DX: Can you briefly go over your history? Many people just know you as YN of XXL while some may just know that you have something to do with White Rapper Show and Miss Rap Supreme. But I think we need to give a clear idea of who you are and where you came from.
EW: I started in 1992. I met Sacha Jenkins; he was a fellow writer. He started a graffiti magazine while he was still in high school. His second publishing venture was a magazine called Beat Down. He had a partner named Hadji. Their first issue had Cypress Hill on the cover. Sacha brought me into the matrix with Hadji and Hadji became editor of Beat Down in 1992. The first interview I ever did was with this guy Divine Styler in August of 1992, and then I interviewed Kool G Rap [click to read]. I quit college, and that’s when I figured out that this is what I wanted to do.

It got to the point where there were some professional differences between Hadji and Sacha. I encouraged Sacha to leave Beat Down so we could start our own thing. Sacha showed me a lot of things in the game like how to publish a magazine and since we were friends, we said, “Let’s do it” and that’s how we came up with Ego Trip.

Ego Trip was an independent zine that we did from 1994 to 1998, but doing Ego Trip led to opportunities at major magazines. The Source and VIBE took notice of what we were doing because we became like the hottest underground zine. So Sacha got a job at VIBE as music editor and I got a job at The Source in the mid-'90s. We kept doing Ego Trip on the side so we could keep putting that publication out. After that we started doing books like the Ego Trip Big Book of Rap Lists which I still feel is the best book about Hip Hop then we did the racism book. The racism book led to the TV opportunities at Vh1 and now we do a lot of TV programming with Vh1. Our current show is Miss Rap Supreme which comes on Monday’s at 10pm.

Aside from the Ego Trip part of it, I was The Source’s music editor from 1996 to 1998, and in 1999 they offered me the XXL job and I was there from September ’99 until January 2008.

That was a pretty long run there. No editor-in-chief, I don’t think, has had a run for so long. I did about 87 issues. Everything I said I was going to do, I did it and I’m very proud of it. I think people need to focus less on the drama of what went down and just really give me my props for what I was able to accomplish. I beat the undefeatable giant, I slayed the dragon, I beat The Source. I completed my mission statement.

DX: That you did. The Ego Trip stuff is doing very well. Should we be expecting anymore Ego Trip books in the near future?
EW: Yeah. With Ego Trip we do things on a project by project basis. Right now our focus is on Miss Rap Supreme. After we finish presenting these episodes to you, we’re going to sit in a room and figure out what our next move is. We take every project very seriously and focus on one thing at a time.

DX: Have there been talks about relaunching the magazine at all? Maybe online?
EW: Of course! I mean it would have to be the right situation. That’s the crazy thing to me. That magazine only came out 12 or 13 times and it’s got legendary status in its own right and I’m very proud of being a part of it. That’s a side of my career that people can’t take away from me.

DX: With Ego Trip there are all these different personalities that are Hip Hop lovers. With you running XXL and being a tastemaker and trendsetter at the forefront of this industry. What is your observations of Hip Hop when you first entered the game and where it is at today?
EW: You grow with it. When you first get in the game you are very wide eyed and you are fascinated that you can get a 12-inch that you don’t even have to pay for and somebody sends you advance cassettes and you can go to listening parties. You get seduced by it. Then you start to see the horror stories in the industry. You see that some of the legends in this game aren’t living financially as well as you are. It’s really a love/hate relationship that comes with it. I just always wanted to document this culture. I stayed in it while some of my peers have strayed. I hope to be an inspiration to the next generation that comes.

As far as my personal tastes go, as a magazine editor, your job is to apply some of your personal tastes plus think of the right moves to do businesswise. Your biggest decision is who you put on the cover. Who you put on the cover is a business decision. It depends on what your magazines status is. When I was at XXL I’m trying to see as many magazines as I can on the newsstands. So even if somebody’s mad I put 50 Cent [click to read] on the cover six months ago, if it sold ridiculous and six months later, he’s still hot then I don’t have a choice. I’m going to put him on the cover again. And be prepared to be criticized for it. Then the numbers come back and they look good. So I think you have to balance and cover everything. We covered every movement from Kanye [West] to 50 while I was there, but obviously some of the Lil Wayne and Jay-Z things have higher prominence because they put up the numbers and sold the magazines.
That’s how it goes in the game. When I was at Ego Trip we could just throw Gang Starr on the cover because we weren’t concerned with selling magazines. But at XXL, my mission was to sell as many copies as I could. You also have to keep it real and not be a glossy pop book so you cover everything that encompasses the culture. Continued on page 3 »