Elliott Wilson – otherwise known as YN – has long been considered the king of the mountain when it came to Hip Hop journalism. From the launching of the ballyhooed Ego Trip magazine, his stint with The Source and taking over the reigns of XXL, YN has made a lasting impression in Hip Hop culture. The Ego Trip team has put out two remarkable books (Big Book of Racism & Big Book of Rap Lists) and has gone on to produce numerous shows for Vh1 including Miss Rap Supreme and The White Rapper Show. In the meanwhile, Wilson has done nothing more but do the unthinkable: take an upstart publication and slay the mighty dragon known as The Source.

How surprising it was when earlier this year word came down that Wilson was relieved from his editor-in-chief duties at XXL. It seemed to be the equivalent of firing Phil Jackson right after his sixth championship with the Chicago Bulls. It flat out just didn’t make sense.

Although Wilson has remained relatively mum on the issue, the trailblazing editor took the time to sit down with HipHopDX and discuss his tenure at XXL, the controversies, the possibilities of relaunching Ego Trip and if the magazine game is dying.

Don’t sleep because Wilson delivers some much needed jewels for those who don’t understand the other side of the industry.

HipHopDX: First things first, how does the top magazine editor in the game get let go from a magazine that really needs his presence?
Elliot Wilson: I can’t really get into all that. I look at it this way, it’s a business at the end of the day. I have this persona where I’m Elliott Wilson, I’m YN and I’ve been this really powerful force in this industry and been in the magazine game for awhile. But don’t get it twisted; I don’t think that I’m above the game. The Hip Hop game is bigger than me. Sometimes you come to an impasse where you feel like you want to make a change. It’s a business. You have to deal with that and move on. I wasn’t the happiest camper when things were going down but at the end of the day, things get resolved and you move on.

DX: Being at XXL for so long and establishing that magazine to what it is today, do you think that there was a change in the industry that led to your departure from the magazine?
EW: Ultimately, I’m not at the magazine because the decision was made for me not to be there anymore. I do believe that the business has changed a lot and I think advertising dollars are harder to get because you have the Internet that’s making a lot of noise. But I’m not going to be that person that acts like magazines are dead at the end of the day. I feel like magazines will always have their place. But yeah…the business is hard right now. It’s hard to sell magazines and it’s hard to establish yourself as a website when you got rappers who are creating their own websites to compete against you. The whole business is harder. The decision was made for them to move in a different direction. So they moved on and I moved on. Obviously it’s going to be a controversial thing because of my history. But I couldn’t be there for 27 years. It had to end eventually. I don’t think I had the ending in my mind on how it was going to go down but I knew that when I took over the mission statement was to beat The Source and I did that. Then it was more about maintaining the excellence and maintaining the product at the high level that I thought it was at. I think what’s been great about the whole thing is that I think people recognize and respect me and what I was able to accomplish and it doesn’t tarnish my career. I know I’m a legend in this game, and I’m still going to be relevant and I’m going to find a different avenue to express myself. This is just a stage in my career. I look at this as a challenge now as I know there are people that are doubting me [saying], “Well this guy is not going to be big again because he’s not there anymore.” I look at that as a challenge and I’m very excited to be the underdog again.

DX: It’s not like your name is Benzino and you got the boot from The Source for disrespecting it. People can still look at you as THE Elliot Wilson…
EW: That’s the thing that I am real humbled by. As much as I’ve been the type of person who was very adversarial and controversial at times, I think people look past all that and understand that I’m a passionate dude. They may not always agree with everything that I say but they appreciate the hard work that I did. When I look back at the situation, I didn’t recognize that a lot of what I was doing – the personal branding of myself – had a lot to do with the success of the magazine. It wasn’t like some kind of genius plan. It was more like natural progression of me in the battle with The Source. They had that bully like mentality so I had to take it to them and make them feel like I could beat them. I created this wild side of my persona with the whole YN thing. I built a personal brand and I think that even though I’m no longer with that magazine, my personal brand is still strong. Continued on page 2 »