Most disappointing mag has got to be The Fader. I loved it to begin with and now... well... let's just say that I don't even flick through it at Tower anymore.
I try to read that bullshit but my brain starts getting cramps. I also get severe nosebleeds.
Last night I read reviews of some (now) very expensive Gary Bartz and Doug Carn records. They were all slammed by critics getting like 1 star and shit.
I actually like Blender - sure, it has much of Maxim's unfortunate strands of DNA but it also has the heart of British music mag inside, complete with a good amount of lists to appeal in the nerdy fanboy (something Strutters should be able to relate to). Their features are sometimes readable though, again, the Maxim element rears its head a bit too often.
My main problem with Blender is that their capsule reviews have caused every other music mag to follow suit and it's pretty much killed both long and medium form reviews.
I read anything that's sent to me for free....and of all the free ones I get Magnet is probably the best.......only mag I buy is Mojo.(Although if they mention Os Mutantes one more time I'm gonna puke).
Last night I read reviews of some (now) very expensive Gary Bartz and Doug Carn records. They were all slammed by critics getting like 1 star and shit.
Ha!
from my understanding downbeat represented a fairly conservative and un-adventurous (and also, more importantly, white) view of jazz, particularly into the 70s and onward. throughout the history of jazz criticism there has been a pretty important amount of tension between black jazz artists and white jazz critics, things were polarized even more in the periods that artists like doug carn were playing when whites controlled the entire jazz industry. in the liner notes for spirit of the new land (or at least in the liner notes of the CD reissue i have) doug carn addresses this specifically, discussing how the white industry was surprising afro centric strains of jazz like his own.
Any British magazine about club music is godawful. Jockey Slut, Mixmag, ugh. Let's praise Paul Okenfoald a bit, shall we. SOMEONE PLEASE give the Grandslam guys a mil or two so the can start it up again.
URB. I don't give a fuck what NY Oakland hatters say, this was the shit out here on the west coast. Now they seem to run stories 8 months after Vice & Fader.
When was URB good?
I'm not trying to dis you, I'm just curious if I missed its heyday. I picked it up periodically when it was free (the early 90s) and thought it was shit so I never bothered reading it once they started charging for it.
A few months ago I picked up some free copies of current issues and was shocked by how bad they were-- like you suggest, they seem to be dumb late in picking up on new music. And on top of being disconnected, the writing was boring.
I actually like Blender - sure, it has much of Maxim's unfortunate strands of DNA but it also has the heart of British music mag inside, complete with a good amount of lists to appeal in the nerdy fanboy (something Strutters should be able to relate to). Their features are sometimes readable though, again, the Maxim element rears its head a bit too often.
My main problem with Blender is that their capsule reviews have caused every other music mag to follow suit and it's pretty much killed both long and medium form reviews.
I actually like Blender myself. I don't read it expecting some great in-depth interviews or anything, there's other magazines for that. The reviews are actually the main reason I read it. Yeah, they're too short and don't really give you a real idea of if an album is good but just the sheer number of reviews they have is what I like. If nothing else they at least make me aware of a lot of the new releases coming out and if their review piques my interest I can always further investigate the album.
Rolling Stone isn't the iconic music magazine it used to be but I still have a subscription to it. They still have decent music news in there and they still generally have some of the best interviews with the big names. Their music reviews are pretty much a joke though since I'd guesstimate that 80-90% of every album they review gets 3.5-4.5 stars, so their rating system is worthless. It doesn't tell me much when almost every album review gives an album around the same number of stars.
Spin Magazine I used to have a subscription to but I let it lapse. It just got a bit too hipsterish for me. It always seemed like Spin fixated on certain bands and hyped the holy hell out of them. My favorite example is Sleater-Kinney. I swear to god if you went by Spin magazine you'd have thought Sleater-Kinney was the second coming of Jesus for 7 years running because they NEVER stopped hyping them up. The main thing that turned me off of Spin is that the writing had this air of snobbishness as if the Spin editors' tastes were vastly superior to everybody elses, and the snarky nature of the writing annoyed me too. God forbid you listen to anything mainstream for fear of the hipster cognescenti glancing down their noses at you! Really, the parallel to Pitchfork is an apt one but at least I'm not paying to read Pitchfork and Pitchfork's reviews at least run the gamut of genres. Spin just bored me in the end because it was hipster trendy band after hipster trendy band on the cover. If I had to read one more story about The Strokes or The Hives or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs or bands like that I would have thrown up in my mouth a little. Spin used to be a decent mag but it seems like they tried a little too hard to be "cool" and arbiters of trends and tastes and the magazine just didn't interest me anymore. My interest in rock music had really waned in the latter 1990's and it seemed like Spin fixated mostly on rock with only trace bits of hiphop coverage and absolutely nothing about genres outside of that. I guess I can't really say that I'm surprised the magazine was sold for a pittance.
