A good portion of Boss Lady’s VIBE magazines from over the years back home in Sydney, Australia (old photo of my gorgeous mum on the right)

If you’re a true fan of hip-hop culture you’re currently not only mourning the loss of Michael Jackson, but also of VIBE magazine.

VIBE was founded in 1992 by Quincy Jones as an uncompromising voice for hip-hop and R&B as the music escalated in mainstream popularity. It was announced yesterday (June 30) that the magazine and its website will cease publishing till further notice.

Danyel Smith, the Chief Content Officer of VIBE Media Group and Editor-in-Chief of VIBE, issued this statement yesterday:

On behalf of the VIBE CONTENT staff (the best in this business), it is with great sadness, and with heads held high, that we leave the building today. We were assigning and editing a Michael Jackson tribute issue when we got the news. It’s a tragic week in overall, but as the doors of VIBE Media Group close, on the eve of the magazine’s sixteenth anniversary, it’s a sad day for music, for hip hop in particular, and for the millions of readers and users who have loved and who continue to love the VIBE brand. We thank you, we have served you with joy, pride and excellence, and we will miss you.

Like so many of my peers, VIBE magazine inspired me to be a music journalist. While I was a diehard fan of The Source magazine also, it was VIBE that I felt most connected to. No matter how exclusive hip-hop felt at times (especially in earlier years) every new issue of VIBE was an invitation to the party.

I would literally run to my local newsstand in anticipation of new issues, happy to part with the $11.00 international cover price. Each new cover informed me of who or what was considered the hottest thing in the US at the time, and I inhaled pages and pages of amazing words by writers like dream hampton, Kevin Powell, Emil Wilbekin, Lola Ogunnaike, Danyel Smith, Touré and countless others about every facet of the culture. VIBE always gave its readers a special feeling that no matter where you were in the world, you were considered a valued part of a global urban culture.

This is an emotional tribute because as I reflect on the legacy of the magazine, I realize just how integral a role VIBE played in the person I am today. I took my cues as a writer from its stable of scribes and allowed my fashion sense to be heavily influenced by the amazing work of its style mavens. I used the magazine as a guide when I created my own magazine, Urban Hitz (Australia and New Zealand’s first major successful hip-hop and R&B publication).

As with everything, all that glitters isn’t gold though. I can’t count the emails and pitches I sent to VIBE staff over the years that went ignored, denying me of my dream to one day contribute to the magazine. To this day I reply to every email I personally receive, no matter how small the subject – I know how it feels to not be taken seriously when you’re nothing but serious, and it stings.

Boss Lady’s favorite artist Tupac Shakur on her favorite VIBE cover

I was a young woman from a minority background growing up in Australia, a country that only knew rock and pop music and to this day refuses to recognize anything else. For myself and my peers, magazines like VIBE were a real taste of the awe-inspiring culture being created in the US that often seemed out of reach.

VIBE will be sorely missed, and in its absence people like myself need to step up to the plate and continue to inspire the next generation of writers with impartial, well-researched and passionate work about this culture we all know and love so much.

To everyone who was ever involved in making VIBE the classic publication it was – thanks for the memories.

Main image credit: Julie Kapsalides

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