First they came for Vibe magazine, and I didn’t give a shit

All of a sudden, the great magazine die-off of '09 is hitting a bit closer to home than I'd like.

It was one thing when it was just Vibe magazine. I've been waiting for them to go out of business for a good decade now. They took $20 from me at a time when I needed it almost as much as I do now. At the time, I didn't have a dollar to my name - I had to save up just to pay my father back when he forced me to cop a two year subscription to Vibe. But at least I was still living at home.

I started to get concerned when Blender went out of business, just because I know they always did the wrong thing, and that's the kind of behavior that's supposed to be rewarded in our society. URB magazine once made the mistake of putting Aesop Rock on its cover, so of course it's gonna go out of business. But Blender specialized in pictures of female pop singers in their underwear. And Blender's content was just a buncha asinine lists. It was the Complex magazine website before there was a such thing as the Complex magazine website.

If a magazine like Blender could go out of business, what's there to say that XXL couldn't go out of business? in which case I might have to move back in with my parents for the first time since the late '90s, contrary to popular belief. As Tracy Morgan would say, it's a public misconception that I really do live in my mom's basement. If I did, I probably wouldn't be nearly as angry as I am. My mom's basement is nicer than most people's houses.

But I figured I was probably still relatively safe. I'm gonna tread lightly here, lest this post get swallowed by this site's notorious software glitch and/or conflicker, but suffice it to say that I'm aware that XXL has taken certain measures to cut down on costs. They've got that $200 or whatever it was they were paying me to write my print column, plus whatever they got paid to make that Charles Hamilton video.

Then I read yesterday that King magazine is going out of business. Ruh roh. Not only did King specialize in pictures of women with huge asses, which should have been a license to print money (it's not like guys in prison can access Xzibit's Dailymotion account), but King was owned by the same TIs that own XXL.

It just to go show how quickly things can change in the magazine business these days. As recently as the day before yesterday, King was interviewing Joe Budden about the fact that his girlfriend Taheezo was gonna be on the cover of next month's issue, and now they're not even gonna bother printing next month's issue. Or are they?

And it's got me thinking: What am I gonna do, if I don't end up blogging here for the rest of my life, as I was planning to? If you notice, there don't tend to be second acts in hip-hop journalism. Or at least not very good ones. You either come up with a scheme to funnel money from Interscope Records into your blog, or you write a book about which rappers you've blown. And I'm not about to blow any rappers.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is, if any TIs are interested in becoming part owner of ByronCrawford.com: The Mindset of a Champion, holler at your boy. I might end up needing that money.