This week’s guest, Steelo Brim, is a triple threat in music, TV, and now podcasts.
He's A&R’d many of your favorite albums of the last decade.
He co-stars in the hit show, Ridiculousness, which runs seemingly 24/7 on MTV.
And Steelo also hosts the successful podcast, Wine and Weed, which needs no explanation.
Now he’s on Episode 017 of The MICK Show to tell us about his journey, and how you can do it, too.
“It’s about consistency, but it’s about efficiency as well,” says Steelo.
We also discuss his Chicago beginnings, how he linked with Rob Dyrdek, and his dream guests for a wine tasting.
Here’s a clue: Mamba.
You can follow Mick (@mick) and Steelo (@steelobrim) on Instagram.
New episodes of “The MICK Show” (presented in partnership with @maximmag) are released every Wednesday!
MICK: We’re back. This is another episode of The MICK Show, here with Steelo Brim. What up, homie? How are you, man?
Steelo Brim: What’s good? How you feeling?
MICK: I’m good, man. I’m glad we get to do this because I drink way too much wine, and so, I think-
Steelo Brim: That’s our problem.
MICK: It’s a great… I get paid now to talk about wine. This is a great job. I get to talk about wine with you. Yeah.
Steelo Brim: I mean, I do a show called Wine & Weed, so I get it. I love to do our show and have me a nice glass… I didn’t have a glass of wine today just yet, but I have been smoking a little weed, so we’re good.
MICK: So, tell me. How old were you when you first started drinking wine?
Steelo Brim: When I first started drinking wine, actually wine was the first thing I ever tasted. I was 24 when I had my first drink of alcohol. When I had my first drink of wine, I remember it like it was yesterday. Me and my best friend, Michael B. Jordan, had snuck into the NCAA… NAACP Image Awards. We wasn’t supposed to be there. I had never had a glass of wine, never had any drink in my life. I think I was like 22 and wanted to fit in. Wanted to look around and not look like weirdos who snuck into this party. So, we saw there was a free wine bar and I remember drinking some chardonnay at the age of 22. That was my first drink of wine. I hated it. It was fuckin disgusting.
MICK: Chardonnay is a bad… That’s a bad way to… It’s like grandma wine.
Steelo Brim: It is. That’s all they had though. It was free and they had it and I was like, “All right, cool.”
MICK: I love it. When you first started getting into more sophisticated palates of wine, were you like… It’s almost like when you have to… Growing up, I had to get all my sneakers at like K-Mart and Sears, and then I discovered Jordans and it was like, “Whoa, this is a different fucking world.”
Steelo Brim: Yeah. It’s a completely different world and it’s a world that I try not to… For me, it’s either… In any world, anything that you do is either you’re in or you’re out, so I try not to fake being an actual connoisseur or sommelier in the space of wine, but I do… Yeah, the more and more I drink wine, I get to know it more, of course I get into more sophisticated things. But I try to just enjoy the true essence of just the wine. It could be the cheapest wine to an expensive wine. I play with it now and try to act like I can taste what the fuck is in it, but I can’t tell. I can’t really tell.
MICK: Yeah, I still can’t tell either. Have you ever chosen a bottle of wine just based off of the logo, and the sticker, and the branding, and the art on the bottle?
Steelo Brim: Of course. I mean-
MICK: Yeah, me too.
Steelo Brim: We don’t buy anything from hearsay. We buy everything from the marketing of it. So, of course, I may say that this bottle looks a certain way, or it might just be a certain price. I might say, “This must be good, because why would they charge me this much?” Because they fuckin know you’re stupid.
MICK: Right? So, let me ask you. You’ve built… A bunch of things I want to get into with you about career and branding and things of that nature, but you’ve built a brand based on two vices, basically. Have you ever caught any flack or any negative publicity from basically making a positive out of things that other people would consider vices?
