Magazine Proposal

My magazine will be a music mag in the vein of other magazines like NME and
Melody Maker, with a slight difference. While these two examples of popular music
magazines try and keep in touch with any important musical development and in
general cover a broad range of music, mine will focus entirely on rap music as a
genre and culture that people follow.

I would like the name of the magazine to be something musically related yet
inclined more towards the rap genre- something involving a microphone as that is
an essential part of rap, especially the rap form of freestyling. Another name
possibility is ‘Diversity’- as rap has grown from being an exclusively black-
dominated genre of music to being something that everyone can be a part of, it is
important to document such an important change outright, and what better way to
do this than have it as the magazines name that will feature on every front cover.

Rap music recently overtook rock as the single most popular genre of music in the
United States, and is the first time that something other than rock has been the
most popular in the US for nearly 40 years when rock was in its heyday. It could
not be a better time to dedicate a magazine to focus entirely on rap as a singular
genre, and my magazine will devote its space equally to the history of rap by
looking at older rappers and rap groups and the trends back during the birth of the
genre, and the new trends of today that have carried rap into the spotlight.

By focusing on one specific genre for my magazine, some positives and negatives
quickly make themselves known. I have already limited the competition down as
there are only a few rap-only magazines in circulation today, the most popular
being The Source and XXL. A downside to being a rap-only magazine is that I have
also severely limited my target audience; while newcomers to the genre may be
inclined to purchase a copy, the magazine will mostly appeal to those who already
followed the genre, be it old hip-hop heads or millenials or younger who follow the
new school of rap.

Target Audience

The primary audience for my magazine will be rap fans. This is the most obvious of
all the different audiences as the magazine focuses on rap as the only genre,
meaning that existing hip hop fans would look at my magazine as an item of
interest and certainly something worth buying. As rap is such a broad genre in
terms of the different types that people can listen to and enjoy, the primary
audience itself will be quite a broad range in terms of age. Older people who grew
up with the early hip hop from the 70’s to the 90’s will find plenty to enjoy about
my magazine, while younger readers from groups such as Generation Z and
Millenials will find plenty of stories and articles about the current trending topics
and the breakthrough artists to watch out for. I have decided for my magazine to
focus on as many eras of the genre as possible to attract the widest possible
audience, as more copies will be sold to different people with different interests.
Rap fans are diverse now to a point where anyone can find some sort of enjoyment
in the genre. While rap/hip hop was never a black-only genre of music for people to
both listen to and musically be a part of, it was born in a section of New York
dominated by African-Americans and the early artists that helped to pioneer the
genre were mostly black, with the exception of acts like the Beastie Boys and
producers like Rick Rubin. Nowadays rap has moved to being a lot more open to
people from different cultures and races to contribute, and it is not out of place to
see white, hispanic and asian rappers dominating the charts both critically and
commercially.

Secondary- My secondary target audience will be a group of people who take an

interest in some aspects of politics, particularly revolving around black culture.
Police brutality towards blacks in America and hate crimes around the world are
topics of interest for these people, and these might be the same people who sign up
for movements such as Black Lives Matter and act extremely negatively towards
the presidency of Trump. While anyone can have these opinions, as many people
do, I would imagine this group to be towards the lower end of the socio-economic
scale- blue collar workers, manual workers, and students, who have extremely
strong feelings towards the racial tension surrounding America and the rap game of
today and who want to stand up and make a change.

Tertiary- As a more refined version of my secondary audience, my tertiary target

audience would be younger people who stand with the Democrat party in America.
As time moves forwards young people’s opinions matter more than ever, with
certain things in society experiencing a form of change due to the efforts of the
younger voices who demand to see a change to the world that they still have to
grow up in. An example of this are the protests surrounding the ever controversial
gun laws in America today; with the steady flow of school shootings disrupting
children’s education and enhancing the fear of being in a place where kids should
feel the most safe, some young people have decided that enough is enough and
have taken to the NRA to voice their frustrations about nothing being done, all to
defend a billion dollar industry from being damaged. These people may have
equally strong opinions about the way that blacks are treated in America, and it
would be a goal of mine to target them and involve them with the stories that are
published as part of my magazine.
Legal and Ethical Issues

