About Marcus

Music Journalist / Editor / Curator / Pundit / Author

Marcus J. Moore is an accomplished music journalist, editor, curator, pundit, budding music supervisor and author of The Butterfly Effect: How Kendrick Lamar Ignited the Soul of Black America. The book is out via Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. He’s currently working on his next book, High and Rising, a cultural biography of rap trio De La Soul, to be published by HarperCollins.

Mr. Moore has been a contributing writer with The Nation and a contributing editor with Bandcamp Daily. His coverage of soul, jazz, rap, and rock can be found at The New York Times, Pitchfork, TIME, Entertainment Weekly, GQ, The Washington Post, NPR, Rolling Stone, and The Atlantic, among other outlets. He also operates The Liner Notes newsletter, where he writes about his favorite music of all genres and eras.

In 2021, he was an associate editor on the Smithsonian’s highly-publicized Anthology of Hip-Hop. A year later, 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. Elsewhere, he works with the Denver-based record club Vinyl Me, Please as its Hip-Hop Director.

Ever the cratedigger, he compiles playlists for local restaurants, bars, coworking spaces, and cafés, and has been known to deejay in Brooklyn, East Africa, and the Washington, D.C. area. In 2020, Mr. Moore released his own album, a compilation of obscure jazz and Black Liberation soul, for indie label Paxico Records. He also hosts radio shows and created the program Energy Music on the UK-based Worldwide FM.

Over the course of his career, Mr. Moore has 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, through which he covered music in the nation's capital, Maryland, and northern Virginia. Mr. Moore also does A&R, and writes bios and liner notes for mainstream and independent musicians.