Steelo Brim: Yeah. I mean, I don’t… I’m not looking at it as like, “Oh, this is a positive,” necessarily. It’s a vehicle. It’s the vehicle that we choose to use on our show and to getting into different topics, getting into different things, and it’s also a social lubricant. We understand that we’re able to… I don’t want to say get away with more things but have tougher conversations than most podcasts can. Say if you’re truly sober and you’d be like, “Oh, I’m being quoted on every moment of what I’m talking about,” versus if you’re like, “This motherfucker’s high as hell and he is drunk as hell. We can’t take everything he’s saying too serious.” But it’s more of a vehicle that we use. Of course, my dad works in youth baseball, in the community. My mom works in the community a lot. So, they don’t necessarily love the fact that I do a podcast called Wine & Weed where I try to tell kids all day… Mom’s a teacher and she’s like, “Stay in school! Education!” My dad’s working with kids and it’s also like, “But your son got a podcast where he’s smoking and drinking.” And he’s like, “But I don’t think you should be watching his podcast because you’re not ready for that just yet,” but at the same time if you were, I try to still make sure that the quality’s there and you’re still getting healthy conversations, things that I feel like if they were for whatever reason to indulge into my podcast, you still have things you can take away from it, and it has heart there and not just, “We’re drunk and high, so…”
MICK: I love that. How did you guys go about building that as a brand? We talk about this a lot on this show. I try to really focus on people who have a lot of different aspects of life going on and the proverbial multihyphenate category, and I think especially over the last year, if you didn’t have a side hustle, and you didn’t have a personal brand, you didn’t have a brand of anything else going on outside of your “real life,” you probably do now after sitting home all year. Do you have any tools or tips for people who are trying to build a sustainable brand? Whether it’s a personal brand like you’ve done or just a consumer brand, like the Wine & Weed?
Steelo Brim: I think establishing a brand story is always step number one, the most important thing. Anything that you do in life, we’re all brands, whether we want to look at ourselves as brand, or a person, or whatever, we’re all brands. It’s just about what are you selling. So, for me it’s about establishing a brand story. You look at yourself where you look at, “Okay, well, what is the brand story of Wine & Weed?” Well, it’s a show that is about two individuals who have two completely different backgrounds, from different places, that want to have healthy conversations to kind of be the liaison between whatever side, the left side of America, right side of America, and establishing a brand story and saying, “Okay, well, all that falls under this brand story and this brand umbrella, it makes it just that much more clear, so then you never get sidetracked doing this thing and doing this thing, because no, if it don’t fall under my actual brand story and my brand umbrella, then there’s no point in me actually doing it.” It won’t strengthen the brand.
MICK: Oh, yeah. I mean, do you think you made any decisions at the beginning of your career that maybe impacted in a positive or negative way where your brand’s at now?
Steelo Brim: Well, I try not to actually live with regrets, whether that sounds cliché or not. I do have things that I look at and say, “Ooh, if I could do that over, I would have probably done this like this,” and just see how it happened to turn out this way. But I try now to just focus on whatever it is and say, “Okay, well, what is the lesson that I’m supposed to be taking away from whatever this thing is? What’s the silver lining that I’m supposed to be finding in this thing?” And not look at things as like, “Man, if I can get that thing over.” Of course, we all have things in our careers and our lives that we’re like, “Shit. Well…”
It may be a timing thing. You may say to yourself, “Well, you know what? If I would have did that thing that I did now, if I would have did that two years ago, I would be even further.” You’re like, “No, no. You did that thing when you did that thing for whatever reason you did that thing.” You might have been more polished. You may have been ready for the actual blessing or whatever you’re about to receive. Maybe you’re ready for the work. And that journey within that two years may have been a part of the actual homework so that you can make it to this test and pass this fuckin test.
So, I try not to look at it and say, “Oh, man, if I did that thing…” I say, “Man, who don’t want to be richer younger? Do more things and shit?” Of course. But at the same time, my journey is my journey, and I think I’m right in that spot I need to be to still make some things happen.
MICK: Obviously, you’re from Chicago. People should know that you got the RSVP hoodie on, the White Sox hat, you know, let’s talk about Chicago hip hop real quick. What was your first introduction to just really dope Chicago shit?
Steelo Brim: The artist formerly known as R anymore, R. Kelly, but R. Kelly raised Chicago in a lot of ways musically. So, R&B was embedded in the music that was going on, whether it was hip hop artists or a rapper, or R&B singer. So, if you were stylistically… Twista still had to actually bring hip hop notes within his music for us to really receive it, you know what I’m saying? So, Do or Die, Crucial Conflict, these are all [inaudible 0:08:31.8]. Twista was definitely probably the first artist from Chicago that I… I’m only 32, that I connected with and was like, “Shit, this is our representation right here. This is the person that’s rapping for us.”
Other than that, when it really hit the scene and really made the real waves, when we took it, you know what I’m saying, to national, that was Kanye. You gotta give him his credit for that. You know, those were soundtracks to my real childhood, like I listen to Twista records, I can remember exactly where I was, or what basement party I was it, what the fuck I was doing, going to the store, I remember in my head.
So, same thing with Kanye. Kanye really did mold and shape a lot of I’ll say my childhood and high school years within Chicago, and he was dope representation for somebody that truly lived in the hood. I’m from K-Town [inaudible 0:09:19.3], crazy area, but I knew at a young age that I didn’t have to necessarily be up that hood as a community. I loved Kanye for that, being like the outcast, because people don’t realize the outcast is a mask.
