Mark Kemp (born April 10, 1960, Asheboro, North Carolina) is an American music journalist and author. A graduate of East Carolina University, he has served as music editor of Rolling Stone and vice president of music editorial for MTV Networks. In 1997 he received a Grammy nomination for his liner notes to the CD Farewells & Fantasies, a retrospective of music by '60s protest singer Phil Ochs. His book Dixie Lullaby: A Story of Music, Race and New Beginnings in a New South was published by Free Press/Simon & Schuster in 2004 and issued in soft cover by the University of Georgia Press in 2006.

Kemp began his journalism career as a newspaper reporter at the Times-News of Burlington, NC, and later as an editor at the science magazine Discover. In the late 1980s, he began writing for the alternative music and culture magazine Option. The Los Angeles-based publication was one of the chief chroniclers of the post-punk independent alternative rock, hip-hop, contemporary jazz and avant-garde music scenes, as well as a rich source of information on so-called world music. Kemp became the editor of Option in 1991, the year Nirvana's breakthrough album Nevermind stormed the pop charts. Option's visibility in the early '90s led to Kemp's hirings at Rolling Stone and MTV.

During Kemp's tenure at Rolling Stone, several acts made first-time appearances on the magazine's cover including Beck, Marilyn Manson, The Prodigy and Sean Combs. Kemp also was responsible for assigning a controversial investigative cover story on Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder, reported by a team of three journalists without Vedder's cooperation. At MTV Kemp was part of a team responsible for launching the popular daytime music-video series Total Request Live; he also helped develop shows for MTV's sister station VH1.

Kemp left MTV in 2000 and focused on his social/cultural memoir Dixie Lullaby, in which he revisited the southern rock of his youth and examined its social and psychological impact on young Southerners in the years following the civil rights movement. In 2002 he returned to his home state of North Carolina, where he continues to write about music, business and culture for a variety of media outlets including The Charlotte Observer, Business North Carolina, eMusic.com, Rolling Stone and Paste, of which he is a senior contributing editor.

References

• Currin, Grayson. "Home is where the South is: A city boy returns to Dixie to reconnect with his music roots." Independent Weekly. September 15, 2004. Retrieved May 22, 2008
• 40th Annual Grammy Awards Coverage: Musical Theater, Film and Television, Box Sets and Writing.
• Hochman, Steve. "Pop Music; Cover boy." Los Angeles Times. November 17, 1996.
• Stout, Gene. "Rolling Stone tries to expose Vedder as 'master manipulator,' 'hustler.'" Seattle Post-Intelligencer. November 15, 1996.
• Pergament, Alan. "Buffalo kid before he became a star." The Buffalo News. December 15, 1999.

External links

• Southern Roots and Healing: E-mail Interview with Mark Kemp, Rockcritics.com.
• Video interview with Mark Kemp about "Dixie Lullaby," Part 1 Part 2, Part3, Nashville Public TV's "A Word on Words" with John Seigenthaler.
• Radio interview with Mark Kemp about "Dixie Lullaby", North Carolina Public Radio station WUNC's "The State of Things," with host Melinda Penkava.
• Radio interviews with Mark Kemp and others on the state of the New South, Baltimore Public Radio station WTMD's "Clear Reception," with host Sheri Parks (Kemp is the second interview on this show.)
• Country music writer Chet Flippo on "Dixie Lullaby", CMT.com.
• Mark Kemp's Simon & Schuster Biography
• Dixie Lullaby page at University of Georgia Press