Reasons To Hate Waxpoetics Magazine

Actually… I really love Waxpoetics and it’s one of the few magazines that I still find time to read nowadays. I’ve been known to harass the booksellers at Borders, rush home franticly to read the articles and drool over pictures of rare records as if they were pinups of pretty women. In the record collecting world Waxpoetics is the equivalent of Sports Illustrated to a collector of Hip Hop/Rap, samples, breaks, drum loops and influencing genres. Reading an new issue is akin to opening the society page to find out who is considered elite, who was tapped to show off their collections, and what the fashionable records are for the next month. I can never put the magazine down and treat every issue with kid gloves trying my hardest not to get fingerprint marks on the covers. In other words I am an addict. It’s almost like I lose my mind once the new issue comes out. Just looking at the pictures is addictive… It’s worse than crack rock!

There are a few things that I really can’t stand about the magazine and of course most of them are tied to whatever behavioral issues I have developed as a result of the writing. I hold Waxpoetics solely responsible for the week I spent listening to Steely Dan’s entire discography and the funny looks that I received when talking to friends about how the group refused to performed live. The week after that I moved onto Funkadelic, researching the group’s history and walking around throwing up the funk sign at my place of employment. I also blame them for the Gabo Szabo record hunt I went on the summer before last, my inability to stop talking about how amazing Joe Zawinal and Weather Report were back in the day, and my ever growing collection of J Dilla (Jay Dee) unreleased beat tapes.

I love you Wax Poetics… Thanks for feeding my obsessions.

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