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 You know how today there's, like, a zillion blogs dedicated to rap and its various niches? Well, back in the '90s, that's what it was like at every newsstand.
On any given month you could find dozens of hip-hop magazines offering every take on the scene, from the most mainstream (like VIBE or RapPages) to the most avant-garde (The Nü Skool), to the most absurd (ego trip), to the most arcane (Elementary). Some were full-color glossies with polished art direction, and others were newsprint 'zines laid out by hand, but all lived and breathed the scene they documented. Unfortunately, as hip-hop moved away from the thinky to the thuggy in the late '90s, the audience for analysis shrank—and so did the ad dollars. Some soldiered on through the next decade or so, but between rising paper costs, competition with free online content, and dramatically downsized marketing budgets, our current economic crisis has made print publishing rugged like Rwanda.Check out the rest on Complex.com!
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