“Vibe” Thinks 14 Is A Lucky Number

Once again, we present Rock-Critically Correct, a feature in which the most recent issues of Rolling Stone, Blender, Vibe and Spin are given a once-over by an anonymous writer who’s contributed to several of those titles–or maybe even all of them! After the click-through, a look at the new issue of Vibe:

Have you ever known a couple that made a big to-do over their 14th anniversary? Not your boy! Would that qualify as a nickel anniversary? Lead? Tin?

These days, magazine editors and ad reps are less sure of themselves than any couple in need of something to spice shit up, now that the bloom be off the rose. So a 14th-anniversary issue for Vibe? Sure! Let’s line up those advertisers! As the September issue is also the “juice issue,” here we have 216 pages resembling the October Vogue if Anna Wintour was a Hot 97 listener: notwithstanding the TOC and mastheads, you don’t get through to the editor’s letter until page 60.

Therein, Editor-in-Chief Danyel Smith notes that “for the first time, a politician graces our cover. It’s time.” She goes on to decry the materialism and sociopolitical indifference of a great portion of her readership and of many hip-hop fans and artists in general. YC wonders if the publisher had a look at this letter, took Smith aside and said firmly, “Look, can’t you just tell them to register to vote and leave it that? We need them to be materialistic!”

And the politician Smith speaks of is … Dennis Kucinich! No, it’s Mike Gravel! Just kidding, y’all, its Ron Paul! Made you look, it’s Lyndon LaRouche!

Of course, it’s the only individual currently running for president that Vibe could credibly put on its cover. Neither Smith’s editor’s letter nor Jeff Chang’s cover profile comes right out and endorses Sen. Barack Obama, but should they decide to do so in the next year, Vibe ain’t gonna pick Rep. Duncan Hunter. (By the way, what do you wanna bet that Bill OReilly’s producers are already planning to have their boss demand that Obama apologize for appearing on the cover of magazine that regularly celebrates performers who describe women in less-than-saintly terms and/or take great interest in the drug trade?)

Chang’s cover story is the kind of earnest, measured appraisal you’d imagine from Vibe, and as such isn’t particularly insightful. However, a full-page sidebar accompanying the story, entitled Voting 101, compares (grid-style, natch) the positions of five major candidates from each dominant party: D: Clinton, Biden, Edwards, Obama, Richardson; R: Giuliani, Huckabee, McCain, Romney, Thompson (YC would have replaced the colorless Huckabee with the maverick, baller-in-his-own-way Rep. Paul). Here we learn what Vibe’s signature issues for the 2008 election are: mandatory minimum prison sentences for drug offenders and whether felons should be allowed to vote.

Obama has a tepid stance on mandatory minimums (“let the states decide”), but clearly Vibe would like to see them abolished. Makes you wonder about the platforms of other music mags: Rolling Stone stumps for decriminalization of marijuana (hey, aging hippies and Kings of Leon-favoring fratboys need to be free to spark one up without fear), but what’s Blender‘s plaftorm? Spin‘s? Magnet‘s? Modern Drummer‘s? Mixmag‘s? Revolver‘s? For that matter, what’s Pitchfork’s platform? Brooklyn Vegan’s? Stereogum’s? Nah Right’s? Feel free to leave your guesses in the comments section.

Elsewhere, the 14th anniversary is observed in good ways–former Public Enemy associate and “media assassin” Harry Allen fucks with Oprah Winfrey for her disaffection for gangsta and post-gangsta rap in a reprint from 1997–and bad. Namely, Vibe‘s front-of-book VMix section presents a haphazard collection of then and now pix of rappers and r&b singers: in 1995, Eve looks round-the-way, and in 2007 she’s all cleaned up; Ice Cube is thugged out in 1990, and a doting dad in 2007; Lil’ Kim looks like LaToya Jackson in 1996, and like Joycelyn Wildenstein in 2007. Obviously, any such photo feature would be better realized if the specific contrast between 1993 and 2007 was observed. Y’know, 14 years and all that…

Your boy has noted in this space before the lead time issues that leave Vibe unavoidably late to the party when addressing the Imus imbroglio after, say, June. And yet, VBeat, another Vibe FOB section, features five fairly good essays grappling with mainstream hip-hop’s lack of interest in appealing to a higher nature. Some academic doesn’t like it, a Vibe staffer does, an author with a book to plug says that it was all better back in the ’80s and that white kids have ruined it, Russell Simmons defends his fence-sitting response in the spring, and writer Greg Tate articulates YC’s view. Which is, namely, that the second the middle class isn’t annoyed with mainstream hip-hop, then it’s fork-in-ass time.

BTW: Tate gets to appraise a Cornel West album in this issue’s reviews section. He thinks it’s great, and, like his former Village Voice colleague Robert Christgau in Rolling Stone, he is allowed a larger word count to say so than the other reviewers (except for Joshua Alston’s lead review of Eve’s Here I Am) and to ignore Vibe‘s seemingly strict stylistic templates. Those Village Voice alums, man, they’re our oracles…