Elliott Wilson fired as XXL editor-in-chief

who

can't

read

"deeq"?

deeq2005

http://www.arikah.com/encyclopedia/images/1/16/Dic_logo.jpg

^ that's the one

ILX just got more confusing, didn't it?

i broke this story last night on the oh snap 2008 thread.

ban djdeeq

ha sorry j0rdan, feel free

nah i was just joking dude.

i'm actually wouldn't mind discussing this. all indications were that he had basically brought xxl up to the top of the erm "urban" music mag market and all was well. if he didn't want to turn the mag into vibe i can def respect that.

yeah he was kind of a polarizing guy and I didn't always like his writing style/tone or his editorial decisions, but he'd have my respect even if he never did a single thing after Ego Trip. and considering that he was outblogging most of the guys on the XXL site who are just bloggers and nothing else, it was pretty lame for the powers that be to strip the site of all his posts.

it's possibly all his shit talking caught up with him, but i don't really know what they expect to do to improve the mag or its sales that he couldn't do, besides not lazily putting Wayne or 50 Cent on every other cover. unless they wanna turn it into a full-on 'lifestyle' mag, like the black Blender or some shit.

Wilson is married to Vibe's editor Danyel Smith fwiw

which is funny bcuz he takes shots at blender all the time in his blogs

i was thinking the same thing re: his blogs. but you'd think that if they had a problem with his outlandishness that they would have said "listen elliot tone it down". if they did and he said "fuck you" (which could've happened) then he is an idiot.

Why is he idiot? You think he's not going to be able to find work?

I think he meant that YN would be an idiot if he lost his job for taking a stand on posting shit talking on official XXL blogs. I'm sure he'll be able to find work as a write, but I can't think of any similiar high profile editing post he could go to, at least not any that would be considered a big step down or out of his element.

woundn't be considered, i mean

i mean that i assume he liked his job at xxl, took some pride in bringing xxl to the top of its niche and enjoyed the kind of nice powerful status/role he played in rap as a whole. if he told them that he wouldn't turn himself down (which is obv speculation) then i think that's some headstrong, stubborn, immature bs tbh.

of course he can get work but i think he'd be lying to himself if he thought he was gonna be able to replace his job @ xxl with anything else in the mag industry.

right alex otm.

but look it's his life and obv we don't know any of the details and maybe he was a fed up as they were and said to himself "well if they fire me then fine", and god knows any one of us who have worked for shitty bosses has justified that logic before.

anyway fuck Harris Pub for pulling the plug on Scratch

scratch blog is just aight sadly.

WAHT IF THEY FIRED YN BCUZ HE STOOD UP FOR BILLY X SUNDAY?

"MY BLOGGERS WILL DO INTERVIEWS WITH JOELL ORTIZ UNDER A BRIDGE WHENEVER THEY DAMN WELL PLEASE"

Tuesday Jan 8

The World's Most Hardbody Editor
RIP YN
Posted: 12:34 PM CST | BY Billy X. Sunday | 83 COMMENTS »

anyway fuck Harris Pub for pulling the plug on Scratch

-- Alex in Baltimore, Tuesday, January 8, 2008 2:24 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Sometimes magazines that people don't buy get shut down. We have no one to blame but ourselves.

In one of his editor's notes, he talked about working on Jay-Z's official bio, so maybe he'll be workin on that.

yeah in all honesty i'm kinda surprised Scratch lasted as long as it did. doesn't mean i'm not still bitter about it, though.

Oh wow. I hope no one elses job is at risk now, particularly my man's and dem powerblogger Noz.

Though I didn't really like dude's editor columns, he was a great blogger, clearly did job well, and obv his work w/Ego Trip is high level. I def wanna know wtf this was all about and will officially quit fucking with Harris Publications if XXL goes lifestyle.

my man's and dem powerblogger Big Perp

no one seems to understand what 'going lifestyle' means

its just an issue of marketing dudes

u_u

sure, marking. and content. and whether the person on the cover is a recording artist. (xpost)

lol marking=marteking=marketing whatever

the last issue i bought was the reasonable doubt issue and that was great i thought.

person on cover not being a recording artist vs. person on the cover being lil wayne or 50 cent (again)

the last couple vibe covers, despite its supposed 'lifestyle' orientation, were lil wayne and kanye tho, so, you know...

vibe coverage of non-music stuff usually blows

but i guess i'm not breaking any news there. the huge basketball thing they did in the wayne issue was kind of embarrassing i thought

having obama on the cover of vibe > whatever xxl was doing that month

all magazines are selling a lifestyle, thats how people sell magazines. when folks say xxl needs to go in more of a lifestyle direction, they're just saying its losing its identity/demographic

having obama on the cover of vibe > whatever xxl was doing that month

-- deej, Wednesday, January 9, 2008 2:53 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

i agree with this. i'm just wondering what the 'lifestyle' that xxl is apparently trying to sell is. they already do spreads on shoes/clothes/electronics etc. i mean king is already the 'urban' maxim. vibe is a mess. idk. i trust you on this deej i'm just a little confused as to where xxl would be trying to go.

it sounds like they are too

right

So far the big (anonymous source) pullquote about this has been "Harris Publications wants the magazine to go in a different direction in terms of expanding its scope." I'm sure I wasn't the first person to use the 'lifestyle' word but let's not harp on that as if that's definitely what they're doing (although I have no idea what else 'expanding its scope' means besides being more open to covering R&B or the next big Gnarls Barkley/Gym Class Heroes-type quasi-hip hop bullshit).

