One issue would sell really well. The next issue would tank. We just couldn't find a rhythm. The very first cover, Snoop [Dogg], did pretty well.
Wesley Snipes tanked. George Clinton tanked. Then Rosie Perez did pretty well. Your nipples were sticking out of your top. Your nipples saved Vibe. Van Meter: Sometimes [Rogin] could come around and upset me. He could be such a prick. But what he convinced me of was treating the cover not as part of the magazine but as an ad for the magazine.
I wasn't getting that in the beginning. The covers were a little bit too arty, too precious. That was my test, and in a lot of ways, I did test Jonathan. And he did convince me.
At the end of the day, Vibe had to be irreproachable in its quality, both for the white people at Time Warner and the black folks who were going to read it. It was terrifying.
I didn't tell anyone for many years. I lived in fear, but it fueled my activism as a black gay man. For me, it was personal and urgent, and that narrative needed to exist in a black music and culture magazine. Van Meter: I was 30 years old. I was the oldest person in the office. There were no grown-ups. And things got a little crazy. Mimi Valdes editorial assistant, ; assistant editor, ; style editor, ; executive editor, ; editor-at-large, ; editor-in-chief, : Jonathan booked Madonna and Dennis Rodman as a cover.
We all wanted Eddie over Madonna, so we were upset about it too. People are really not happy about this. Valdes: We were all standing by waiting for Scott to give us the go-ahead to come in. When Jonathan saw us, he got really upset. Van Meter: I felt like I was losing control. Jones: I was staying away from editorial policy.
I got involved when Jonathan put the Beastie Boys on the cover and told me he was following up with Dennis Rodman and Madonna. He had already shot it! Van Meter: I guess Quincy was getting a lot of shit from people for putting the Beastie Boys on the cover, and when he sees the Madonna cover, he went crazy.
Van Meter: Madonna was queen. I couldn't conceive of killing the best cover story we had done so far. And then the phone calls started. Everyone tried to get Quincy to change his mind. Even Madonna called me at home. She was really pissed. See you around, pal. Van Meter: No one could get Quincy to change his mind. I look back now and realize how incredibly naive I was. Valdes: For all the criticism he got, Jonathan really established the tone and the vision for the magazine.
We had a research department. We had a fact-checking department. A photo department. Our art department was top-notch. He created a beautiful magazine. Light: I was We need to see visible newsstand growth. Danyel Smith music editor, ; editor-in-chief, , : Alan called me for the job as music editor. We were under a great deal of pressure to turn it around as soon as we could. Light: I had been flirting with Prince a year-and-a-half for a story.
The first week of June was when I went to go do the interview with him, and they were the first interviews he had done in five years. Not a bad way to come out of the gate. Crazy is always linked to some kind of trauma or pain. We know now that it was domestic violence. I was shocked when their publicist, Lisa Cambridge, a childhood friend of mine, let me know that they were really upset by the story. And then I saw the cover. Light: TLC was our breakthrough cover.
All three sold. Not a straight-up hip-hop cover among them. Smith: Alan believed in reporting. Quincy Jones, Alan and I -- we all believed that Vibe should be the magazine of record. The TLC story was followed by another breakthrough when Vibe became the first publication to confirm rumors of R. When Kelly got wind of the story, his manager abruptly canceled a scheduled interview. Ironically, Kelly still sat for the cover shoot.
Carter Harris ran down the actual marriage certificate. I interviewed everybody and their mother for that story. The situation was tragic even then. Did any of us know that he would become the most iconic figure in hip-hop history? Absolutely not. Did any of us know that in three short years Tupac would go from a marginal figure in hip-hop to the center of a storm between the East and West Coasts that was largely created by some folks?
She ended up inviting Harry to be on the show. I wanted to write a version of that story about the car culture in New York. Much later, I got a call from someone at Universal talking about a movie option. It became The Fast and the Furious. Though Vibe validated the careers of many artists, the magazine fostered the growth and shaped the narrative of two figures in particular: Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B. Their rise -- and the ensuing war of words between them -- became the story upon which Vibe truly made itself indispensable in American culture.
It began in November , when Shakur was shot in the lobby of a Times Square recording studio. A few months later, Kevin Powell interviewed the rapper while he was in jail awaiting sentencing on a sexual abuse conviction. Vibe printed vigorous denials from all three -- and others Shakur had mentioned -- in its August issue. That is the greatest relationship you can have with an artist in a magazine. Every time we put Pac on the cover, it sold better each time.
Anything that we wrote about him generated more reaction, more mail, than anything else. And he and Kevin Powell had a certain relationship. Did I have qualms? But we reported the hell out of the responses [of the people Shakur named]. All of those guys spoke with their reaction and their version.
Powell: I remember praying that the Tupac I interviewed in jail -- Rikers Island -- would be the Tupac who would come out of jail. West Coast. The death of Shakur on Sept.
Karla Y. Most recently, Kendrick Lamar and Miguel were featured on the cover of the magazine. By Rose Lilah. Rose Lilah roselilahhshit. Image via HNHH. Vibe's print magazine and online sites have been bought by SpinMedia. News hip hop deal vibe. The magazine features a broader range of interests than its closest competitors The Source and XXL , which focus more narrowly on rap music, or the rock and pop-centric Rolling Stone and Spin.
Quincy Jones launched Vibe in , [3] in partnership with Time Inc. Originally, the publication had been called Volume before co-founding editor, Scott Poulson-Bryant gave it the name Vibe.
A private equity firm, Wicks Group, bought the magazine in
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