He worked on several magazines in their early years, including Q and Empire for Emap Metro, and launched Big!
Together with Mat Snow, he developed Maxim for Dennis Publishing, and worked on the launch of Encore magazine in 1994 for Haymarket.
He then joined GQ as an editor, moving in 2003 to US company Rodale as an editorial consultant on Men's Health and Runner's World magazines.
His journalistic contributions have been published in NME, Black Music magazine, The Guardian and Mojo, among other publications.
His 2013 book, Sounds Like London: 100 Years of Black Music in the Capital, received positive review coverage,[3][4][5] described in The Independent as an "exceptional work [that] can sit proudly beside the author's earlier Bass Culture: When Reggae Was King, the definitive account of the glory days of the Jamaican music industry.