THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY

September 16, 2026

THE FUNNY THING about meeting Peter Relic is that it takes a while before you realize who you’re talking to. The conversa-tion starts with coffee, rain, and a joke about Stevedore’s name. Outside the coffee shop’s windows, Eastern Wharf disappears behind a summer downpour. Inside, Relic is telling stories.

One minute we’re talking about Savannah. The next we’re in Los Angeles in the 1990s. Then we’re inside the offices of VIBE magazine. Then we’re talking about Eminem before the world knew who Eminem was. Then Serena Williams. Then SCAD students. Then a song called “Bust a Move” that was recorded over a used refrigerator in a rough part of Hollywood and somehow helped change the trajectory of hip–hop. Relic tells these stories the way some people talk about the weather. Casual.

Unforced. As if everyone spent the 1990s in the middle of the golden age of music journalism. Today, he as a public relations writer at SCAD, where he spends his days telling stories about artists, designers, filmmakers, and students.

But long before that, Relic was documenting some of the most important cultural moments in America. He wrote for Rap Pages. Then VIBE. Then XXL. Then Rolling Stone. Along the way he found himself covering people who would eventually become household names.

One of those assignments arrived almost by accident. A story Relic wrote about actor Brian Austin Green’s unlikely attempt at becoming a rapper caught the attention of editors at VIBE. Soon afterward, they called him with another assignment. “There was another white rapper coming out,” Relic recalls. “Do you want to write a story for us about it?” That rapper turned out to be Eminem.

The story led to a job offer. Suddenly Relic was moving to New York City during a moment when hip hop was exploding commercially while still evolving artisti-cally. It was an era when underground acts and mainstream stars occupied the same conversation, and music magazines still held enormous cultural power. For many writers, those years would have become the entire story. For Relic, they became the beginning.What stands out most in conversation is not his résumé. It is his curiosity. At one point, the conversation turns toward his work at SCAD and how he approached storytelling when he arrived in Savannah. “We need to tell the stories of the students,” he says. It is the kind of sentence that explains an entire career. Instead of focusing on accolades, he became interested in the people behind them. The students. The filmmakers. The artists. The dreamers who arrive in Savannah from around the world carrying ideas that may someday become something larger.

That philosophy feels remarkably similar to the way he approached music journalism decades earlier. Long before people become famous, they are simply people trying to make something. Relic has spent much of his life paying attention to those moments. That perspective eventually led him to his new book, Bust a Move, a project that took nearly fifteen years to complete.

The book tells the story of Delicious Vinyl, the independent Los Angeles record label that helped launch artists like Young MC and Tone Lōc while playing a pivotal role in bringing West Coast hip hop into the American mainstream. Relic originally thought he was writing a piece of music history. What he discovered was something far more interesting.

In 1987, the founders of Delicious Vinyl were not trying to build a cultural movement. They simply loved the music. They pressed records themselves. Delivered them to local stores. Recorded songs in apartments. Used closets as vocal booths. They were making music for the same reason most creative people create anything. Because they had to. “Their goal was to press up maybe 500 copies,” Relic says. Instead, songs like “Wild Thing,” “Funky Cold Medina,” and “Bust a Move” became national phenomena.

What fascinated him was how completely the story challenged conventional wisdom. The record industry had rules. Delicious Vinyl ignored most of them. “They did the opposite of everything the record industry was doing,” he says. The result became one of the great DIY success stories in American music. But as Relic explains it, the story is not really about chart positions or record sales. It is about connection.

“They did the opposite of everything the record industry was doing.”

Throughout our conversation, music keeps circling back to memory. He talks about his sons discovering hip hop. I tell him about hearing the Fat Boys as a kid riding in the backseat of my parents’ car. We talk about Billy Strings concerts and the artists who become soundtracks for different chapters of our lives. The details change. The feeling never does.

“I remember the first time I saw KRS–One,” Relic says. “I was all in.” Everybody has a version of that story. A song that opened a door. An artist that changed how they saw the world. A moment that stayed with them long after the music ended.

That is ultimately what makes Relic’s work interesting. Not because he interviewed famous people. Not because he worked at famous magazines. Not because he wrote a book. It is because he understands that behind every cultural moment is a human story waiting to be told.

Sitting at Eastern Wharf as rain taps against the windows, it becomes clear that Peter Relic has spent his career collecting those stories. And now, in Savannah, he is still doing exactly that.