Jay-Z XXL Analysis #1

Media Studies Music Magazines Analysis of Front Cover

XXL”JAY-Z” cover.

Organizations: XXL is own by Harris Publication Inc. an American magazine publisher located in New York city, it has publish over 75 titles e.g. Juicy, King, Dog, News, 0-60, and many more. They sell an estimate of 209,000 per issue.

It’s known for rating from (S-XXL). Their target audience are Rap and Hip Hop fans ranging from 18 to 30 years of age. Their main competitors are Source and Vibe. Their funds are through advertisements and deals with famous artists. (In this case “JAY-Z”)

XXL is a monthly publish magazine contain music reviews gigs and rap scene. When Vibe shutdown in 2009 XXL became the bestselling Hip Hop magazine in UK. However Vibe soon began republishing their magazine but it was too late for Vibe to be the main rival for XXL due to a cessation in publishing.

Front Cover

Masthead: The master head of XXL is in white block letters with red background surrounding the heading, and was overlap by JAY-Z due to less important and not too attract more attention than JAY-Z, as well as they have enough confident to be sure that people who look or buy would know their Title as its one of the most famous Hip Hop magazine.

Judging front size it telling the consumers that they are big, invincible, powerful etc… this point also would proof that JAY-Z who is bigger and overlapping the heading to be more powerful. It’s one of the two areas in the front cover that contain red due to its level of importance. It can also means that its less important than JAY-Z since the red is surrounding the Title XXL not the color of the word its self despite JAY-Z name is in Red and same itself, as the font are likely to be the same size that means that they are at the same level is importance to a certain level which is later define by the color red.    

Main image: The main image is JAY-Z himself, standing in the middle of the front cover surrounded by towers one of them is identified as the empire state building (the tallest one) and Chrysler building (the second tallest one). With this information it helps us to identify the city that he is in the New York City. The color tone is monochromatic, the reason is to bring out the contras between black and white and secondly his music video ‘Empire state of mind’ the most part of this music video the color tone is monochromatic which links to the color tone they have chosen for this cover.

Jay-Z himself is dress in black firstly is to embrace his heritage and also to make him stand out in a white city around him. From his clothing, he is currently wearing 3 layers of clothes which is all black. His second layer of clothing is a waistcoat which make him look more formal, rich, and cool. He also wear the ‘Jesus piece’ is a spiritual or religious piece of jewelry that is popular in the Hip-Hop community and mirror the face of Jesus. Also many Hip-Hop artists and celebrities, have adopted the Jesus piece as a common fashion accessory and have it decorated with many precious gems. This also an evidence that proofs that he is one famous Hip Hop singer. But in this case it’s black. His hands are holding his belt and opening a part of his coat to show that he doesn’t have any weapons to hide, despite he is wearing a black sunglasses which show that he doesn’t want us to know that he is thinking or looking at to look cool and powerful which is embraced even more with his black clothes. Jay-Z himself is bigger and taller than all the towers in the front cover despite it looks like the empire state tower is about the same height as him means he still has rivalry going on in New York and there is still two more tower in New Your that is taller than him which is the ‘One World Trade Center’ and ‘432 Park Avenue’ which could say that he hasn’t completely control the Hip Hop game yet. Which gives the reason there is a question mark in one of the anchorage text that says “IS JAY-Z BIGGER THAN HIP HOP?” Also the reason that Jay-Z is not standing in front of all the towers is to make the readers know that he is big he owns them and use them as pawn to protect the king which is probably the reason he stands behind them, to makes that he is surrounded by knights etc…

The buildings around him looks like model and has few textures to it also shows that the thing they want the reader to focus on is Jay-Z, and probably the reason the editor limit the variety of the colors on the front cover.

Layout: All the text are around which means they use 3 column so Jay-Z would be in the middle. The text on the left are there to promote Jay-Z himself and his college. On the right which is the smallest text on the front cover, is add-ons to give you a brief information about other less important artist further in the magazine. The big text on the bottom left is the text that is mention earlier, that the text is not saying that Jay-Z is bigger than Hip Hop but rather to ask the reader is Jay-Z the biggest in Hip Hop, but for him to be the biggest it means that he has to completely monopolize the whole Hip Hop industries. In this case New York is like the battlefield for the Hip Hop industries. So the fact that he is on the similar height of the Empire State Tower is to say he is yet to become bigger than Hip Hop.

The reason Jay-Z is one of the biggest text and highlighted in red is also to show his power, level of importance in the magazine.    

Layering: The other reason for Jay-Z is in the middle of the New York (a lot of white people live) wearing black and being black himself is also to give confidence to black people that look down on them self because their black and to make black people to know that have a chance to stand in a higher place even if they are black, basically to make him look like a hero to black people and when they respect him and see him as their idol will likely means that they will follow him buy his album which you can say both sides earn even thou Jay-Z earns more since he has ratings and money from these people and these group of people get confidence from him.(B&K escapism) Not a particular win win situation but good for his marketing to help him reach the title of “BIGGER THAN HIP HOP”.

Font: The main font for this cover is Arial font, due to its simplicity and easy to read and the texts on the left are caps Arial to show that is more important than the text which is Arial on the left which is less important.

Sell Lines: These relate to Blumler and Katz as they contain the info of what’s inside the magazine and they could socially interact with friends and family.

Language: All of the words here are easy to understand and fairly straight forward to make it easy to understand and catchy so people would want to buy them.