One of my personal favorite music mags currently, though it's definitely for hardcore music nerds looking for stuff outside the mainstream:
I was wondering the other day why Fader sucks so bad. Seems like the eds are in with a lot of knowing folks. I usually turn to the back pages for record porn in the "vinyl archeology" bit. There was one by Cosmo last year and a JP one recently. I test drove a Scion last summer and still get that shit. I think it's better than Fader though.
The Fader's still pretty much a promotional advertisement brochure for Cornerstone Promotions, isn't it? Especially since Rob Stone et al are behind the periodical as well - hipster cognoscenti quotient always in full effect...
ever looked at issues of these from like 2000? 2001? wow. its like time capsules of rapidly dated musical trends. puts "underground" music in perspective..
URB. I don't give a fuck what NY Oakland hatters say, this was the shit out here on the west coast. Now they seem to run stories 8 months after Vice & Fader.
When was URB good?
I'm not trying to dis you, I'm just curious if I missed its heyday. I picked it up periodically when it was free (the early 90s) and thought it was shit so I never bothered reading it once they started charging for it.
A few months ago I picked up some free copies of current issues and was shocked by how bad they were-- like you suggest, they seem to be dumb late in picking up on new music. And on top of being disconnected, the writing was boring.
Mongo:
URB never had a golden era by any means: the writing was always uneven, even in its best years (founding through 1995). However, what URB was particularly good at was helping people get started, most of whom would go onto bigger and better things after leaving the magazine. It's also notable that several key people were at Ego Trip and URB at the same time, which I always thought was strange, including Sacha Jenkins, Tracii MacGregor and Josh Levine. Even Spencedookey!
In any case, here's a roll-call of folks who get their formative start at URB:
Jeff Chang (Can't Stop, Won't Stop) Brian Cross aka B+ (Photographer) Joseph Patel aka Jazzbo (MTV) Tracii MacGregor (Source post-94, pre-Benzino hell)
The above was the pre'95 generation. I started at the mag in 1995 and I'm sure that helped send it to hell but during my tenure as both writer and editor, I helped put on: Serena Kim (Vibe) Jon Caramanica (NY Times, Blender) Hua Hsu (Village Voice, Slate)
I do think the mag's balance of hip-hop and electronic music, which used to be its distingiushing feature, has been mostly a liability for the last 10 years or so; basically since those two genres went in very different directions in the mid-90s. And yeah, it's not on top of trends very well at all; partially because it's always had a bad production schedule.
Btw, I was just reminded how many big shot NY editors/writers got their start at either the SF Weekly or Bay Guardian in the 1980s, including Danyel Smith who shepherded Vibe through its best years; Sia Michel, long time Spin editor-in-chief who got fired today; Ann Powers, formerly of the NY Times, now Blender, and Jason Fine who first went to Option, and has since been at Rolling Stone for many years.
URB. I don't give a fuck what NY Oakland hatters say, this was the shit out here on the west coast. Now they seem to run stories 8 months after Vice & Fader.
It's also notable that several key people were at Ego Trip and URB at the same time, which I always thought was strange, including Sacha Jenkins, Tracii MacGregor and Josh Levine. Even Spencedookey!
Just a little bit of clarification here: Sacha Jenkins is the co-founder of ego trip. Tracii, Josh & Spence were all appreciated contributors to ego trip but were never technically "at" (as in staffmembers of) ego trip. Sacha, Elliott Wilson & myself in turn freelanced for Urb circa '94, '95. -Mao
Amidst the thickets of ads for Tribal and rolling paper and girl-on-girl rave gear, URB back in the day had some pretty cool writers. Not just journalists, but people who ended up rapping real well or graduating to the status of Real Writers or Instapundits.
Related: you can poo-poo Wire and URB all you want, but those two magazines let Our Boy Dave Tompkins do whatever he wants, tamed (just slightly) DT's heretofore undomesticated style, let him write about Black Sabbath as a Next 100 and Dr. Phibes as a general interest item. Someday soon, you will say to yourself, Wow I never thought the story of the generally overrated vocoder would be such a page-turner.
