What's Happening With Miz Media?

Hey everyone, Miz here.

It's been a while since we last caught up and I'm sure you have a lot of questions after clicking on this, so I want to make sure I answer them as best as I can. For those of you that care, I'm going to put a bit more of a personal (and very informal) update at the bottom of this post so feel free to read that as well if you're just curious on how I am.

Now for more pressing matters. The most obvious question has to be:

"Where have you been?"

I'll just come out and say it's been difficult for me to carve out time to work on this website recently. The past year or so of my life has been busier than ever for so many reasons and I have been really struggling to find the motivation to continue giving this blog my all. I've also found myself growing a bit more distant with hip-hop/rap music and culture, specifically as the landscape continues to morph into an unrecognizable collection of new faces and sounds compared to the ones I'm familiar with. AKA: Getting old sucks.

Despite this, I do still look for "hidden gems" and try to keep my finger on the pulse of news and upcoming talent. It just doesn't provide me with the joy I used to have anymore for whatever reason.

With all of that in mind, I actually think burnout has been the major contributor to my lack of motivation. For those that don't know, my day job consists of writing articles and posts very similar to this one, and I find it hard to dissociate this hobby from my work and my feelings of always being at a computer. When I get home from work, after spending time on three separate articles for my job, the last thing I feel like doing is booting up my computer and doing it all again — although I will admit, I definitely prefer writing these articles as they align more with my interests.

"So what does this mean?"

No — I'm not quitting or shutting down the site.

While I have reasons outside of the obvious, such as this site being my writing portfolio, I do still want to continue Miz Media. At least as long as Wix keeps it financially reasonable to maintain a site generating no revenue — a much bigger ask in today's economy (and especially with these tariffs!) but that's neither here or there.

"But why does everything look different?"

This "rebrand," aside from adjusting the terrible UI and design choices I made long ago (tan and gold, I must've been on something in college...) is also just a fun exercise I wanted to take on.

I have learned so much from my job about web design and better web practices for things like SEO and user experience, and I really wanted to see how these things would translate to this site. I also finally figured out how to fix the atrocious post layouts and fonts across my whole site which always bugged me. I think we can all agree that this is much better but I am still improving, so bear with me.

I also want to add that with this rebrand, we will be using "Miz" as a pen name for privacy reasons (and referring to myself and the collective brand as "we" outside of instances where I make a post like this.)

Random but important nonetheless!

"Ok, so what's next?"

Miz Media as you knew it is officially dead.

This site is no longer a Hip-Hop/Rap blog as we previously advertised it. Starting now, we're pivoting the theme to encompass all genres of music. We truly are "Media for the Masses" now!

I feel this change was necessary, but also kind of inevitable. I knew there would be a day where hip-hop didn't really align with how the soundtrack of my life evolved. Even over the past few years, I've found myself listening to music from other genres and feeling the need to discuss and share it, only to be reminded in sobering fashion that I only cover "rap music and culture." So I figured I would just save the energy for a topic that better aligned with the site whenever the feeling hit me.

Only it never did. So here we are.

While I really would've preferred to come out of the gates with a bunch of new content, I sadly don't have anything ready at the moment. But, for the first time in awhile, I'm motivated again and that's really what this post is a sign of if anything else.

I have a few ideas for groups and artists I want to cover, and I also have some discussions that I'd really like to share with you all sometime soon. There might even be some new content types I decide to play with. But with this site, everything goes by feel so we'll see how this all pans out...

That being said, I think it's safe to say you can expect an article within the next month. I won't spoil anything, but you're probably Linkin' together the pieces as you read this.

Personal Update (Click to expand)

Hey again! Thanks for checking in on me :)

Honestly, things have been pretty good lately. 2024 was really a shitty year for a lot of personal reasons (all is good now) but at this point, things could only go up really. Except for the Brooklyn Nets draft pick this year — seriously, fuck the Mavericks and the 76er's (I'm not okay).

I don't want to get into too many specifics cause there can be some...we'll call them "interesting characters" on the Internet. But if you're someone from my childhood still tapping in, I hope you're doing well! I still come "home" pretty often so feel free to connect with me if you wanna touch base (preferably through my email list — just kidding).

All jokes aside — Work has been great, although I still hate living in the city (oh yeah, I kinda moved to New York after being in Virginia for a year), I met my (now) girlfriend last summer who — aside from being the only highlight of last year — provides me with all of the support and happiness I ever could want in a partner, and I also now find myself with so many things to do these days which has been a really new and exciting development.

I haven't really picked up any new hobbies—if anything I'm slowly losing one as I play less and less video games because I just have no time for it (and new games are getting worse and becoming overpriced)...But I have found a new passion in collecting basketball cards which has been fun (been loving me some Cam Thomas, Amen Thompson, and Stephon Castle hoops). Oh yeah, and I guess I'm finally a sports guy because I finally found interest in basketball if that wasn't already obvious. N-E-T-S!

There isn't really much else to cover. Family and friends are good, although I wish I could see the latter a bit more (I see the former too much now hahaha)...my mom did get a new puppy (Phoenix) after our old dog passed. She's a real menace and gives me hell every time I visit, but she's cute so we let her get away with it.

But I think that's about it. Appreciate you for reading!

If you made it this far, thanks for caring so much. You should consider subscribing to my email list so all my post update notifications can clog your Spam folder. But seriously, your subscription lets me know people actually enjoy this content and helps further motivate me to keep doing this. An extra big thank you to all of you who already signed up! Don't expect the emails to actually mean anything moving forward though!

We'll see you guys soon.

-Miz