im guessing it means opening up to more R&B more than more gnarls barkley ... which is something i'd be surprised to hear anyone on this board particularly opposed to, unless sergio is posting again and i didnt know

I haven't read XXL seriously since I had to do a paper on hip hop magazines about four years ago. Did they get better during that time? I remember being kind of appalled at the low quality of hip hop rags in general (and my perverse favorite was Murderdog, which surprised me by having relatively credible advertisers along the worst content in a national magazine that I've ever seen).

jim swells?

murderdog is great because its 1) interview content vs. editorial content ratio is high 2) breadth of coverage, platinum acts to unknowns

now if they started going R&B i might raise an eyebrow

murder dog is the only magazine that actually lets the artist go off and end up saying some real and insightful shit instead of structuring it about the writers bullshit narrative

dont get me wrong sometimes i like those long ass stories about a rapper doin everyday shit and watchin paris hilton on TV and the mustard chili dog he was eatin when mr opinionated rap critic spoke with him at the hotel lobby but when you fill 6 pages with "im sitting at the restaurant with jadakiss and..." storytelling bullshit and only a couple sentences from the artist himself i am done with your self-obsessed ass

no forced concepts, no nerd-ass fan fiction, no bullshit. let the artist talk

half the time the artist comes in w/ a narrative ready for your ass though, and that kind of narrative structure is giving the whole thing a less contrived focus

like i know what you mean, most rap mags are terrible at this in a journalistic sense, but dudes come into interviews with ready-made stories that are only made interesting if the journalist is willing to look through the bullshit

yeah i guess you cant do every interview with like yukmouth or some other such shit-talkin opinionated dude you kinda have to make that narrative around the boring-ass rapper if you wanna cover the type of dudes who sell magazines

soulja boy waited at the airport, contemplating his newfound fame. "i'm just tryna keep doin it, man" he mused.

It was a warm night, as well it should be. Given that it was summer and all.

i always hated how xxl came with the cutesy lil similies and metaphors and shit... "Right now The Game is on top like a Jenna Jameson in a hot lesbo flick (ed note: yeah, baby!)" man what the fuck are you talkin bout?!?!

"Jadakiss rips the track as if he was a shorty tearing through his wrapping paper on Christmas morning"

what mag was 'a bentley drinks cognac' in

lol kris ex

It was a warm night, as well it should be. Given that it was summer and all.

:D

dont get me wrong sometimes i like those long ass stories about a rapper doin everyday shit and watchin paris hilton on TV and the mustard chili dog he was eatin when mr opinionated rap critic spoke with him at the hotel lobby but when you fill 6 pages with "im sitting at the restaurant with jadakiss and..." "i'm sitting backstage with gorilla zoe and..." storytelling bullshit and only a couple sentences from the artist himself i am done with your self-obsessed ass

-- and what, Wednesday, January 9, 2008

^^j/k i liked that story

the other side of letting an artist go off w/o a writer structuring the story is shit like lil wayne where you end up with circular nonsense and random ass asides and shout-outs to dj khaled or whoever that completely derail the interview

by circular nonsense i mean starting off a point and finishing it 2 minutes later after going off on some pointless bs

ha thats exactly what im talking about though! he came at me with a bunch of pre-written shit about his background, all i could do was mention how many sandwiches i saw him eat

the other side of letting an artist go off w/o a writer structuring the story is shit like lil wayne where you end up with circular nonsense and random ass asides and shout-outs to dj khaled or whoever that completely derail the interview

-- J0rdan S., Wednesday, 9 January 2008 23:29 (25 minutes ago) Link

yeah I was about to bring up the last XXL cover story I read, which was that most recent Wayne cover and basically the whole article was one long Q&A w/ a short intro, and it was so fucking pointless and barely readable that a really long checkout line at the store was the only reason I got all the way through it. Wayne is kind of a terrible interview maybe unless you really do chop the shit up into some sort of narrative, and as sick as I am of reading flowery blog posts about wfb mixtapes, a little writerly flair could've really helped a piece like that.

Al needs to start a Lil Wayne Will Change Your Life blog.

lol

whats happened to the xxlmag site?

weird i was just on it yesterday....

lol maybe Wilson never forwarded the server bill to the new brass

RIP

http://www.nydailynews.com/img/2007/06/27/gal_funeral7.jpg

terrible news

man i want a bloodshot eyeball on my coffin when i die

lol @ people like me quickly scrolling through the revive thinking elliot wilson actually died

no, jordan, you are truly one of a kind.

let's wait a few hours before we start tarnishing the site's legacy ok?
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44720000/jpg/_44720931_yves512.jpg

really though the first thing i saw was deejs RIP

RIP yellow man

^lol at this

anyway rapradar is really filling an unoccupied niche in rap internet journalism by posting jim jones mp3s and excerpts of rick ross interviews

Oh wow. I hope no one elses job is at risk now, particularly my man's and dem powerblogger Noz.

― Wrinklepaws, Tuesday, January 8, 2008 3:23 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51aC2nK2X3L._SS500_.jpg

I was supposed to do one of those Scratch guest blogs but have been way too busy/frazzled to send one in -- maybe will try to get one in late and see if they use it.

Dying @ wrink p

Anyway I picked up RESPECT which is yn's new mag and it's pretty good. Pretty much all the content is interviews done by him which are hit and miss with rappers but he knows his shit. Design is nice too. No sunglasses spreads.

was this mag named after big-ass pants?