MICK: Yeah. You have a favorite Kanye album?
Steelo Brim: Favorite Kanye album? Ooh. I’m gonna be biased and say College Dropout, just because of what it did as far as culturally speaking in Chicago. It was just bigger than rap. So, it was just for me, it was like, “Whoa, shit. We’re a real city. We know we a real city. We’re the third biggest city in America, but somehow for whatever reason people look over and the other way.” So, it’s like for me it was like, “Oh, this is huge.” I love the first three. They’re all to me classics.
808s to me is a classic for whatever it did sonically. It wasn’t my favorite album, but I do think it was dope as fuck. My Dark Twisted Fantasy is an amazing body of work, probably one of his best albums put together. I’m a Kanye fan. I love… But I would say probably College Dropout.
MICK: Nice. I grew up loving the early Common albums and my favorite Chicago album of all time was probably Common’s Resurrection album-
Steelo Brim: Oh, Resurrection?
MICK: I’m a little older than you. And with I Used to Love Her and all that, and I listened to that album repeatedly. I used to be really fat in high school and I used to go to the gym at 6:00 in the morning to try to lose my weight, and I would listen to that album on a treadmill every day for 45 minutes before I went to school, so like to this day, when I put that album on, I get like PTSD of like-
Steelo Brim: Oh, word.
MICK: … my clothes not fitting and like feeling like I’m sweating on a treadmill, at like a Bally’s in a strip mall in the middle of Ohio.
Steelo Brim: I thought you were gonna say you use it as an actual workout playlist to this day.
MICK: Nah, nah. I’ve occasionally threw it on at a gym, but when I go back and listen to it, it’s just like it didn’t age really well as an aggressive gym album. It’s more of like now it’s like that… You know, I listen to that album all the time still, but it’s like I want to actually… Now I went back and bought the vinyl. It’s a very like Sunday afternoon, put the vinyl on, it’s a very much more daytime, drink some wine, it’s like it’s that type of album. If I put that shit in the gym right now I’d be lifting like 10 pound little weights.
Steelo Brim: Real smooth. Way to smooth. See, for me Common was like he was older than really my generation, or my age bracket, listening to Common, but of course when introduced to Common, when I was able to actually comprehend, understand, and really connect with-
MICK: Yeah. That’s interesting. I mean, I think we relate to music a lot of ways through bridges, like you mentioned like that, because I didn’t learn… I learned so much, especially from a DJ mind state too in general, like you discover so much stuff through bridges, and now I think it’s… People are so fortunate, because with Spotify, and with going on WhoSampled, and all those websites, we live in a bridge culture. Like if you listen to three songs like you just mentioned, people could easily discover weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks of awesome shit.
Steelo Brim: Yeah, for sure.
MICK: And I love that. Do you miss the art of discovery? Or do you like the fact that everybody has all access to everything? Because we also live in this world where people only want… You want sneakers nobody has, and people, you live in a world you want the shirt nobody has, and all that shit, but when it comes to music, there’s no longer that level of exclusivity.
Steelo Brim: Yeah. I think a part of us and how we were raised, we all kind of… In anything, you love it when it’s more exclusive. You love it when it’s a little more underground and you feel like you the person that’s put people on, that you’re the person that knows this thing. I was a… A mutual friend, Miguel, when I first met Miguel, I’m talking to Miguel, that was in Myspace days, and pretty much his whole first album was already on Myspace. Just like it was on his playlist that he had on, and I remember getting him to come in and meet. For me, I was like, “Man, this dude’s dope, this dude’s dope. People are sleeping on this guy, this guy is dope. People are sleeping on this guy. This kid needs more exposure.” And then that person blows up and you’re like, “See?” But you’re also like, “Damn, now you’re just [inaudible 0:13:16.7]”
MICK: So, how did you go from being like… and I assume maybe you were in Miguel’s top eight on Myspace, to go and to have the whole MTV thing and all that? What… How did all those lines cross?
Steelo Brim: I was working on another album while I was working at A&R, and was just helping put their project together, and I met Drama from Fantasy Factory, Young & Reckless, Rob’s cousin. Met him and he wanted to start a publishing production company, and I was like, “I can help you with this. I can put this stuff together. I know all the songwriters, the producers, I can help you kind of grow your little catalog, your producing,” and he was a managing producer. He was like, “Yeah, please help me with this.” And then Rob just came to the studio like twice and I was just being myself, crazy energy in the studio, I was always motivating, making people feel… always just working with whoever it is and just always providing some good energy. And I think Rob was just like, “This dude’s funny and crazy.” And he was like, “Yo, can I holler at you?” And I didn’t know him from a hole in the wall.