Copyright law is one of the most important things to consider when writing stories
for a magazine. While facts and ideas cannot be copyrighted, the words used to
describe these facts and ideas can, and the author of a copyrighted magazine does
not own the facts/ideas in the article. My magazine will abide by copyright law by
being extremely careful about the stories we publish, as the price to pay for a
publishing a piece of already copyrighted work is too much for a magazine
continuing to grow as mine will be. Luckily, the copyright law for magazines and
newspapers is different- while the copyright for all newspaper writings goes to the
employer, meaning that a newspaper reporter does not have individual protection
for any of their stories, a magazine copyright will protect all contributions made in
that issue of the magazine. This means that protection for the work in our issues
will be easy to cover and copyright law will be harder to break

Other issues surrounding the publication of magazine stories will have to be looked
into. Libel is the publishing of a story that does a certain amount of damage to a
person’s/group of people’s reputation; while damaging the subject of the articles
reputation is bad enough, it will also cause the author of the article time, anxiety
and money, and has the possibility of landing the author in court, thus ruining their
own reputation. My magazine will avoid all of these complications by being
extremely careful- checking and double-checking our facts, and being able to
confidently back them up.

Draft Article

For the article included in my magazine, I wanted it to encompass everything my

magazine stands for- looking back at the past generations of hip hop and
appreciating them. This means references to hip hop groups of the past- I have
made sure to reference NWA and Public Enemy as two prime examples of figures of
the Golden Age of Hip Hop. I have also made reference to the modern hip hop
scene and how it differentiates from the past, with SoundCloud rap as the focal
point. I have mentioned the rappers Lil Pump and the recently deceased
XXXTentacion as I feel like they are at the forefront of this scene; even though the
latter artist is dead he is still making waves with his music.

Pictures

The pictures used were taken in an attempt to replicate the recent song and, more
specifically, the accompanying music video by Childish Gambino; This Is America. It
offers such a unique perspective on the current state of politics, race issues, gun
violence and hip hop as a culture in America that I thought it would be a great focal
point to base my magazine around. The photos in the shoot, featuring Eimar with a
guitar in his hand, is reminiscent of certain shots in the music video, which in turn
were used to represent African culture, and perhaps how prevalent it is in America
right now. A reason for this might be due to the rise of rap music over the past few
years and how it currently dominates the music charts featuring artists from all
over the world, while in the past it was specifically an African American genre of
music.

Banners

My banners were kept as minimal as

possible for a few reasons- I felt as though too much information would clutter up
the page, making it unprofessional. I also didn’t really see the need to include much
more than the necessities of what needs to be on a magazine banner- the issue
number was present as well as the date the magazine was issued, simply as they
are magazine staples and are included on pretty much any mainstream magazine
you would find in the shops.

The colour of my banner was kept black for

both my front cover and my double page spread. This was done for a few reasons;
the background for both my images was left largely untouched in terms of colour,
leaving them both grey. The black banner didn’t clash with this and overall creates
a muted colour palette. As for the text, for the front cover I tried to match it as
closely as I could with the colour of the guitar and cigarette filter, as they are the
only two pieces of colour on the image. Matching the colours as closely as possible
helps add to the professional feel I am going for.

Similar Products

Diverse magazine takes a lot of inspiration from the other rap magazines that
dominate the very specific scene. While most of these examples are very
commercial in their approach, championing the modern artist and focusing on the
‘gossip’ side of hip hop news, talking about the private lives of the rappers featured
in the issues. The Source magazine is different- it has a much broader range of rap
documentation in terms of the era of the music, and tends to lean more towards
politics in terms of its news stories.

Fonts

I went with a variety of fonts for both my front cover and double page spread, but
kept it consistent through both so the magazine doesn’t become an eyesore. For
the fonts of all the straplines, headings etc, and the masthead, I wanted all the
fonts to be in a block-letter style, rather than cursive etc. This was done in an
attempt to emulate other rap magazines such as XXL and The Source; when looking
at their front covers, I noticed that the majority of the text on there,
most notably the mastheads and straplines, were always in block-
style text, probably due to the nature of the magazine and the
content it includes, as a more fancy style of font would not have
worked as well.

My double page spread features the same general

aesthetic- for the headlines I went for a bold blocky font, this time
choosing Impact for the headline and the pull quote. As for the rest
of the text I chose Minion Pro. Any font like it would do, I just needed
something simple for the actual text for the double page spread.

Masthead

I would like the name of the magazine to be something musically related yet
inclined more towards the rap genre- something involving a microphone as that is
an essential part of rap, especially the rap form of freestyling. Another name
possibility is ‘Diversity’- as rap has grown from being an exclusively black-
dominated genre of music to being something that everyone can be a part of, it is
important to document such an important change outright, and what better way to
do this than have it as the magazines name that will feature on every front cover.