Stress

“New York’s Illest Magazine”

1995-2000 | NYC

Pitch:
Framing hip-hop as defiant counter-culture, this Rotten Apple-centric mag offered a healthy dose of graffiti coverage as well as stories about political activism and prison life.

Notable For:
The first-ever magazine covers for Jay-Z (Issue 3/Summer ’96) and Eminem (Issue 18/1999)—Spin liked Em’s A Clockwork Orange treatment so much they bit the concept wholesale. Also, the Rawkus special (Issue 12/March/April ’98), which came packaged with vinyl.

Death Knell:
The glitz and glamour of the shiny-suit era kinda killed off the independent spirit.

Legacy:
Former E-I-C (and graf legend) KET went on to join the launch team behind this little publication called Complex. True to Stress’s activism roots, other key staff members went on to more serious non-music-journalism endeavors (e.g. former Senior Editor Jee Kim now works at the grantmaking Surdna Foundation).

Rating: We respect its earnest ambition to cover political issues, but Newsweek it wasn’t.

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