YOU LOVED LAST YEAR’S SO MUCH, we decided to do it again. While we work as hard on Tabloid as we do on any other issue of VIBE, it’s an extra-fun issue to make. And this year it was filled with even more high spirits because we were producing it as Senator Barack Obama became President-Elect Barack Obama (see page 57).
So even though the Tabloid Issue functions as our year-end wrap up, we hope you’ll agree that it’s jam-packed with the new and exciting energy I believe is in store for our readership, and of course, for this country in the years to come. Plus, a few jokes.
Notice how we can bring you cutting-edge reporting about the state of our nation in one issue, and then approach our celebrity subjects with a sense of humor the next? It’s what we aim to do all year long—serve you, our readers, with the best and the most, from all the angles you care about.
Last year was crazy. We barely had enough pages to get in all the drama. From Lil Wayne to Kanye to Remy Ma. And don’t forget Jay-Z and Beyoncé, Chris and Rihanna, and the list goes on.
Then there’s “Abracadabra: The 80 Best Songs of ’08” (page 46)—an incredible, ranked roundup of what turns out to have been an amazingly kaleidoscopic year in music. “Style A to Z” (page 80) returns with zest and attitude. The crossword puzzle “Say Word?” (page 40) is back. There’s all kinds of stuff in this issue, including “The Essence” (page 54), a page dedicated to the musicians who died this year, memorialized with an appreciation of their best album ever.
SPEAKING OF THE “ESSENCE”—of soul—I’m heavy-hearted. As if Jennifer Hudson’s tragic loss wasn’t bad enough (see page 70), I’m saddened to mention the death by apparent suicide of Shakir Stewart. He was a complicated sweetheart of a man. A true fan of fine music, he entertained with an exasperatingly upbeat personality, lived with natural and contagious curiosity and the kind of casual enthusiasm about daily life that makes his death even more challenging to comprehend.
The fact that he was executive vice president of the legendary Def Jam Recordings is important, because of the influence Shakir had in this crazy world we work in. He signed Young Jeezy to his first label deal and Beyoncé Knowles to her first solo publishing contract. But Shakir’s title is beside the point of his life. He was a good spirit. A father. A friend to many. A world traveler.
Being a bit selfish perhaps, the hardest part about it for me—aside from just being angry about the whole damn thing— is that Shakir was from Oakland, Calif. People get tired of me talking about Oakland because I go on and on—with pride. I go on so much that I wrote a novel, More Like Wrestling (Three Rivers, 2004), about creative, ambitious young men and women from Oakland and the desire so many of us have to leave The ’Town and underdog cities like it, even as we mourn that decision.
I, along with so many others, mourn Shakir’s decision. But I know too much about some Oakland boys to doubt his pain. May he rest in the kind of blissful peace we cannot imagine. No more wrestling, Shakir.
As ever,
Danyel Smith
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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