HarveyCanal"a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
URB. I don't give a fuck what NY Oakland hatters say, this was the shit out here on the west coast. Now they seem to run stories 8 months after Vice & Fader.
When was URB good?
I'm not trying to dis you, I'm just curious if I missed its heyday. I picked it up periodically when it was free (the early 90s) and thought it was shit so I never bothered reading it once they started charging for it.
A few months ago I picked up some free copies of current issues and was shocked by how bad they were-- like you suggest, they seem to be dumb late in picking up on new music. And on top of being disconnected, the writing was boring.
Mongo:
URB never had a golden era by any means: the writing was always uneven, even in its best years (founding through 1995). However, what URB was particularly good at was helping people get started, most of whom would go onto bigger and better things after leaving the magazine. It's also notable that several key people were at Ego Trip and URB at the same time, which I always thought was strange, including Sacha Jenkins, Tracii MacGregor and Josh Levine. Even Spencedookey!
In any case, here's a roll-call of folks who get their formative start at URB:
Jeff Chang (Can't Stop, Won't Stop) Brian Cross aka B+ (Photographer) Joseph Patel aka Jazzbo (MTV) Tracii MacGregor (Source post-94, pre-Benzino hell)
The above was the pre'95 generation. I started at the mag in 1995 and I'm sure that helped send it to hell but during my tenure as both writer and editor, I helped put on: Serena Kim (Vibe) Jon Caramanica (NY Times, Blender) Hua Hsu (Village Voice, Slate)
I do think the mag's balance of hip-hop and electronic music, which used to be its distingiushing feature, has been mostly a liability for the last 10 years or so; basically since those two genres went in very different directions in the mid-90s. And yeah, it's not on top of trends very well at all; partially because it's always had a bad production schedule.
Btw, I was just reminded how many big shot NY editors/writers got their start at either the SF Weekly or Bay Guardian in the 1980s, including Danyel Smith who shepherded Vibe through its best years; Sia Michel, long time Spin editor-in-chief who got fired today; Ann Powers, formerly of the NY Times, now Blender, and Jason Fine who first went to Option, and has since been at Rolling Stone for many years.
And let's not forget that Tracii MacGregor put on one Rashied Gabriel to do a regular Urb Massive column on Austin hip-hop.
And yes, Tracii had ties to the Good Life scene aka Project Blowed.
It's also notable that several key people were at Ego Trip and URB at the same time, which I always thought was strange, including Sacha Jenkins, Tracii MacGregor and Josh Levine. Even Spencedookey!
Just a little bit of clarification here: Sacha Jenkins is the co-founder of ego trip. Tracii, Josh & Spence were all appreciated contributors to ego trip but were never technically "at" (as in staffmembers of) ego trip. Sacha, Elliott Wilson & myself in turn freelanced for Urb circa '94, '95. -Mao
Jeff,
Yeah, I didn't mean to suggest that any of those guys (save Sacha) were staff at Ego Trip. I just meant that it was striking to me, reading through the early issues of ET, to see all these people who I tended to associate with URB pop up. I initially was going to list you as another person who had written for both but I coulddn't remember for certain if you were at URB since I haven't read those back issues in years (and don't plan to right now) so I erred on the side of safety. I didn't realize Elliot did too - yet another coincidence. It's too bad the mag burned so many bridges by failing to, you know, pay people. of:
In any case, since we have you in the mix here: I was wondering, in your opinion, as EIC for the mag for such a long time, if you felt like the magazine's concept/vision built slowly over time or changed more dramatically from issue to issue? (BTW, this is for personal curiosity, not anything "official")
And Slurg: I wasn't trying to disrepect T-Love (who gave me my job at URB) but I was talking mostly about people in the journalism world (which would include someone like B+, as a photographer). But yeah, T-Love was at URB in those pre-95 years before she left to get her solo career off the ground and help release the first J5 EP (I think I have that last part right). And though he didn't go to writing fame, I always had a lot of respect for James Tai's writing in the mag. Dude was funny and clever and never pandered to the standard of celebrity journalism that's cropped up.
Amidst the thickets of ads for Tribal and rolling paper and girl-on-girl rave gear, URB back in the day had some pretty cool writers. Not just journalists, but people who ended up rapping real well or graduating to the status of Real Writers or Instapundits.
Related: you can poo-poo Wire and URB all you want, but those two magazines let Our Boy Dave Tompkins do whatever he wants, tamed (just slightly) DT's heretofore undomesticated style, let him write about Black Sabbath as a Next 100 and Dr. Phibes as a general interest item. Someday soon, you will say to yourself, Wow I never thought the story of the generally overrated vocoder would be such a page-turner.
