FORBES: Jalen Rose Is The Voice Of The People
September 4, 2021
Jalen Rose is the voice of the people with two popular podcasts Jalen and Jacoby and Renaissance Man.
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is the voice of the people.
The proud Detroit native (What up doe?) and University of Michigan graduate is one of the most authentic and compelling personalities in entertainment, culture, and sports media.
Rose first came to prominence as a member of the iconic Fab Five team at the University of Michigan where the squad went to two consecutive NCAA championship games in 1992 and 1993. Following his college career, he was drafted as the 13th overall pick by the Denver Nuggets in the 1994 NBA draft. In his successful career, he would play for 13 seasons and won the Most Improved Player Award in 2000.
Since his retirement in 2007, Rose has worked at ESPN as an analyst on SportsCenter and in 2012 he became one of the hosts for NBA Countdown. In 2011, he produced the ESPN documentary and it became ESPNʼs highest-rated documentary
Of all his achievements, Rose is most proud of his school, (JRLA) which he founded in 2011. The academy is an open enrollment, tuition-free, public charter high school on the Northwest side of Detroit, where he grew up. The academy serves over 400 9th through 12th-grade students with one hundred percent of the academy’s graduates have gained college acceptance since the inaugural class graduated in 2015.
I caught up with Jalen on a Zoom call and we spoke about why he uses his platforms to be an advocate for athletes, how he got a bust of Jadakiss, and his two popular podcasts and
Grove: It’s an honor to speak with you today. Earlier this year, I covered the incredible work you’re doing at The Jalen Rose Leadership Academy.
Rose: Appreciate the love man. We are tuition-free so any coverage and any support we get is major. Thank you very much.
Grove: But I wanted to start with this: What do we have to do to get the Fab Five in the Basketball Hall of Fame? Your squad, the Georgetown Hoyas, and the North Carolina Tar Heels with Vince Carter were my favorites.
Rose: Well, just so you know, when I was a member of the Pacers, Larry Brown use to have us practice at the University of North Carolina. That was the first time I ever met Rasheed Wallace and Vince Carter. I cannot make this up. I went to their basketball facility and Rasheed Wallace had on Michigan shorts and Vince Carter had on a Michigan jersey at UNC’s campus! True story. Dean Smith had a picture of me shooting a shot over Bobby Hurley hanging on his wall. They was like, “Dean Smith loves you.”
Grove: Here’s something else I want to know. When you and your wife Molly have a sports debate, who wins?
Rose: She wins. You know how it is. I met the true executive producer of your show, your wife Brandi. I know she set up that background. I know she’s the person who put all the pictures up. All you did was say yes, yes and sit there. I know for a fact.
Grove: You are correct! In the sports realm. whatever platform you’re on, you always advocate for players. Whether it’s during contract negotiations or free agency. Why is that important for you?
Rose: Because there are a lot of voices. Some are more predominant than others. Some are more accurate than others. You can disagree with Kevin Durant leaving OKC to join the Warriors but you can’t call him names. That crosses the line. One of the many reasons I wanted to get into this industry, as mass communications was my major in college, was that I felt like I wanted to be a voice that was unbiased. I was called a hoodlum and ghetto when I was at Michigan. If there was a list of all the hated collegiate athletes, I’m was going to be on it. I watched all of these things happen and was like, “I’m going to have an opinion and I’m going to say facts.” I wanted to be honest, to represent my people, my neighborhood, and the streets because that’s where I grew up playing sports on the blacktop at the park. What I wanted to as a sports analysis, not just as a black man, but also as an educated man who accomplished everything everybody else accomplished that does this job. I have their diploma but I have my voice and my experience. Lastly, I want to kick down barriers. I’m the only former NBA player that has a Monday to Friday show and that’s been the case for like 10 years. Why is that? Because what ends up happening is if you look at the landscape of media, football and basketball are predominantly Black and many networks don’t want to have an all-Black show. So what happens is that we’ll have the former Black player that we can rinse and repeat and treat us like a monolith. While we still have the white play-by-play person as the host. That is the staple of most shows. They just rotate the players. So I’m just here as a vessel to try to break down as many barriers as possible.
Grove: When was the first time you met David Jacoby and how did you two come up with the podcast?
