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06.28.04 08:48 PM

the new yorker gets gangsta

back in the '01 when Kelefa Sanneh penned that piece on Jay-Z's hustle called "Gettin' Paid," i thought it was a major coup for hip-hop. no, not on some the mainstream must accept it shit. on respecting his business savvy. i was so feeling that, especially since duke had gotten dissed when trying to shop for co-ops in new york's fair manhattan. it was like giving him another cloak of cred that would enable a large body of folks to see just how long and green his money was. now i remember that article like it was yesterday, since i don't usually go checking the new yorker for any hip-hop coverage. besides that piece made it to da capo's best music writing (which could be a hit or miss circumstance to begin with).

truth is, no one checks the new yorker for hip-hop coverage, regardless of the shot in the dark hip-hop journalistic beauty that turns up. but cats on the block have been telling this scribe that the new yorker is getting gully with theirs. the new yorker is watching hip-hop's back. the new yorker, the say, has jockitis.

there could be some truth to this. but instead consider perhaps that the new yorker just wants a little street cred all to itself. why else would this week's ink in talk of the town be titled "Gangsta Content" and be about a little magazine called Don Diva. in the second graf, the piece even mentions both FEDS and Felon also.

here's that second graf: "Don Diva’s editor-in-chief is a former telephone-company employee and marketing executive from suburban New Jersey named Tiffany Chiles. Chiles founded the magazine in 1999, at the suggestion of her husband, who was then serving a ten-year federal sentence for bankrolling his music label, Big Boss Records, with profits from his wholesale cocaine business. A similar publication, F.E.D.S., which stands for “Finally Every Dimension of the Streets,” had been around for a year or so. And, not long after Don Diva’s début, a cousin of Chiles’s husband launched his own title, FELON, which stands for “From Every Level of Neighborhoods.” But, judging by regularity of publication, number of ads (music, clothes, jewelry, beepers, vodka, legal services), and sales of ancillary products, Don Diva’s mixture of life-style and service journalism has been particularly successful: the magazine recently launched a U.K. edition."

go forth and read the rest: Gangsta Content

posted by lynne | link to this |