To be associate editor of SLAM magazine at age 23 was one thing — an incredible thrill and a job I felt lucky to have (thank you, DP and Tony G.!), but one that I also felt I’d worked toward, having treated basketball fandom as a part-time job since I was 10 years old and having been paid to cover the sport for several years already. I’d also read SLAM since its very first issue dropped in 1994. But to inherit the same title at XXL — a rising hip-hop publication suddenly led by a gifted leader in the space, Sheena Lester — felt like a true gift. I was a basketball journalist but still very much a hip-hop fan. In a way, though, one prepared me for the other. As the XXL staff prepared for the Great Day and began to track who was going to show up on 126th Street, excitement mounted. Slick Rick is going to be there? Scarface?! Tribe?! The freakin’ Wu-Tang Clan?! I was going to be in the presence of artists I’d bumped in dorm rooms and cars, seen in concerts but never been, you know, face to face with. But I had my SLAM experience to lean on. SLAM had already sent me to numerous games to do countless interviews — I had even been in the Chicago Bulls’ locker room during the ’98 NBA Finals a couple months earlier. So I had learned … no autographs. No geeking out. Keep it professional! So when September 29 rolled around, and interacting with these amazing rappers face to face was my job — literally, Datwon Thomas and I were tasked with shooting Polaroids and getting signed releases from every single artist who came through — I was able to keep my cool. Except when Rakim showed up..

—Ben Osborne

Photos by Ben Osborne © iD8 Studios

More From Ben Osborne:

“I found these negatives of these photos years after taking them and barely remember just how vibrant the colors were that afternoon. Of course I remember the day, and I know I played a big role — that day and especially producing the issue — but to see this personal photo I took when my work was done, years after the fact, is an incredibly strong reminder that I was right there. Gives me goosebumps, to be honest.” 

–Ben Osborne

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Pusha T as seen in RESPECT. magazine. Photo copyright Karl Ferguson Jr..

PUSHA T

New York City, 2013

“Pusha’s album My Name Is My Name had recently been released and he came up to Hot 97 to promote it on DJ Funkmaster Flex’s show. I was there to capture his portrait before he had to leave for his Gramercy Theater show. You can always count on Pusha to be cooperative, he’s so used to the process.”

 

– Karl Ferguson Jr.

From the RESPECT. Archive: Karl Ferguson Jr. photo feature. Issue #18 Nov 2013.

The post Photo of the Day: Photographer KARL FERGUSON JR. Captures PUSHA T Like Nobody Else Can appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

After letting the controversial list marinate for a couple weeks, XXL drops the 2012 Freshman list cypher. There’s some good rhymes here by these guys but it would have been nice to see Schoolboy Q spit here. Who has your favorite freestyle in the cypher?

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Iggy Azalea, fresh off her XXL cover, drops a hard-hitting and quick-spitting freestyle over Nicki Minaj‘s “Roman In Moscow” beat properly renamed “Iggy In Moscow“. Listen to it below, and leave us a comment. “Who want beef? Oh I heard cattle.”

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Wale spills his soul to Carl Chery of XXL Magazine:

I got the target on my back for some reason. I put my foot in my mouth sometimes. I’ll be the first to admit it. I’ve made a lot of bad decisions, but my impulsive actions is one of the things that makes my music so good, [makes] my music so relatable because I am the human, I am the young Black man. I’m impulsive, I’m emotional. And the connotation behind emotional is like Carl Thomas boohoo cry emotional, nah. I’m not cry over spilled milk emotional. I’m riding for the cause emotional. And I was thinking, if I just keep doing what I’m doing and keep shutting my mouth then they’ll listen, but I realized, nah. You gotta take the muzzle off and be like, “Look,nigga. What you want?” This is my heart and my soul and I’ma give it to y’all. You know how many people would die to be where I’m at? Well, I’ll kill to stay where I’m at.

At the end of the day, muthafuckas gon’ feel what they want. I can respond to all that fuckery on Twitter, but I’m for the people. 99 percent of the people that write me bullshit [on Twitter] are following me. I could follow them back real quick and then DM them a little bit. “You little bitch ass nigga. Fuck you and your life.” Nah, I want people to see what I deal with everyday. The target that I put on my back, on my chest because I ride for the culture. I ain’t gon go for anything no more. A lot of these niggas, there’s no passion. They just wanna make these little songs that you sing, you gon hear it a couple times, and that’s cool. What’s up? Whatever happened to sticking for the people?

