A Wild and Ridiculous Ride With Steelo Brim

There was a time when everyone – actors, models, and wannabe creatives – moved to Tinseltown hoping to be “discovered” by someone, anyone who might be a gatekeeper of the Hollywood studio system. Steelo’s ascension into the often-resistant studio and network gates has been part luck and part hustle–being in the right place at the right time. To say the least, it’s been ridiculous! 

Photography by Daion Chesney

Fashion Styling by Apuje Kalu

Grooming by Star Bahati

Videography by Raymond Eugenio

Driving in his car on his way home in Los Angeles, there is no pretense in anything Steelo says to me during our phone conversation. He doesn’t sound like a guy who just struck a first-look deal with Paramount+ and MTV Entertainment Studios. In this deal he will develop, executive produce, and appear on-camera for scripted and unscripted shows produced by MTV Entertainment Studios across the ViacomCBS portfolio of networks. Nor does he sound like a guy who’s being interviewed to grace his first-ever magazine cover, as I remind him. “This is going to be amazing!” says Steelo in a voice that sounds like he just won the lottery.

Steelo is co-host, and now executive producer, along with his friend and now business partner Rob Dyrdek of the juggernaut MTV show Ridiculousness,which just celebrated its 10-year anniversary. Steelo also co-hosts with Chris Reinarcher the popular podcast Wine & Weed–a weekly episodic series chatting trending topics over a bottle of wine, a joint of weed, and special guests on occasion including Miguel, Wale, Sevyn Streeter, Iman Shumpert, Michael B. Jordan.

But let’s go way back, before Ridiculousness and before Wine & Weed, Steelo’s creativity and love for art and drawing blossomed early as he was growing up on the west side of Chicago. “My first published piece was in a Chicago-based magazine when I was five years old,” says Steelo. “I thought it was the coolest thing!” As the son of preachers–both his mom and dad were pastors–one wouldn’t expect his household to be the foundation for Steelo’s comedic chops. “I used to write sketches. I was writing sketches and stuff was always in my head,” says. Steelo. “My family is just really funny. We’ve always been known as the family that’s just crazy and outrageous. I have to give that to my mom and dad.”

Family bonds and support allowed Steelo to chase his dreams, which also included playing baseball. During our conversation, Steelo humbly recounts that he used to play baseball and was ranked in the state of Illinois, which coincidentally, at age 12, led him to being cast in the Brian Robbins-directed movie Hardball. It was there that he met his now best friend, actor Michael B. Jordan.

His budding friendship with Michael B. Jordan would be the turning point of his life years later when he was a freshman at Morgan State University. “Michael hit me one day and said, ‘Hey, I’m going to move to L.A. You should come.’ I said, ‘All right, let’s do it’ and I dropped out of my freshman year,” says Steelo. 

“My family wasn’t happy about it and were a little disappointed, but my parents always believed in choice, even if they didn’t believe in the choice I made,” says Steelo. 

There is an unwavering self-assuredness in Steelo’s voice as he continues to talk about his accomplishments. At the time, he was working in A&R. “I was working on [a] Trey Songz [project] at Songbook Entertainment, a label that was under Atlantic Records. I always had big dreams. Even if it didn’t always make sense, so moving to L.A. and really believing, I’m going to work in music…I just hustled my way, hustled, hustled. Music was definitely my aspiration before television.”

“my parents always believed in choice, even if they didn’t believe in the choice I made”

Today, Steelo is not only riding the wave of Ridiculousness, one of the most successful MTV shows in history but is in the process of creating his own TV empire just as the network is expanding the franchise to include spin-offs: Deliciousness, Messyness, and Adorableness.

“I actually was working in A&R and I was helping Rob’s [Dyrdek] cousin, Drama, put together his publishing and production company,” says Steelo. “Rob came to a couple studio sessions and just thought I was funny. One day he was like ‘Hey man, you want to be on this show I’m doing with MTV? It’s going to be dope.’ “I didn’t really believe him,” says Steelo. Three months later, he gave me a call. I didn’t even have his number. I didn’t know he had mine, and he was like, ‘Hey, this is Rob Dyrdek, that show I mentioned, yeah, we start filming tomorrow. Can you be there?’ Legitimately, I started my first episode of television the next day and the rest is history.”

Success can breed comfort and complacency. Success is also what you negotiate. Instead of waiting, Steelo took the reins, learning everything he could about the TV production process, including applying to be a writer on Ridiculousness, “I actually went and sat with everyone [producers] and gave them a writing package and I was like, ‘Hey, can I please be in the writers’ room so I can help elevate the show if I can or help my voice be purer,” says Steelo, “and they all thought it was a good idea. From there, we just continued to build the creative relationship and I came into producing season three.”

Now that Hollywood is trying to diversify, Steelo finds himself in a unique position as a Black male creative. “It means a lot. I know this is huge!” says Steelo. “I want to make sure that I am amplifying the voices of the Black community and people of color and telling organic stories. I want to make sure that my writer’s room, my production, everything has diversity.”

Does he feel the pressure? “There’s no pressure,” says Steelo. “The pressure was what I was putting on myself. I stopped overthinking and just started investing in myself more, and saying you know what? ‘Just put in what you want to get out. That’s all you can do in life. If you put in what you want to get out, you can’t lose.’