He was like, “Hey, we should do a show together.” And I was like, “Yeah! Cool, bro. Good talk.” Hollywood bullshit. And that was really the only time we really spoke. He told me what the show was gonna be about. I told him, “Oh, okay. Cool.” Didn’t have his number or anything. He calls me three months later and was like, “Hey, this is Rob Dyrdek.” First of all, Rob, if you know Rob, if you don’t know Rob, I’ll give you guys a little insight. He was like, “That show, though, that I mentioned to you, we start tomorrow at 10:00 AM. Can you be there?”
I’ve never done television. It wasn’t why I moved to L.A., wasn’t in my interests. I was wholeheartedly feeling like A&R is gonna take me into owning a label one day, like I want to… This is my passion. This is what I want to do. And now somebody’s telling me, “Hey, come and do this TV show with me.” And I don’t know, something just in me was like, “Well, I can be there. I’ll be there at 10:00 AM.” And I went and we knocked it out.
MICK: Do you think the, “Be here tomorrow at 10:00 AM,” thing was a test? Because he obviously knew about the show before that night, before… to call you. But I feel like a lot of times, you hear a lot of these origin stories, if you will, of people who are like their dream job… I see even a lot like in the tech industry, that people are just like, “Oh, I really wanted to work for Uber, and they called me and said oh, we have an internship starting tomorrow, but you live in Kansas.” And you just lie and be like, “No problem, I’ll be there 9:00 AM. No problem.” And then you just fucking somehow get from Kansas to-
Steelo Brim: You figure it out.
MICK: … from Target and you get there. Yeah, so you wonder, like do you think that was a test? Because you obviously passed it.
Steelo Brim: I love the question. Part of me wants to believe that it was and that he was really this fucking strategic and just-
MICK: I know where you’re going with this. You’re about to say no, that dude was just-
Steelo Brim: But the other part of me was like there wasn’t… If I would have got there and walked around, there was another Black dude that looked at me on set that was waiting on this call, I’d be like, “It was a test.”
MICK: It’s like the backup Steelo just waiting.
Steelo Brim: For me, it was that I knew… I was close enough. But at the same time, if I wasn’t there, if I wasn’t ready, if I didn’t deliver, who knows? I mean, they would have had to figure something out. The show was picked up. They already had a green light for actually shooting it, so they would have figured something out. And those dudes were funny. I mean, the first day, Jeff Tremaine, who is the executive producer and co-creator of Jackass, who’s also an EP on Ridiculousness, understand I don’t know you. I’m scared. It’s my first day being on television. That dude’s walking around, “Don’t fuck this up.” Just like that’s the first thing he says to me.
I’m like, “What the fuck is going on?” Also, if you know Jeff, that’s just a joke that Jeff says to everybody, but I don’t know this. This is my first day. I am petrified. And Rob had went really hard in telling him like, “This is the guy.” Which, I don’t know why he did that and bet on me that hard, but it worked out.
MICK: That’s awesome. Let’s talk about consistency. You guys have been on for… I mean, what? The show’s been on 10 years?
Steelo Brim: The show has now been… Yeah, 10 years.
MICK: Crazy. 20 seasons, but 10 years, which is a lot of fucking work for you, so congratulations to that. What lessons would you be able to give to our audience about consistency?
Steelo Brim: For us, it’s been consistency, and I think with consistency and time on all of us, if you want to do more things, it’s about also efficiency, as well. Our first season, we started off filming at 6:00 AM, we’re done by 6:00 PM, and that was industry normal, industry standard. People were like, “Oh, 12 hour day. That’s cool.” We shot, that’s cool, and now we film six episodes a day, and we start at 10:00 AM and we might be done by 2:00.
MICK: Oh, wow.
Steelo Brim: And that’s with all six episodes of us being like, “Take care, have a good day.” So, efficiency was big in that, as well, and just for us, being smart and saying, “Okay, well, this is becoming the bread and butter of the network somewhat. Let’s pump out more. Let’s give I guess the viewership what they want.” We are consistent because we do have actual chemistry and comradery on the show, like it is fun. It is still fun. I think the day that it stops being fun, we’ll all… It’s kind of hard being able to do six in a day and really quick.
MICK: I’m sure, yeah.
