EDITOR’S LETTER

THOUGH EMINEM AND 50 CENT GOT DEEP WITH US ABOUT RESPECT AND SUPPORT BETWEEN BROTHERS, THE THING ABOUT HIP HOP IS THAT IT’S SO RARELY ABOUT LOVE. IT’S ABOUT DREAMS OF MONEY, POWER, AND RESPECT.

I don’t know if I’ve always had an freaky people. It’s negotiating, and support between brothers, the since gangsters were running the affinity for people who make sometimes, with folk you wouldn’t thing about hip hop is that it’s so band-booking business in the days moves, or if, after more than twen- want in your home. It’s making things rarely about love. It’s about dreams of Count Basie and Lawrence Welk. ty-five years of living hip hop happen when you think you can’t. It’s of money, power, and respect. Oh, Even as I write this, we hear that the (“Rapper’s Delight” came out when conquering fears, real and imagined, how we want those things. And the rapper Fabolous was shot in the

I was 14), I’ve become enamored of on the daily. It’s why, though I’m not way the world is now, it seems like thigh and then arrested in the early those who get their hustle on. In my “powder burned” (like Young Jeezy we must have it. Gotta make moves, morning hours of October 17; we’d semi-cynical moments—which and the Clipse) or the veteran of gotta be a hustler. just been discussing, around the occur most every workday—I truly bullet wounds (like 50 Cent), I can That’s why I liked Cassidy so VIBE offices, how cool Fab’s new believe life is a hustle. It’s hard. relate. We act as if we’re so far away much from the start: The swagger. fashion line is. But now any Fab Whether you’re a student trying to from “the hustler” mentality and the The cuteness. The hustler mentality. profile will have to begin with some get as much money as possible culture it breeds, but we’re not. It’s The slightly old-school B-boy version of “Who Shot Ya.” from the financial aid office, a everywhere. It’s heartbreakingly stance. At press time Barry “Cas- Still, I must get my hustle on. I’m novelist trying to get the right emotional; it goes to the core of sidy” Reese is in the hospital, beginning to wonder, though, if we’re bookstores to book you for the right primal desires to escape pain, to feel recovering from a car accident. all swaggering a bit too hard. readings, a journalist trying to get secure, and to be, in reality or in our He’d served time earlier this year for subjects to open up and say things own minds, number one. involuntary manslaughter. Based on readers will find fascinating, or an The people on our cover this our reporting, that killing may have editor-in-chief sweating blood to month know exactly what it takes to been precipitated by a kind of get the hottest and most right be number one. Though Eminem strong-arming not unique to hip Danyel Smith covers possible; it’s a hustle. and 50 Cent (“Family Matters,” page hop—it’s the sort of hustle that’s Editor-in-Chief

It’s interaction with fine and 126) got deep with us about respect been going on in the music industry