BILLY X. SUNDAY says its not who you think…
I’m poring over the magazine rack at the supermarket when I come across this chunky magazine that looks like one of those hip fashion rags. Its obviously for cool motherfuckers like myself because the cover photo has a snowboarder jacket featured along with a pair of my favorite sneakers, the Nike Dunks. I pick the magazine up and the shit is brawlic. Like you know those mags that should be hardbound because they are so heavy? These dudes are using some good ass paper too.
I love magazines that are printed in such a hardbody fashion that they will last a few years of me flipping through the pages. On some coffee table shit where the magazine can be used as the table. These are the joints that are built like reference books so you can consult them for the the next several months instead of finding out what the flavor of the week. Flavor of the week is just the flavor of the weak. Do you homos dig my homonyms? Anyhoo…
So the mag was called Antenna and the shit was filled with streetwear ads that looked like eye candy for those of us fuxing with shit like Stussy, or G-Shock or Motorola. The features were about the next season’s shoes, t-shirts and gadgets and the twenty-somethings, thirty-somethings that design all of this slick shit. I was impressed with the content as much as I was attracted to the ads. To tell you the truth they all seemed to meld into one linear path and I didn’t even mind. You know how the ads can sometimes appear forced into a magazine? Not in this shit. Everything was all together like gumbo.
So now I had to go a little deeper to find out who was putting this dope shit out. When a nigga like me goes through a publication that is so visually exciting the next thing I am thinking is that I want to work for whoever is publishing this joint because they obviously know what the fuck is really good. Holy shit! Haha. Antenna mag is published by the people at Harris. The same folks putting out a shitload of gun fanatic magazines and even XXL. Where the hell do they keep all the cool motherfuckers doing this Antenna mag shit? No one in the XXL offices is this fucking cool. Well there is Daytwon, and there is Carl, and there is… Nah, that’s it.
These clowns doing the Antenna mag are more Hip-Hop than the people doing XXL, which in all fairness focuses primarily of the music facet of Hip-Hop which is rap while eschewing the other elements of Hip-Hop. Damn, I want to work for the Antenna people. They aren’t looking at what’s now. They are fucking with what’s next. Streetwear culture has surpassed Hip-Hop culture in content and marketability. It’s what Hip-Hop used to be before the music industry commodified rap music. Streetwear culture is active and inclusive, while Hip-Hop culture now looks like Jay-Z standing on stage. Stiff and immobile.
I fux with streetwear culture because I can listen to my rock music and my rap and whatever the else I fucking like to hear. My friends can be of all different races and most of them are half white and half ______________ (insert ethnicity/race of choice). This is the future of America party people. Antenna will be our magazine too. I’m just mad this shit only drops quarterly.
