started, I decided I wasn't going to be a gossip magazine and I decided that I would create the value of the boundaries myself. Like if I see you cheating, it's not my job to publicize I seen you cheating, it's my job to publicize the hot record, what you have going on in the community, it's a thin line. So you have to put a stamp on what values your publication stands for. You have some magazines that

come out, their niche is gossip, that's what they wanna do. So you know dealing with that particular person, there's something, they wanna know. Really how you move, that's your presentation. Whatever integrity means to you, that's what it means.

Living during a time where everything is happening right before us on the timeline, is there ever a time that integrity is greyed and is it hard to stick to your guns? It's definitely hard, because we don't get the praise that the gossip blogs get. Although we have been out there longer, alot of them have mocked our style and our formula, we just don't get the praise because we just don't get into it. You would think people would respect that more but they don't. They really wanna see the sizzling hot gossip or the bullshit storyline. But unfortunately, I can't get into that. We hold strong. Like the BOB cover that we did, we talked about him being homeless, him camping, that story's priceless because that's him. So regardless of what's going on with him now, we still have a lot of personal information that he didn't put out to the other masses because they didn't care to ask him about that.

What's next for Hype? What are the new heights you are reaching for? The new height we're reaching for now, we're building out a collaborative partnership with a company called OverTV, we just did that. The main goal for us right now is to be a media house. A lot of the urban outlets, and I wouldn't even say urban, I'll say Urbanites because Urbanites to me are the people who love the urban culture whether they are White, Black, Iranian, Spanish, doesn't matter. They've been left behind. Like you're starting your grind right now, you should be able to call in like they were able to back in the day, you should be able to call into a bigger media house and say "I need some support, I need to be part of this house." Then we come and we help you formulate a structure. No one was there for me when it came to structuring the magazine, I did alot of it out of my head. I don't go together sites, because I don't like to see their stuff, I like to be creative in my own way. But we need to build a hub of support networks for other media outlets. That's the goal for the Hype Magazine network as a whole. So in the next 2-3 years, our goal is to help about 20-30 major outlets, they're not major now, but they will be, to help them get over that threshold to get into the new wave. Digital is king right now, and alot of these outlets don't know how to convert to it, but I do. So really just helping as many people as possible.

The world’s #1 digital magazine, The Hype Magazine, celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2022. As part of the celebration of two decades as an integral part of the media industry, the outlet will share its long and storied journey via a series of shorts published via its YouTube channel and streaming television platforms. Segments of the docuseries are currently in production and will be released incrementally throughout the year.

Founded in 2002 as a one-page community newsletter to service the Indiana market by CEO/Publisher Dr. Jameelah “Just Jay” Wilkerson, The Hype Magazine rapidly took hold. It evolved into a regional magazine that became the voice of the midwest. Hype enabled breaking acts from outside of the market to gain access to a much-coveted and untapped region of the United States. Serving a rapidly growing fanbase across the country, The Hype Maga-

Celebrating 20 Years!

zine added its web portal just a mere nine years behind the public release of the World Wide Web in 1993. Combining The Hype Magazine’s physical presence with its online portal, it began to popularize and transform the “ezine” or “webzine” into the now popular format of “digital magazine” in the early 2000s as well.

Among The Hype Magazine’s accomplishments and development has been seeking out and supporting breaking artists long before the mainstream caught hold. Often the outlet provided the very first magazine cover for artists like Ludacris (March/April issue 2005), Soulja Boy (Issue 24-08), Jazmine Sullivan (Issue 27-09), MGK, Snow Tha Product, GRAMMY winner Whitney Peyton, Ty Dolla $ign (2012) and more. Gracing its more current impact covers (print and digital), you’ll see the likes of K Michelle, Nick Cannon, Yo Gotti, Rick Ross, Florida State Senator Randolph Bracy, Charlamagne Tha God, Yella Beezy, Bobby FishScale...the list goes on. As a digital powerhouse, The Hype Magazine is home to more than 40,000 articles and posts featuring household names as well as those on the cusp of stardom.

In 2013 The Hype Magazine took to the retail newsstands claiming space in significant book retailers Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million, select military bases and, even catching the attention of collectors who would buy issues in bulk and resell them on EBay and Amazon!

Currently, The Hype Magazine network has expanded to include multiple magazine titles with the LGBT magazine Raynbow Affair and positions in streaming television and radio. CEO Wilkerson is also extending the brand’s reach via various other high-end ventures, to be announced throughout 2022.

About The Hype Magazine

The Hype Magazine is a lifestyle and entertainment publication covering everything news from Hip Hop to Hollywood. Hype, which stands for How You Perceive Everything, prides itself on being a trusted platform from which news and interviews are delivered without adulteration from its contributors or editors. To date, Hype enjoys a global audience of approximately 1.4 million across its multiple platforms and social media profiles making it one of the most impactful independent portals in the industry. You can join The Hype Magazine’s social media conversations by following them on Twitter and Facebook @TheHypeMagazine and Instagram @ TheHypeMagazineNetwork and enjoy its content via its website www.thehypemagazine.com.