Twenty five years ago it’s become clear that we created something much more important. When the legendary Quincy Jones established VIBE magazine, his stated goal was to found “a Rolling Stone for the hip-hop generation,” but the staff-which I joined at the magazine’s launch, in 1993-aspired to create something closer to Vanity Fair. IT WAS WRITTEN: VIBE MAGAZINE, 2PAC & BIGGIE Her byline has appeared in L’Uomo Vogue, Whitewall, The Undefeated, Dazed Digital, Jocks and Nerds, and L’Oeil de la Photographie.2Pac's Siblings Distrust Cop's Motives For Investigating Keefe D Miss Rosen is a journalist covering art, photography, culture, and books. * Vibe was resurrected in 2012, and continues to publish online. “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince” (August 1994) ![]() His pictorials had titles like “Cracked Actor,” “The Serpents Egg,” Five Women,” “She Stands Brightly,” and “Game Changer”-which may entirely surprise you when you peruse his website.Ĭrave celebrates the legacy of George Pitts, one unlike anything or anyone else, before or since. Pitts understood the photograph because he was an artist himself, publishing his work in a host of books, magazines, and books. ![]() That was George Pitts and his inimitable ability to assemble a team, from top to bottom, working to translate the three-dimensional world onto glossy pages. Dre, Tupac and Suge Knight (February 1996) Paging through old issues is like looking at family albums and yearbooks, all the “They were so young!” and “I wonder what happened to…” and “Did we really wear that?” Vibe set the highwater mark, defining the look of the times rather than following trends. Throughout his tribute, he takes us back to the days when Vibe not only covered culture, but it was culture itself. Vibe was a magazine that one was as likely to find in a dentist’s office as in the stunning New York abode of a figure like Madonna,” Pitts remembered. No doubt there are reader bases that I’m forgetting, but this random listing only confirms for me, the broad appeal that Vibe was able to sustain for 16 years. “Working at Vibe changed my own life for the better, and enabled editors including myself to engage in an international discourse with a wide, disparate range of readers: the core fan base of Hip-Hop generation readers, popular music lovers, style and culture mavens, hipsters of all stripes, photography connoisseurs, serious musicologists, black culture militants, and scholars of all kinds. He assumed the mantle and penned a beautiful tribute for SPD. By that time, Pitts was the Director of Photographic Practices at Parsons The New School, in New York. ![]() Then, two days later, Michael Jackson died. People like to talk about 2016 being a rough year, but flash back to one devastating week in 2009 when word came that Vibe magazine had folded*. Pitts seamlessly mixed talents like Andrew Dosunmu, Hype Williams, Jonathan Mannion, Ben Watts, and Eric Johnson with Juergen Teller, Bruce Weber, David LaChapelle, Mary Ellen Mark, and Ellen von Unwerth. The list is as astounding as the artwork itself. While he manned the helm, Pitts ushered in a new era of talent, giving young artists, illustrators, and fashion stylists their big break. What made Vibe singular was the way it avoided being a mere music magazine it showed music as part of a larger culture and history, one that was as much a look as it was a sound. Method Man, LL Cool J, Busta Rhymes, Master P, Lil Kim, Missy Elliot, Foxy Brown and Lauryn Hill (February 1998)
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