INTERVIEW | APPLE MUSIC’S REBECCA JUDD “I WANNA BE THE ELLEN OF RADIO”

After eight years present­ing on com­munity radio sta­tions such as The Break Lon­don and West­side FM. In Janu­ary 2020, Rebecca Judd secured her own show, the eponym­ous, Rebecca Judd Show on Apple Music , Monday to Thursday, 2 to 4pm. Here she talks to I Am Hip Hop’s Maya Elese about hust­ling in her broad­cast­ing jour­ney, up and com­ing break­out female voices in the music industry and how to suc­ceed in radio.

Rebecca Judd often uses the term ‘organ­ic­ally’ to describe her career tra­ject­ory. The 25 year old radio presenter admit­ted that her first for­ay into broad­cast­ing arose from not want­ing to fol­low the crowd at the end of col­lege. “No one in my imme­di­ate fam­ily went, it just wasn’t a thing in my fam­ily to go to uni. I remem­ber every­one in my class was sign­ing up to UCAS, except me.” For­tu­nately, due to Rebecca’s aca­dem­ic back­ground in Media and Journ­al­ism, her col­lege tutor sug­ges­ted that she apply for the BBC Work Exper­i­ence scheme. A moment which Rebecca describes as ‘everything happened from there’. Rebecca did 3 weeks work exper­i­ence at BBC Radio 1xtra where she got to sit in on her broad­cast­ing idol’s show. “I remem­ber Tre­vor Nel­son let me press play on a song, the nerves that I had, I kept ask­ing, what now yeah, now? Rebecca fondly pon­ders on that moment “that’s when I knew that this is what I want to be doing.”

Fol­low­ing on from her stint at the BBC she secured a show at com­munity radio sta­tion The Break Lon­don, in East Lon­don. How­ever, it was when sta­tion man­age­ment at the icon­ic West­side FM approached Rebecca to do a demo that ‘it really became pop­ping’. Work­ing her way up from doing cov­er shows Rebecca secured the much coveted driv­e­time slot on West­side FM, a role that she kept for four years until being approached by the voice of Apple Music UK Julie Adenuga in 2018.

How­ever, no oppor­tun­ity worth hav­ing doesn’t come without its set­backs. “I would say the biggest struggle was bal­an­cing life and my dream.” Rebecca’s dilemma of jug­gling her full time retail job along­side her drive time show is ever so famil­i­ar to us mil­len­ni­als. Hustle Cul­ture is the term to describe the per­petu­al state of work­ing that many under 35’s find them­selves in, bal­an­cing a full time job and run­ning mul­tiple side hustles. Rebecca cred­its her fam­ily for always believ­ing in her dream “when times were low and when money was low.”

Unfor­tu­nately, the con­ver­sa­tion sur­round­ing suc­cess­ful women in the music industry is always dom­in­ated with ques­tions regard­ing gender wage gaps, dis­crim­in­a­tion and a gen­er­al lack of rep­res­ent­a­tion. Rebecca prefers to take a much more pos­it­ive per­spect­ive on the broad­cast­ing industry “there are so many amaz­ing women doing sick things. Big up Julie Adenuga who is my idol. Big up Tiffany Cal­ver the first woman to host the Rap show on BBC Radio 1xtra. Annie Mac, Clara Amfo. There are so many women inspir­ing the next gen­er­a­tion. Hope­fully, in ten years time this won’t even be a ques­tion any­more.”

In fact, it was Rebecca’s idol, broad­cast­ing per­son­al­ity, and the voice of Beats 1  Julie Adenuga who she cred­its for kick­start­ing her jour­ney at Apple Music. Julie recog­nised the poten­tial in Rebecca and asked her to co-host the Fri­day show. Rebecca’s infec­tious energy, relat­ab­il­ity and pas­sion for cham­pi­on­ing Brit­ish music led to more doors open­ing for her at Apple, such as present­ing The New Lon­don show, and then The Beats 1 List. In Janu­ary 2020 her eponym­ous show was launched. Rebecca dream­ily remini­cises on her child­hood, and her family’s intrins­ic rela­tion­ship with music. “Music was such a major pri­or­ity in our lives, now I’m happy that I can just play it for a liv­ing.”

Listen to The Rebecca Judd Show Monday to Thursday from 2–4pm on Apple Music live for free at apple.co/B1_Rebecca or on-demand with an Apple Music sub­scrip­tion.

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Maya Elese

Edit­or / Author at No Bounds

Mul­ti­lin­gual Lon­don born, bred & based print & broad­cast journ­al­ist, presenter, DJ & cul­tur­al pro­du­cer with a par­tic­u­lar love for glob­al afro-dia­spor­ic cul­tures. @mayaelese on everyth­ang.

Latest posts by Maya Elese (see all)

• INTER­VIEW | ROC NATION SIGNED RAP­PER & PRO­DU­CER KAY YOUNG DIS­CUSSES HER NEW EP ‘MIDDLE MAT­TERS’ — Septem­ber 3, 2020
• INTER­VIEW | APPLE MUSIC’S REBECCA JUDD “I WANNA BE THE ELLEN OF RADIO” — March 9, 2020
• REVIEW | ‘J DILLA CHANGED MY LIFE’ AT THE JAZZ CAFE, LON­DON — Feb­ru­ary 6, 2020

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