In a short time, the publication had established itself as a definitive hip-hop voice. But in late 1995, Light, then editor-in-chief of VIBE, was about staying ahead of the curve. How the media covered rap’s bloodiest and most territorial years remains a divisive topic. Remembering how it all came together piece by piece is not necessarily a good time for Alan Light. The plummet began shortly after the cover’s ink dried. The cover captured the fleeting moment of Death Row Records at its apex. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Tupac were all under contract, becoming at the time the greatest collection of superstar hip-hop talent on one label simultaneously. If N.W.A had planted its flag as the “world’s most dangerous rap crew,” Suge and Death Row not only upped the ante, they drafted an entirely new set of rules. Dre, Tupac and Suge Knight of Death Row Records. The February 1996 issue of Vibe Magazine featuring Snoop Dogg, Dr.
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Snoop Dogg’s Los Angeles murder trial - he was acquitted of first- and second-degree murder - was still in progress when VIBE’s Death Row cover hit shelves in early 1996. Death Row had only gotten stronger, thriving despite headlines that would cause most other companies to crumble. His 1995 opus Me Against The World became the first No. Tupac was rap’s premier spark plug, perhaps its most eloquent thinker and America’s most controversial and popular artist. The music, profoundly explicit, was the embodiment of neighborhoods and fractured households ripped to shreds by a society that would have forgotten about it had it not been for hip-hop.ĭeath Row had landed its crown jewel. Shakur signed a three-page handwritten contract, an agreement worth $3.5 million, for three albums. Simpson’s divisive not-guilty verdict and only days after the Million Man March on Washington, D.C.
19, 1995 - not even the biggest headline of the month, as it arrived roughly two weeks after O.J. Suge Knight bailed Tupac out of prison on Oct. “I can’t leave until this s- is straight.” Related and unrelated to the conviction, Shakur felt betrayed by some in his circle. “I cannot die with people thinking I’m a rapist or a criminal,” he said in a 1994 interview. “I hope in time you’ll come forth and tell the truth.” The thought of being remembered as a sexual deviant had haunted Shakur before his conviction. “I’m not apologizing for a crime,” he said in court. At his sentencing in February 1995, tears streamed down his face as he apologized to the victim, but he remained steadfast about having committed no crime.
Days after the shooting, he was found guilty of sexual assault. Less than a year prior, Shakur suffered an attempt on his life that left five bullet wounds in his body, including two to his head. Tupac Shakur stewed in New York’s maximum security Clinton Correctional Facility for much of 1995. Dre’s 1992 The Chronic, one of rap’s most influential albums ever. The decision to branch out on his own with a business partner known for violence and gang ties was potential career suicide, a possibility both Dre and The Source milked with its startling November 1992 cover. Dre was already seen as a musical savant, a producer who helped make N.W.A a name America had come to love, loathe and fear. With Knight, a former bodyguard, Dre launched Death Row Records. Dre had split from Eazy E personally, N.W.A as a group and Ruthless Records in 1992. These magazines satisfied a pre-Wi-Fi audience’s yearning for news and images about rap’s greatest, most dissected and, at its lowest, most heartbreaking era.Īmid financial disputes, Dr. The transcendent XXL didn’t launch until the summer of 1997. By the outset of 1996, two publications were responsible for driving the conversation around hip-hop and R&B, its biggest stars and its most provocative news: VIBE (created by Quincy Jones in 1992) and The Source (launched in 1988). Let’s take it back to an era before the internet, blogs and social media reigned, to when hip-hop magazines were the unrivaled scripture for America’s most beloved, bemoaned culture.
Appropriately titled “Live From Death Row,” VIBE ’s February 1996 cover featured the already-notorious label’s faces: Dr.
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