blaze

I never would have written Black Will Shoot if I hadn’t ended up as editor in chief of Blaze. How did kid like me--nice manners, Yale graduate, zero street knowledge--end up running the hottest new rap magazine of its time? Well ...
Back in 1996, I was working for The Associated Press as assistant New York bureau chief when Vibe magazine offered me their managing editor job. Vibe knew me because I’d freelanced a few articles for them and other music mags. I fell in love with hip-hop when I became a DJ in college, and freelancing for The Source and Vibe let me scratch that itch.
Plus I wanted to be down with hip-hop, and writing was the only way for me to be a part of the culture that was changing the world.
A year later my Vibe bosses came to me and said, “We’re starting a new rap magazine. The name is Blaze.” And I took it from there. The premiere issue was the biggest magazine launch of 1998, and “the largest music and entertainment magazine launch in publishing history,” with 120 ad pages. I conceived the format, hired a complete staff, and thought up a slew of ways to set Blaze apart from the Source (which was op top back then) and XXL (which was just getting started). One of these bright ideas—having rappers respond in print to record reviews—is what got me into trouble with Wyclef.
So now I’m a name in the news. Next thing you know, I got more problems. And way more press. My surgically repaired face is prominently displayed in the Washington Post and the New York Times . I’m on MTV, I’m on Hot 97. I’m in the airport one day and this guy looks up from my picture on the front of USA Today’s Money section and says, “Hey, that’s you!”
Word, that’s me. The kid with the big ego.
Then one day I’m riding the subway and see a friend’s name on the front page of The New York Times. THE FRONT PAGE. Now, I never expected my homie Montoun to get acquitted in the killing of Gerald Levin’s son. But when he did, it just so happened we were about to drop a special issue of Blaze on the relationship between prison and rap. So of course I wrote about Montoun.
Bad move. The majority owner of Blaze, Bob Miller, came up through Time Warner. He knows Levin, and he ain’t about to let my editorial hurt his friend. But how can I, the great Jesse Washington, allow my words of wisdom to be censored? What about the separation of church and state? What about all that credibility I thought I had in the rap game? So when Miller understandably killed my editorial, I wrote another piece lambasting all my bosses, then signed an invoice paying Montoun $8 an hour for “intern work.”
Call it professional hari-kiri.
“Blaze is gonna change the rules of hip-hop journalism,” I had told The Washington Post. Nine years later, with Blaze long ago shut down, I think I’m the only one who was changed by that magazine.