I put my passion into this shit. That’s why it’s so easy for me to snap, to react ‘cause it’s all I got. This is my life. This is my art. I don’t got no kids. I don’t have nothing but this and my niggas, the same thing. We threw everything away and put it all on this. I got niggas that could have been overseas playing basketball, niggas that could have been making good money on the streets. We threw it all away for this shit, for little ole me. That’s deep, man. Niggas is 24, 25. They just got their whole life ahead of them and they put it on me. Why wouldn’t I ride for these Black niggas, these college niggas, these women. Who’s doing it for them like that? Who made a song within the past year that can make you probably cry or consider crying?

Maybe I’m not the best technical lyricist. Maybe I’m can’t sing the best or come up with the catchiest melody, but what if I put my heart is this muthafucka and touch your soul, touch your heart moreso than anybody who’s doing it right now. I come from a place with all do respect who’s never had a music star in hip-hop. So the odds is already against me. I came in the game with a chip on my shoulder, an unmovable chip on my shoulder. I got family. I got a mother that I don’t her to work no more. You gon tell me if you was in my position and you put your heart and soul in something and niggas came for it, you ain’t gon react? Nigga, if you ain’t gon react you must got another plan.

This is it. We gon’ do this shit for the culture, for the people. For the nigga in college that get up every morning that’s like, “Fuck, man.”  Yea, we gon talk about this ambition shit now. For the nigga that’s in the streets, trying to get out the streets, we gon talk that ambition shit. For the girl who got one kid, trying to figure it out, baby father just left, we grew up with them. This for you. For the nigga that works at XXL trying to get to the next stage, who probably work the fucking mail room right now. He on the train every morning, man. “I can’t wait to get in this muthafucka. I can’t wait to get to this next level.” For LeBron, man. I’m [26 years old]. I’m one of the greatest athletes that ever fucking lived and all they’re talking about is I ain’t won a ring. This is for you, LeBron. I wake up everyday [at] 9 O’Clock in the morning to go to my fucking class and I still got a C minus. This for you my nigga. I know. I was there too.

I wanna be known as one of the best rhymers, dawg. I just got off the phone with Clark Kent. He told me I’m one of the best rappers that he’s ever heard. That’s Clark Kent. He was there.Reasonable Doubt, yea. Young Guru text me. Your “Mass Appeal” freestyle was crazy. These ain’t little 18-year old niggas. These ain’t no niggas doing the dougie, man. These [are] niggas that was around when the shit was going down. This is why I do it, my nigga, for real.

via XXL

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The legendary rapper speaks on whose storytelling skills he appreciates, why storytelling is still prevalent in hip-hop today and the current state of rap…

via XXL

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You can’t get away from Kanye West. Whether you’re rooting for him or not he relentlessly bounces back from whatever harm he inevitably causes. This coming month XXL Magazine has decided to celebrate our favorite Louis Vuitton Don with a cover article he wrote himself and by allowing him to be the creative director for 40 pages of the magazine. We know he’s a great rapper and producer, but let’s see how he fares as a journalist.

As revealed by Popeater, Kanye West will appear on the cover of XXL’s October issue, hitting newstands nationwide on September 28.

The Louis Vuitton Don penned the cover story on himself—his first article ever—and also served as the creative director of his own 40-page section in the special collector’s issue.

In his candid cover story, Ye speaks on the reaction he received from the infamous 2009 MTV Video Music Awards debacle. “I stress that the incident wasn’t about Taylor personally,” he explains in the story. “And it definitely wasn’t about race. Where I messed up is, at the end of the day, it’s your show, Taylor. It’s your show, MTV.”

“The relationship with the public and with your fans is like the relationship with your girlfriend,” he adds. “How could I not, at a certain point, be like, ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been at the awards show. I’m sorry.’ Not that I don’t deserve to get beat up or change who I am inside, to make sure that that doesn’t happen again.”

Mr. West said that, following his VMA outburst, he immediately dedicated himself to the studio. “I knew I wasn’t in a great spot publicly after the incident, but I would just block it out and work as hard as possible and let my work be my saving grace,” he shared. “In a way, I had thrown a Molotov cocktail at my own career, and it gave me an opportunity, for the first time, to go away and find out who I was. Because I felt very alone.”

In addition to Kanye’s cover story, XXL’s October issue features stories on Kid Cudi, West’s G.O.O.D. Music family, Wiz Khalifa and the top 10 producers turned rappers of all time.

Information courtesy of XXLmag.com.

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