XXL magazine launches

Why it matters

XXL launched in August 1997, edited out of Brooklyn, published by Harris Publications. The pitch was: another monthly hip-hop magazine, in the same lane as The Source and Vibe, but designed for a slightly broader newsstand reach and willing to take more aggressive editorial positions. XXL spent its first decade in the shadow of The Source. By the late 2000s, after The Source had collapsed under the Benzino editorial-control disaster, XXL became the dominant glossy hip-hop publication in the United States. The Freshman Class issue, launched in 2007, is the most consequential ongoing franchise in rap journalism: each year XXL picks ten emerging MCs for the cover, and the cover slots have become a kind of informal industry credential. (Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, Big K.R.I.T., Wiz Khalifa, Mac Miller, Future, A$AP Rocky, Travis Scott, Chance the Rapper, Megan Thee Stallion have all been Freshmen.) You should look at the historical Freshman covers to see how the genre's commercial bench has rotated over twenty years. The covers do the work no other rap publication has matched.