Damn, my brain is so fucking zoinked on cold medication right now: yeah, I totally forgot that URB also gave DT his start too. Another pre-95 alum.
In any case, since we have you in the mix here: I was wondering, in your opinion, as EIC for the mag for such a long time, if you felt like the magazine's concept/vision built slowly over time or changed more dramatically from issue to issue? (BTW, this is for personal curiosity, not anything "official")
In any case, since we have you in the mix here: I was wondering, in your opinion, as EIC for the mag for such a long time, if you felt like the magazine's concept/vision built slowly over time or changed more dramatically from issue to issue? (BTW, this is for personal curiosity, not anything "official")
In any case, since we have you in the mix here: I was wondering, in your opinion, as EIC for the mag for such a long time, if you felt like the magazine's concept/vision built slowly over time or changed more dramatically from issue to issue? (BTW, this is for personal curiosity, not anything "official")
You mean ego trip?
Indeed.
I think it was both. We lasted a grand total of 13 issues. Honestly, looking back I feel like it took us about six issues to find our voice. After we won Hip Hop Connection's Rap Magazine World Cup (w/ issue #7), the development process excelerated - primarily due to the full-time addition of Gabriel Alvarez (who we somehow convinced to leave his gig at Rap Pages to come work w/ us for no $) and after that Brent Rollins (who was also previously at Rap Pages as art director). I think the last three issues of ego trip were the most complete in fulfilling our vision of what we could be, which turned out to be a race humor magazine masquerading as a hip hop zine. By that point we were putting so much into each issue that we decided to do books instead - more $, longer shelf life.
In any case, since we have you in the mix here: I was wondering, in your opinion, as EIC for the mag for such a long time, if you felt like the magazine's concept/vision built slowly over time or changed more dramatically from issue to issue? (BTW, this is for personal curiosity, not anything "official")
You mean ego trip?
Indeed.
I think it was both. We lasted a grand total of 13 issues. Honestly, looking back I feel like it took us about six issues to find our voice. After we won Hip Hop Connection's Rap Magazine World Cup (w/ issue #7), the development process excelerated - primarily due to the full-time addition of Gabriel Alvarez (who we somehow convinced to leave his gig at Rap Pages to come work w/ us for no $) and after that Brent Rollins (who was also previously at Rap Pages as art director). I think the last three issues of ego trip were the most complete in fulfilling our vision of what we could be, which turned out to be a race humor magazine masquerading as a hip hop zine. By that point we were putting so much into each issue that we decided to do books instead - more $, longer shelf life.
The last issue of ego trip is the Breaking Atoms of magazines.
Last night I read reviews of some (now) very expensive Gary Bartz and Doug Carn records. They were all slammed by critics getting like 1 star and shit.
Ha!
from my understanding downbeat represented a fairly conservative and un-adventurous (and also, more importantly, white) view of jazz, particularly into the 70s and onward. throughout the history of jazz criticism there has been a pretty important amount of tension between black jazz artists and white jazz critics, things were polarized even more in the periods that artists like doug carn were playing when whites controlled the entire jazz industry. in the liner notes for spirit of the new land (or at least in the liner notes of the CD reissue i have) doug carn addresses this specifically, discussing how the white industry was surprising afro centric strains of jazz like his own.
Very good points. I also remember it was the white critics that first latched onto Ornette Coleman and the emerging free jazz style -- even if they missed the movements at the East and the later generations of free jazz artists. Miles Davis, in his (auto)biography, was pissed as hell at this.
In any case, since we have you in the mix here: I was wondering, in your opinion, as EIC for the mag for such a long time, if you felt like the magazine's concept/vision built slowly over time or changed more dramatically from issue to issue? (BTW, this is for personal curiosity, not anything "official")
You mean ego trip?
Indeed.
I think it was both. We lasted a grand total of 13 issues. Honestly, looking back I feel like it took us about six issues to find our voice. After we won Hip Hop Connection's Rap Magazine World Cup (w/ issue #7), the development process excelerated - primarily due to the full-time addition of Gabriel Alvarez (who we somehow convinced to leave his gig at Rap Pages to come work w/ us for no $) and after that Brent Rollins (who was also previously at Rap Pages as art director). I think the last three issues of ego trip were the most complete in fulfilling our vision of what we could be, which turned out to be a race humor magazine masquerading as a hip hop zine. By that point we were putting so much into each issue that we decided to do books instead - more $, longer shelf life.