Rose: The first time I met David was when we were at Stroker’s, an adult entertainment club in Atlanta. By the way, I’m the first former athlete to have a podcast. I was doing podcasts on Periscope before Apple and Spotify. I pitched Bill Simmons an idea at an ESPYS’ after-party that was at the W Hotel in L.A. I was like, “I’m going to wait until like 2 am to approach him because usually adults that had a couple of glasses of wine will be more apt to least listen to my idea.” I saw that ESPN had a subsidiary called Grantland and I was doing primarily basketball shows. Before that I was on the NFL Network, MTV Movie Awards, I worked for TNT, I’m socially and politically conscious so I didn’t want to take 22 minutes to only talk about basketball content. So I pitched Bill the idea of a show called The Rose Report and it really took me like two or three months to actually get the meeting.
One of the things I decided is that I wanted somebody to do the show with me. I like having somebody to bounce things off of. So in the pitch meeting, they asked me did I want to bring in one of my former teammates or somebody from my neighborhood or college. I told them I wanted to do the show with Jacoby because he was in the meeting working right beside Bill at Grantland. He was looking at me like I was crazy and that’s how we started.
After a few years, we changed the name to Jalen and Jacoby. We went from a podcast to a radio show, to a late-night TV show to an hour on ESPN 2 to 30 minutes on ESPN.
Grove: On Jalen and Jacoby you have so many iconic photos in your background but how did you manage to get a bust of Jadakiss?
Rose: I’m just trying to teach people. A large portion of our audience can’t hear what we’re saying. They may be in transit, they may be at a restaurant, they may be at the airport, or they may be in and out of the room. But they see us when they look at the TV. Just like the pictures behind you. You chose to sit in that spot for a reason. That’s exactly what I did. I put up the Muhammad Ali summit picture, the Ice Cube Doughboy pic, the Jackson Five, and Jane Kennedy. By the way, the OG’s loved when I put that picture up. They was like, “Yo, we rock with you.”
I’m glad that people are actually appreciating the greatness of The Lox. I was in the “We Gone Make It” video. I’ve been to D Block. I’m really fortunate that Styles and Sheek have shouted me out in songs. It was terrific marketing when Jada started saying he was “Top Five Dead or Alive.” Now you can’t introduce him or say his name without mentioning that. In doing that promotion, he created his own Hall of Fame bust. Eventually, I told him, “I need that bust for the studio. I know that bust is at your house right now doing nothing and nobody’s looking at it. I’m starting to show called Jalen and Jacoby. You know about this show. I want to have you on the show. I need that bust.” So for years, people been seeing it and there’s waves on the bust that we always joke about and people were surprised that I was still having him in the conversation of all-time greats. I wasn’t just talking about the Verzuz because I was there. You know who was there with me? David Jacoby.
Grove: Not only do you have one the top sports podcasts with Jalen and Jacoby, with Renaissance Man, you have one of the premiere entertainment/culture podcasts. How did you develop that concept?
Rose: Everything I do is representative of my hometown. They even gave me the key to the city. So Renaissance Man, comes from a notable building of Detroit called the Renaissance Center. When I use to go there when I was young, they had a restaurant called The Summit on the rooftop that moved really slow in a circle. You can see Canada and we use to go to the movies there. It’s our storied building
So I named Renaissance Man after that but it’s also a play on words to be so very versatile in the game. I was fortunate to have a top-flight podcast in the sports division and I wanted to build a top-flight podcast in the entertainment division. So if you look at my guests, I haven’t interviewed a current athlete on the show. But I interviewed people in fashion, travel, current events, wine, I just had Wolfgang Puck on the show. I realized that I have an audience of people that support me and believe in me doing this multimedia thing for a living that I can venture outside of the sports space and have a successful show that has nothing to do with sports. That’s what Renaissance Man provided me. I’ve interviewed Magic Johnson, Mark Cuban, Adam Silver, and Tommie Smith but I’ve also interviewed Katie Couric, Killer Mike, Master P., Bobbi Brown, the legendary makeup aficionado. So it has really given me a chance to broaden my horizons for the audience but also talk to people in a different way. Like I’m interviewing Hit-Boy today. I appreciate the New York Post for believing in my vision of interviewing so many different people from so many various walks of life. I’m really getting them to open up about things that they don’t necessarily always talk about. So I guess I am a true renaissance man because when you look at the podcast rankings, I have one in the sports category and I have one in the entertainment category and I’m really fortunate.
