For more than 30 years, Malik has worked across entertainment, media, advertising, branding, and digital industries. Trained in intellectual property and entertainment law and holding an MBA focused on digital business strategy and innovation, he approaches creative development from both sides of the table: as an artist concerned with the work itself and as a strategist concerned with how that work is built, protected, positioned, and expanded.
Entertainment, Media & Brand Work
Throughout his career, Malik has consulted for television executives, production companies, artists, and entertainment brands on projects involving AMC, Sony, BMG, Warner Chappell Music, Paramount, VH1, Comedy Central, and Urban Box Office.
His advertising and branded entertainment work includes directing, producing, writing, composing, and developing campaigns and public service initiatives for brands and organizations including Reebok, Ford, Pepsi, Burger King, Captain Morgan, Universal Music Group, Gatorade, Downy, and Carnival Cruise Lines, as well as HIV/AIDS prevention campaigns.
As a writer, producer, and composer, his commercial music and jingle work has appeared in campaigns for Gatorade, Downy, Carnival Cruise Lines, Burger King, and Pepsi.
Theater & Live Entertainment
Malik’s work in theater began as a performer with La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York and Umbria, Italy, before expanding into producing, directing, multimedia design, marketing, and theatrical development.
He later produced the inaugural musical adaptation at the Apollo Theater featuring music by Ashford & Simpson and served as associate producer, content creator, and marketing executive for the Negro Ensemble Company’s 50th-anniversary productions. Those productions received multiple AUDELCO Awards.
He is currently developing several original stage works, including a Broadway musical adaptation of a late-1980s comedy for which he has written and composed original music; the original musical Gut Bucket Blues; and Baldwin | Buckley, a theatrical work examining ideology, cultural conflict, political discourse, and the possibility of shared humanity.
Music & Visual Storytelling
Malik’s current music projects include a 1970s-inspired soul instrumental visual album and Notes and Lyrics, a jazz-influenced vocal project that reimagines classic jazz compositions through original lyrics, narrative, and contemporary cultural themes.
He is also developing a 22-episode vertical visual series inspired by the approaching 50th anniversary of a landmark album. Conceived as a visual love letter to the recording, the project interprets each song through cinematic imagery, commentary, narrative, and short-form visual storytelling.
Author, Essayist & Cultural Commentator
Malik is the author of Six Degrees of Racism: A Practical Guide to Accountability, Repair, and Ending Generational Harm and Verticals Series and IP Essentials: A Creative Survivor’s Guide.
His forthcoming works include An Inventory of Intimacy: Notes on Sex, Memory, and Desire; the novel Soul Searching; and The Black Man’s Guide to Understanding Himself, an exploration of identity, emotional awareness, masculinity, memory, and self-examination within the Black male experience.
His political and cultural commentary is anchored by The Color of My Politics, an essay and multimedia series examining race, power, politics, media, public perception, and the theater of American public life. The project extends from written essays into video, spoken commentary, podcasts, and other short- and long-form media.
Color in 60 brings that perspective to short-form digital storytelling, translating political and cultural analysis into concise visual commentary created for contemporary audiences.
Malik is also developing X: A Black Generation Lost Seeking to Be Seen, Heard, and Understood, a 55-essay series examining race, generational identity, social mobility, emotional visibility, citizenship, and the changing landscape of constitutional and civil rights protections for Black Americans.
Podcasts
Malik’s podcast projects include The Black Tax: Stories of Being Black in America; Brown Liquor Stories: Because Every Great Story Starts with Brown Liquor; and Black Coffee White Issues, a commentary series drawing on themes explored in Six Degrees of Racism.
Across these projects, Malik moves between essay, conversation, humor, politics, personal narrative, music, and cultural analysis without treating each medium as a separate creative life.
Education, Law & Business
Malik’s creative work is informed by an unusually broad academic and professional background spanning law, business, psychology, cultural studies, and digital strategy.
He holds bachelor’s degrees in Black and Puerto Rican Studies and Clinical Psychology, a master’s degree in Industrial Psychology, an MBA focused on digital business strategy and innovation, and a Juris Doctor with concentrations in intellectual property and entertainment law.
That combination informs his approach to entertainment development: create the work, understand the audience, protect the intellectual property, build the business around it, and give a strong idea room to become more than one thing.
iClick2Media
Through iClick2Media, Malik develops original entertainment properties, digital media initiatives, interactive content, and technology-driven storytelling tools.
Current initiatives include a screenplay development platform for creators and a narrative-driven digital game project exploring new ways for audiences to participate in stories across film, music, publishing, and emerging media.
At the center of Malik’s work is a simple proposition: intelligent entertainment need not choose between substance and pleasure. Whether the form is a song, essay, screenplay, stage production, podcast, book, film, or sixty-second piece of political commentary, the work should entertain, say something worth saying, and leave behind intellectual property with a life beyond its first appearance.