The last issue of ego trip is the Breaking Atoms of magazines.
Comments
Wire gets my vote.
I've been reading old Downbeats.
Last night I read reviews of some (now) very expensive Gary Bartz and Doug Carn records. They were all slammed by critics getting like 1 star and shit.
Ha!
"the times they are a becoming quite different."
My main problem with Blender is that their capsule reviews have caused every other music mag to follow suit and it's pretty much killed both long and medium form reviews.
By the way:
Rich
from my understanding downbeat represented a fairly conservative and un-adventurous (and also, more importantly, white) view of jazz, particularly into the 70s and onward. throughout the history of jazz criticism there has been a pretty important amount of tension between black jazz artists and white jazz critics, things were polarized even more in the periods that artists like doug carn were playing when whites controlled the entire jazz industry. in the liner notes for spirit of the new land (or at least in the liner notes of the CD reissue i have) doug carn addresses this specifically, discussing how the white industry was surprising afro centric strains of jazz like his own.
Damn, that line is fucking harsh! I love it! Source status just got boosted a notch.
Seriously. It'd be pretty damn funny if suddenly The Source had a huge surge in circulation.
When was URB good?
I'm not trying to dis you, I'm just curious if I missed its heyday. I picked it up periodically when it was free (the early 90s) and thought it was shit so I never bothered reading it once they started charging for it.
A few months ago I picked up some free copies of current issues and was shocked by how bad they were-- like you suggest, they seem to be dumb late in picking up on new music. And on top of being disconnected, the writing was boring.
I actually like Blender myself. I don't read it expecting some great in-depth interviews or anything, there's other magazines for that. The reviews are actually the main reason I read it. Yeah, they're too short and don't really give you a real idea of if an album is good but just the sheer number of reviews they have is what I like. If nothing else they at least make me aware of a lot of the new releases coming out and if their review piques my interest I can always further investigate the album.
Rolling Stone isn't the iconic music magazine it used to be but I still have a subscription to it. They still have decent music news in there and they still generally have some of the best interviews with the big names. Their music reviews are pretty much a joke though since I'd guesstimate that 80-90% of every album they review gets 3.5-4.5 stars, so their rating system is worthless. It doesn't tell me much when almost every album review gives an album around the same number of stars.
Spin Magazine I used to have a subscription to but I let it lapse. It just got a bit too hipsterish for me. It always seemed like Spin fixated on certain bands and hyped the holy hell out of them. My favorite example is Sleater-Kinney. I swear to god if you went by Spin magazine you'd have thought Sleater-Kinney was the second coming of Jesus for 7 years running because they NEVER stopped hyping them up. The main thing that turned me off of Spin is that the writing had this air of snobbishness as if the Spin editors' tastes were vastly superior to everybody elses, and the snarky nature of the writing annoyed me too. God forbid you listen to anything mainstream for fear of the hipster cognescenti glancing down their noses at you! Really, the parallel to Pitchfork is an apt one but at least I'm not paying to read Pitchfork and Pitchfork's reviews at least run the gamut of genres. Spin just bored me in the end because it was hipster trendy band after hipster trendy band on the cover. If I had to read one more story about The Strokes or The Hives or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs or bands like that I would have thrown up in my mouth a little. Spin used to be a decent mag but it seems like they tried a little too hard to be "cool" and arbiters of trends and tastes and the magazine just didn't interest me anymore. My interest in rock music had really waned in the latter 1990's and it seemed like Spin fixated mostly on rock with only trace bits of hiphop coverage and absolutely nothing about genres outside of that. I guess I can't really say that I'm surprised the magazine was sold for a pittance.
One of my personal favorite music mags currently, though it's definitely for hardcore music nerds looking for stuff outside the mainstream:
The Fader's still pretty much a promotional advertisement brochure for Cornerstone Promotions, isn't it? Especially since Rob Stone et al are behind the periodical as well - hipster cognoscenti quotient always in full effect...
ever looked at issues of these from like 2000? 2001? wow. its like time capsules of rapidly dated musical trends. puts "underground" music in perspective..
Mongo:
URB never had a golden era by any means: the writing was always uneven, even in its best years (founding through 1995). However, what URB was particularly good at was helping people get started, most of whom would go onto bigger and better things after leaving the magazine. It's also notable that several key people were at Ego Trip and URB at the same time, which I always thought was strange, including Sacha Jenkins, Tracii MacGregor and Josh Levine. Even Spencedookey!
