Kieran Press-Reynolds Interview (Freelance writer)
Kieran Press-Reynolds is currently Insider‘s US digital culture fellow and a freelance writer. In his young career, he’s already had pieces in the New York Times, Highsnobiety, and more.
How did you get to where you are today, professionally?
I started with a music blog writing about SoundCloud rap in the summer of 2018. I had noticed that a lot of the publications and journalists I read weren’t really taking this kind of music seriously—that was the era when the term “ignorant rap” as a synonym for Lil Pump and Smokepurpp was swirling around—but I thought it was genius and I wanted to defend it. That fall, my sophomore year of college, I transferred campuses and sort of started over. I joined the college newspaper and started doing album reviews every week, spending a lot of time in the library nestled in cubicles writing until the place shut down for the night.
The next summer, when I was 19, I decided to try freelancing. After sending around 25 pitches to various editors, I got an opportunity from an editor at Highsnobiety. I started with reviews, then gradually expanded into features and longform scene-dissection-type pieces. Over the last year or so, I’ve written for Complex, Bandcamp, Pitchfork, and The New York Times, and produced a radio show about video game music with the publisher Repeater Books. I enjoy doing audio-related journalism and would love to do more.