History of Rap Music
Rap music is now considered a sub-genre of the Hip-Hop music style. Rapping first really picked up in the early 70's. it was apparently origionated by african americans in more rural streets. It gradually become more respected by people and lead to the birth of the DJ's we know now.
As rap became more popular it became more about entertaining crowds as opposed to earning money from the music produced. This lead to subcultures of rap becoming very popular during the 90's. Gangster rap became more popular than a lot of other mainstream types of music.
For my main task I have decided to make a rap music magazine. This magazine will feature a front cover, contents page and a double page spread. Because I have chosen to design a rap magazine; I decided to research other rap magazines.
This is a typical front cover for a rap magazine. The key features are people usually wearing a hat of some sort, and a lot of 'bling' things. This is one sign of a common stereotypical rapper. The primary target audience for this genre of music is generally teens or adults. A lot of people in their early teens listen to rap music, and some people older than that continue to listen to rap. There are many people over the world that listen to rap music, but like I said the main target audience is Teenagers.
This is another stereotypical rap magazine which features a man wearing a hat and a lot of jewelery. This is a bit different because the man features is not wearing a lot of clothes, which usually in rap magazines they do. The colour scheme for the whole front cover is a mixture of black and yellow, with a little bit of white. This is a fairly interesting scheme which adds charactor to the whole page.
The font on the front cover is a mixture of both yellow and white. This is obviously done to stand out against the black background. While this may be true, it does not stand out in a way which would make it look unprofessional. In fact the cover looks very professionally done and all the colours blend together well to give it a good first impression.
The titles featured on the front are all to do with rap which is clear from the first glance. This is because they contain the names of common and well known rappers like Drake and Chris Brown. Using names of well established rappers will help appeal to people buying the magazine.
This is different than the two other covers because it features a very close up shot of little waynes face. This is done because he is easily recognisable as a rapper and is already well established in the rap genre. This indicates that the magazine relys on the reader knowing quite a bit about the genre they are reading already.
The magazines colour style is also a deep red and black. This works well because the red background blends in well with the clothes little wayne is wearing. The font is also white surrounded by red. This works particularly well because the picture contains a lot of white, but not so much that it would clash.
The front cover contains a lot of common stories that would be connected to the rap music genre. These stories are things like other rap artists and their life stories. And songs that are being released are also usually included.
This is an uncoventional front cover but it still works well as an example of a rap magazine. It is different than most because it does not feature a close up shot of a rapper dressed in the stereotypical gear. Instead it features a fairly close up shot of Dr.Dre playing chess. This is different because usually the rapper is doing something related to the genre of music they feature in, even if its subtle like the grabbing of a chain.
The colour scheme for the magazine is clearly a black and white mix, but is done in a glossy way to make it look modern. The black background and clothes of the wrapper match well with the chessboard which is also black and white. The whole scheme is simple but works very well at conveying the genre of rap.
The magazine titles are not the same as the other magazines. Rather than explaining what stories the magazine will contain it just has a list of well known rappers. This would only work for a very well established magazine and would not really help draw in new customers. This is because people generally want to know what to expect of a magazine before they buy it. Saying this, the magazine does indicate that there will be an exclusive interview with Dr.Dre
Planning
Next I had to move onto the planning. Just like in the preliminairy I had to start by deciding on what title I should use. I came up with a few ideas which were:
- Rap Weekly
- Rapstars
- Rap time
This is my basic outline for my front cover. I have decided to lay it out with the large picture on the left, while the advertisement and story previews were on the right. This is only a basic plan and I haven't decided which colour theme or picture I will use yet.
This is the scheme I decided to go with was a black, white and yellow. This is because I thought the other magazines that did this looked professional and quite interesting. It also allows me to take a picture of someone in dark clothing which usually seems to look more professional anyway. A picture like this will also allow for jewellery which is usually associated with rap to be highlighted.
Pictures:
This is the picture I decided to use on my front cover. I felt it was more appropriate for many reasons compared to the other one. This picture features many aspects of the rap genre. This person is wearing the ideal clothes associated with rap. This can be seen by the tank top worn, and the dark coloured trousers. I blacked out the background of this picture so that it would fit nicely on my final front cover.
I tried using the first image on my front cover and as you can see it did not work very well. I found that the picture did not work very well with the colour scheme I chose and did not really fit across the page like I expected. For these reasons I thought it would be much more appropriate for me to use the other image I have uploaded. I felt this would help it look more professional