In any case, here's a roll-call of folks who get their formative start at URB:
Jeff Chang (Can't Stop, Won't Stop)
Brian Cross aka B+ (Photographer)
Joseph Patel aka Jazzbo (MTV)
Tracii MacGregor (Source post-94, pre-Benzino hell)
The above was the pre'95 generation. I started at the mag in 1995 and I'm sure that helped send it to hell but during my tenure as both writer and editor, I helped put on:
Serena Kim (Vibe)
Jon Caramanica (NY Times, Blender)
Hua Hsu (Village Voice, Slate)
I do think the mag's balance of hip-hop and electronic music, which used to be its distingiushing feature, has been mostly a liability for the last 10 years or so; basically since those two genres went in very different directions in the mid-90s. And yeah, it's not on top of trends very well at all; partially because it's always had a bad production schedule.
Btw, I was just reminded how many big shot NY editors/writers got their start at either the SF Weekly or Bay Guardian in the 1980s, including Danyel Smith who shepherded Vibe through its best years; Sia Michel, long time Spin editor-in-chief who got fired today; Ann Powers, formerly of the NY Times, now Blender, and Jason Fine who first went to Option, and has since been at Rolling Stone for many years.
circa '95-'99
Just a little bit of clarification here: Sacha Jenkins is the co-founder of ego trip. Tracii, Josh & Spence were all appreciated contributors to ego trip but were never technically "at" (as in staffmembers of) ego trip. Sacha, Elliott Wilson & myself in turn freelanced for Urb circa '94, '95.
-Mao
Related: you can poo-poo Wire and URB all you want, but those two magazines let Our Boy Dave Tompkins do whatever he wants, tamed (just slightly) DT's heretofore undomesticated style, let him write about Black Sabbath as a Next 100 and Dr. Phibes as a general interest item. Someday soon, you will say to yourself, Wow I never thought the story of the generally overrated vocoder would be such a page-turner.
And let's not forget that Tracii MacGregor put on one Rashied Gabriel to do a regular Urb Massive column on Austin hip-hop.
And yes, Tracii had ties to the Good Life scene aka Project Blowed.
Hmmmm...
Jeff,
Yeah, I didn't mean to suggest that any of those guys (save Sacha) were staff at Ego Trip. I just meant that it was striking to me, reading through the early issues of ET, to see all these people who I tended to associate with URB pop up. I initially was going to list you as another person who had written for both but I coulddn't remember for certain if you were at URB since I haven't read those back issues in years (and don't plan to right now) so I erred on the side of safety. I didn't realize Elliot did too - yet another coincidence. It's too bad the mag burned so many bridges by failing to, you know, pay people.
In any case, since we have you in the mix here: I was wondering, in your opinion, as EIC for the mag for such a long time, if you felt like the magazine's concept/vision built slowly over time or changed more dramatically from issue to issue? (BTW, this is for personal curiosity, not anything "official")
And Slurg: I wasn't trying to disrepect T-Love (who gave me my job at URB) but I was talking mostly about people in the journalism world (which would include someone like B+, as a photographer). But yeah, T-Love was at URB in those pre-95 years before she left to get her solo career off the ground and help release the first J5 EP (I think I have that last part right). And though he didn't go to writing fame, I always had a lot of respect for James Tai's writing in the mag. Dude was funny and clever and never pandered to the standard of celebrity journalism that's cropped up.
Damn, my brain is so fucking zoinked on cold medication right now: yeah, I totally forgot that URB also gave DT his start too. Another pre-95 alum.
You mean ego trip?
Indeed.
I think it was both. We lasted a grand total of 13 issues. Honestly, looking back I feel like it took us about six issues to find our voice. After we won Hip Hop Connection's Rap Magazine World Cup (w/ issue #7), the development process excelerated - primarily due to the full-time addition of Gabriel Alvarez (who we somehow convinced to leave his gig at Rap Pages to come work w/ us for no $) and after that Brent Rollins (who was also previously at Rap Pages as art director). I think the last three issues of ego trip were the most complete in fulfilling our vision of what we could be, which turned out to be a race humor magazine masquerading as a hip hop zine. By that point we were putting so much into each issue that we decided to do books instead - more $, longer shelf life.
The last issue of ego trip is the Breaking Atoms of magazines.
Very good points. I also remember it was the white critics that first latched onto Ornette Coleman and the emerging free jazz style -- even if they missed the movements at the East and the later generations of free jazz artists. Miles Davis, in his (auto)biography, was pissed as hell at this.
That makes me the K-Cut of ego trip.