Catch a VIBE: For Millions of Readers, Urban Mag Was a 'Rolling Stone'

I don't remember what year it was, maybe 1994, '95, but I recall that this fairly new magazine, VIBE, was featuring an up-and-coming songstress from Yonkers, N.Y., on its cover. Mary J. Blige was a little bit R&B, a little bit hip hop, and all soul. She peered out from the cover that month in a floppy red apple jack hat and a red oversize hoodie. Maybe she even had shades on, that trademark scar flashing back to her hardscrabble roots.

What's the 411? had been certified classic, but My Life, which had just dropped, was truly groundbreaking. It was that issue of VIBE that cemented for me the power not only of music, but of music journalism. We now had our very own Rolling Stone.

I loved that issue (couldn't track it down though; Feb. 2008 pictured, here). It was a demonstration of how a thing could capture all of what you were feeling at a certain moment.

Blige, at the time, was considered a really difficult interview. I remember being in school reading about spats she had with writers, getting drunk with them. But she opened up to VIBE about her personal demons, including addictions to heroin, and her man, K-Ci of '90s R&B band Jodeci.

I read stories like this with relish, but also the reviews, clever sidebars, and gorgeous fashion spreads in the magazine's large-size format (which I often tore and saved).

There would be more iconic covers to come in the next decade and a half: Biggie and Faith coupled up in the back seat; 'Pac and the Death Row clan assuming menacing postures before a dark background; years later, a newly solo Beyonce, drenched, asserting her divadom.

VIBE was where you connected to your musical heroes, particularly at a time before the mediatakeouts made knowing what they were up to as simple as ordering in, and the nahrights made waiting a month for anything seem quaint. Still, even online, the publication proved there was something to be said for having a legacy to stand on.

Quincy Jones now says he wants to buy back the brand he founded and helped build before it succumbed to market forces, and reinvent it online. I had the opportunity to work for a time with the stellar staff at the mag; hope Jones makes good on that.