About Naima

Naima Cochrane is an award-winning music marketer and leading voice in Black culture whose superpower is storytelling.

MUSIC
A music industry veteran of more than 20 years, Naima learned the ropes at Bad Boy Entertainment and Arista Records, then went on to Columbia and then Epic Records, where she worked with mold-breaking artists including John Legend and Beyoncé. She left the label side of the business for management, first with EGOT Legend and later with Oscar-nominated, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony award-winning actress and singer Cynthia Erivo.

STORYTELLING
Naima was named to Essence’s 2023 Power 40 list in Music, thanks primarily to her curated music content platform, #MusicSermon. #MusicSermon began as a storytelling series on Twitter/X focused on pre-blog era Soul and Hip-Hop. The series was a viral hit and encouraged community around shared nostalgia and love of music. That community expanded from Twitter/X to Instagram with Naima’s annual #BlackMusicMonthChallenge.

#MusicSermon prompted a transition into journalism, and since 2018 Naima’s voice and work have been featured in outlets including Billboard, Rolling Stone, and the NY Times, as well as published works including 2021’s Smithsonian Anthology of Hip-Hop
and Rap. Partners including Spotify, Netflix, and Sirius XM/Pandora have tapped Naima’s unique expertise for campaigns, research and scripted projects, including Sirius/Pandora’s Webby-award-winning All Music is Black Music podcast. She remains entrenched in the business side of the entertainment industry as a marketing consultant, and led the creative strategy for Empire Records’ Clio Award-winning campaign
for late singer Aaliyah’s highly anticipated catalog re-release in 2021. 

EDUCATING

Naima is passionate about framing music within a broader cultural and historical context in ways that serve current and future Black artists and executives. She leads mission-critical research as a founding board member of the advocacy organization the Black Music Action Coalition, including the org’s annual Music Industry Action Report Card. In Fall 2022, she joined the faculty of TheClive Davis Institute at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts as an adjunct professor, and in 2023 joined full time as an Assistant Arts Professor.

Naima splits her time between Silver Spring, MD and NY, indulges in too much TV, and is known to randomly break into ’90s R&B choreography in public places.

Book Naima or Get in Touch

Interested in connecting about speaking engagements, moderating or hosting? Or have an idea for partnership/collaboration? I’d love to hear from you.