Steelo Brim: … to walk away, but at the same time, I think the day that we are not having fun anymore, we can’t stand each other, will probably be the day that we say, “Hey, guys. We did it. We’re 58. We did it.”
MICK: What do you got, like 27 more years of that for you, right? And then we’ll see. 62 more seasons.
Steelo Brim: I don’t want to [inaudible 0:18:50.7] myself, but they also… Just, it’s fun. It is fucking fun. It’s easy.
MICK: No, I love that. What would be your dream guest for a wine tasting? Dead or alive. Five people.
Steelo Brim: It’s the anniversary of the death, anniversary of Kobe, so I’d probably say Kobe, just because Kobe… I feel like he’d be well versed in a lot, he speaks languages, he’s lived all over the world, I feel like he would know everything about wine. So, I would definitely say Kobe. I’d be like Kobe Bryant, for sure.
MICK: And that gives you so many other international options for your other guests, because they could speak any language and he could translate.
Steelo Brim: And he could just translate, and then I gotta trust him-
MICK: Yeah, yeah. Well, trust him and he’s drinking wine.
Steelo Brim: Ooh. Who? This is a good question, because I’m like… I’m really just like I’m stumped on who I would be like, “Oh, that person.” I’m trying to think who I’m a fan of.
MICK: Let’s cut it down. Let’s cut it down to three then. Kobe and who else?
Steelo Brim: Three? Okay. Kobe… If we’re gonna keep it smooth, then I would say Kobe, Sade, because I just feel like Sade just goes with wine. So, she’s supposed to be there.
MICK: You do like people with four-letter names, too. That’s nice.
Steelo Brim: Oh yeah, I need one more.
MICK: Pelé?
Steelo Brim: Pelé. I’m like Seal.
MICK: MICK? MICK is good.
Steelo Brim: MICK? Ah, MICK. Oh. Let me get one more, let me get one more. All right, I would say Dave Chappelle. I would go with Dave. Dave! I would go with Dave, just because I know if nothing else, comedic relief, it’s gonna be a good time, we gonna all have fun, talk some shit, talk about the world, and get into some stuff, so I’ll go with that four right there.
MICK: I like that. You ask this to 90% of people on a podcast or anybody, they’d be like, “Jesus, Obama, Oprah,” it’s always… All great choices, by the way.
Steelo Brim: All great choices for dinner.
MICK: Yeah, for dinner.
Steelo Brim: Because you got… But we’re saying strictly wine tasting, I gotta have the right… You know what I’m saying, I don’t want Jesus looking over me being like, “Yo, fam…” You know what I’m saying, you gave me the wine, you just turned that water into wine, now you trippin on me for drinking. I don’t need that pressure on me.
MICK: Jesus come in with like two bottles of Dasani, like, “Yo.” Just turns it into wine right there. And that’s how my podcast gets canceled. Cool. Yo, all right, man. Well, I mean as we get close to wrapping up here, what else can you tell us exciting about your next season of Wine & Weed? Anything you want to share? What else can we look forward to from you this year?
Steelo Brim: Wine & Weed, it’s gonna be an amazing season. Season three we’re gonna have a lot more guests. We’ve already had a number of people on the show, but we’re gonna continue to bring more and more people on the show. We got some real heavy hitters coming this season. Finally started to run the show as a real show. My friends were tired of me just texting them saying, “Come on my show.” So, now we’re getting this thing, getting a real engine behind it, but really excited. We got some stuff coming up with Black History Month. We all have events, so we’ll be doing Wine & Weed more as obviously COVID friendly, making sure we’re taking our precautions, but at the same time doing little events that we know can just bring more eyes on the podcast, though not necessarily through the podcast.
But got some cool stuff planned.
MICK: Nice. I like it, man. Well, hopefully when the world opens up and I start DJing again, we’ll be in the same room, we could have some wine and some music and a good time.
Steelo Brim: Please do.
MICK: And appreciate you joining The MICK Show.
Steelo Brim: All right, dude. Thanks for having me, man.
MICK: Cool, man. Well, we appreciate it. Absolutely, we will make sure everybody’s linked to everything that you’re doing, and we’ll be back next week with another episode of The MICK Show.
That was it for another episode of The MICK Show. Thank you so much for tuning in. Please rate and subscribe to The MICK Show wherever you like to listen and make sure to follow on Instagram @Mick and on Twitter @iamMICK. Let me know who you want to hear on a future episode, and we will see you back here next week.
The MICK Show is presented in partnership with Maxim. The show is produced by Lantigua Williams & Co. Juleyka Lantigua-Williams is our editor. Cedric Wilson is our producer and mixed this episode. Manuela Bedoya is our social media editor.