How I Got My Media Break.

Joseph Patterson is a music journalist and promoter most famous for his club nights 'ChocABlock’, which initially started off in Northampton in April 2007. The event featured well known acts such as Skepta and Tinchy Stryder. 'ChockABlock' has grown enormously since then and even greeted us here in London attracting hundreds of Grime and Bassline listeners.

JP, initially started blogging in 2007 to track the progress of his event as well as many others he attended. The site has grown from strength to strength since then accumulating a staggering amount of hits. The blog features topics, from music to event, lifestyle and more.

His writing history includes Contributing Music Editor and Club Editor for SUPERSUPER magazine, columnist for JD Sports Magazine, The Voice, and Artrocker, writer for Dazed & Confused and he is a contributor of Mix Mag and Ctrl+Alt+Shift+. Most recently he was offered the role of contributing to MTV's website where he writes 'MTV The Wrap Up'.

I thought I'd catch up with JP himself to find out exactly how he made his way into the industry.


‘I started off working as a club night promoter with my event called ChockABlock, which is a night that features the best in UK underground music. Then one day I just had an idea to put together a blog, somewhere where I can write club night reviews, he explained. ‘I sent a link to my blog to SUPERSUPER Magazine and they offered me to write a 3-page story on the up North sound of Bassline. When that was published, they told me that the feature was very well received and offered me the role of Contributing Music & Clubs Editor and the rest is history, as they say. Since then I’ve written for the likes of The Sun, The Guardian, The Independent, NME, RWD, Mixmag, Dazed & Confused, Metro and many others and in February of 2010 I was offered the role of Editor at MTV’s urban website – The Wrap Up. ‘

For JP, the route of music journalism happened as an accident but, for him he recalls it as 'a good accident'. His best article 'would probably have to be an article that I wrote for NME on how Grime MCs turned their back on the scene for pop and mainstream success. As an avid Grime Music fan, I just found it hard to see all these old grime MCs forget their roots, so I felt the need to bring them back down to reality and that was possibly one of the most important articles that I’ve ever wrote to date.'

Yes he describes the industry as 'Challenging', be he advises anyone who wants a career in the industry to '...definitely think about making up a blog and practice writing. In the early stages of writing I approached many top publications with pitches and in the pitch was a plethora of spelling mistake, grammar mistakes and I was refused for a very long time until I learned to do things properly. I never went to college, never went to Uni, I was never an intern, so I just had to teach myself. I used to read articles and how they were put together from morning until night and my grammar is still not that great today, but it certainly isn’t as bad as say 1 or 2 years ago (I’ve been a music journalist for 3 years now).'

You can stay tuned to JP via his blog JP...The Hoods Journalist or MTV The Wrap Up