Rap Pages Magazine

Rap Pages was one of the first magazines to cover Rap and Hip-hop. Based in the gilded LFP headquarters in sunny Beverly Hills, it was in a pitched battle for survival against NYC based Source Magazine. I joined the team to help them reinvent the overall look as well as help streamline the workflow. When I came onboard the magazine still looked like a low budget fanzine and we wanted to create something that would appeal not only to the readers, but to a new level of advertisers as well. The editors were some of the best informed in the business, but as with many things LA were very chilled in their approach. The laid back attitude combined with the tiniest of budgets made it very difficult to compete but eventually we found a way to get the most bang for our buck. This was the second time I had the good fortune to work with Nancy Leopardi and she was able to use her considerable Rolodex to bring some great photographers to the project. Musicians are often reluctant participants, and this genre is particularly notorious for image control. Nancy however was able to find photographers that could cajole these artists out of their comfort zone somewhat and we got a lot of great images to accompany the exhaustive edit. One of my best moment at Rap Pages was when during a routine focus group we showed the participants the first issue of my redesign. As the participants were leaving, due to the fact that we had a few issues the interviewer asked for them back. One participant responded, "No way this s*** is tight!"