What we talked about
Joey Brabo, co-owner, COO, and head editor of Respect My Region (RMR), joins the PreVetted Podcast to unpack how music, cannabis, and community intersect, and why thoughtful media can de-stigmatize an entire industry. Raised across Seattle, Indiana, and Texas and now based in Los Angeles, Joey traces his path from lifelong music fan to culture builder, sharing how personal health challenges, exposure to technology, and hands-on sales/marketing roles shaped his advocacy and editorial lens.
Show notes
Joey Brabo has spent 14 years building Respect My Region into a media platform that takes hip-hop, cannabis, and emerging culture seriously, refusing both the cynicism of mainstream coverage and the boosterism of pure brand work. As co-owner, COO, and head editor, he balances editorial independence with the business reality that sponsor partnerships keep the lights on. The result is a publication that treats readers as adults: one that can cover an underground artist and a regulated cannabis brand in the same week without compromising either.
What we covered
- RMR was founded in 2011 around the idea that regional hip-hop scenes deserved serious coverage, the platform has since grown into a multi-vertical operation spanning music, cannabis, and culture while keeping its independence.
- Joey’s editorial test for what gets published: does the story say something that will still matter in five years, and is the source close enough to the work that the reader learns something they could not get elsewhere.
- Cannabis coverage as normalization work, Joey argues that the most useful thing media can do for the industry is treat it like any other regulated category, with the same rigor applied to a dispensary launch as to a software company funding round.
- Building a sponsor-powered media network without becoming a content farm: the partnerships that work are the ones where the brand is comfortable with editorial being editorial, and the ones that fail are the ones where the brand wants to script the coverage.
- Personal branding on LinkedIn as a multiplier for the business: Joey treats his own profile as a way to surface what RMR cares about, not as a separate parallel project.
- Advice to young creatives: build the body of work in public, find one or two people who will tell you the truth about it, and treat consistency over years as the actual differentiator, the people who keep showing up are the ones who eventually get to choose what they work on.