Closing the Book on XXL

A former writer reminisces over the pivotal hip-hop magazine

Last week, the New York Post reported that XXL, the venerable hip-hop magazine, will cease publication. The mag, published for 17 years by Harris Publications, was sold to Townsquare Media, which plans to do away with the print edition and operate it strictly as a website.

In most circles this news was met with a collective shrug, because media news isn’t particularly exciting to anyone who doesn’t work in media. But for people behind-the-scenes, writers/editors and longtime readers, it was a bit of a drag.

Two weeks earlier, it was announced that Vibe magazine, which has been around since 1993 and has shuffled through a handful of different parent companies, would also cease publishing its print edition.

Are urban music magazines dead? That appears to be so. And it’s quite depressing, particularly for this writer.

Back in the summer of 2004, after seven years of reading the magazine strictly as a fan, my professional writing career began with a byline in XXL. I was asked to write a review of Masta Ace’s A Long Hot Summer LP. It was 300 words, and I got paid $300.

Although I can’t recall who was on the cover that month, I do remember very distinctly what it felt like to write…