Hip-Hop Wired: Do you mean that figuratively or literally?
Sway: Both, because I actually do play chess.
Hip-Hop Wired: When did you learn how to play?
Sway: As a teenager, probably in junior high school. I would play friends and learned how to move the pawns, or the knights or the bishops and what their range of movement was. Then as I got in high school I learned better strategy when I met my partner King Tech, his father is from the Middle East and used to play chess. Tech and I would go back and forth and his father would teach me strategy.
Hip-Hop Wired: How often do you play now?
Sway: Now I don’t play as much. I may have played four games last year. But the strategy, you always exercise that. We all got to figure out our fields and navigate through it. In this age of journalism it’s important to have a brand. Look at someone like Elliott Wilson, who’s everywhere and he wants you to know he’s everywhere. He celebrates his relationship with artists to help promote his brand and that’s great. You see a lot of younger journalists doing the same thing. My objective is to make my brand what the artist celebrate. I want my brand to bring the artist to us instead of the artist’s brand taking me to them. I want it to be a mutually beneficial payoff.
Hip-Hop Wired: What role if any does social media play in that payoff?
Sway: I play they game in terms of taking pictures of my guest and posting it on my Instagram but not to exploit those guests or bring some type of attention to me, but just to make people aware of this is who we talked to today and show that variety. I’m not one of those guys interested in making these moments [to be famous]. I don’t have to do that. I don’t look for it, but if those things come my way, I make the most of it.
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