Mission Statement

‘Open Mic’ is a new and exciting magazine for rap fans to read about the latest info on their favourite rappers, concerts, new albums and other information related to the world of rap. The name ‘Open Mic’ is referring to rap battles. An open mic event is were, in this case, a rap artist can go on stage and perform in front of a crowd and is open to anyone. This is usually done underground and most of the rap artists that are popular these days started off doing rap battles at open mic events, such as Eminem. This gives the artists a place to rap in front of a crowd because otherwise they wouldn’t have a crowd to perform in front of. Also at open mic events they have rap battles where different rap artists can lyrically fight each other to gain respect. I think this will relate to all rap fans because they will want to connect with the magazine so having a name like ‘Open Mic’ will help them do this.

The magazine will cost £2.50 as it’s a fairly reasonable price and it will be found in large newsagents and supermarkets, but will also be found in big music stores such as HMV. The readership will also have the choice to subscribe to the magazine and get it monthly by going to this website: www.OpenMic.co.uk. The magazine will also feature competitions and quizzes on different rap artists with prizes such as meeting their favourite artists. This will allow my target audience to become more connected with the magazine.

The topics featured in this magazine will be on things such as newest albums, advice from rap artists on how to make it big and different interviews with big rap icons. This magazine promises to give a vibrant, urban and youthful look and feel for my target audience so they can relate to them, catch their eye and make other people realise that it is a Rap music magazine. I will try and make my magazine inspirational and entertaining for all fans of rap and have new and updated copies monthly.

The values of this magazine is to help inspire young talented rap artists make it big, this magazine will feature both famous and non-famous rappers so that it can still appeal to casual rap fans but can still connect to the hard-core fans in finding out who the next big rap star is. This magazine will help young unnoticed rap artists get noticed and recognised by featuring them on the front cover of the magazine and having an article dedicated to them to help raise their profile to the larger rap audience. Also the style of this magazine will be fun, urban and youthful because of the target audience but still having both formal and informal language allowing a mix of language for the reader.

The magazine will mainly feature male artists as I believe the rap music genre is mainly males and the target audience is also males with some females. It will also feature girls on the magazine who are represented as sexualised females meeting the codes and conventions of the genre so that it will appeal to my target audience.

The Blumler and Katz theory is the understanding of what the audience does for the media not what the media does for the audience. This means that it is down to the audience if the

magazine will sell, which is obvious, and the theory explains that the audience is in charge of what goes into the media. This all means that the content in rap magazines is the Medias way of getting to that target audience and I hope that I can achieve the same success as XXL and Vibe. They cover all of the codes and conventions a rap magazine needs in order for it to sell and please the audience. The users and gratifications theory follows a simple model, the audience takes an active role in sharing music of rap with friends and so they will do the same thing with sharing rap magazines with friends by telling them about a certain article, which may or may not encourage their friends to pick up that particular edition and maybe further editions.

I would like to include most of the main hip hop artists to date in my magazine, mainly male artists such as Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Kanye West, Dr Dre, Jay Z etc. I won’t be having an image of them on my front cover however, this is because I am going to have a new artist that not many people know about and that the rap fans need to know who he is, that he is a new and upcoming artist with a bright future. I hope to intrigue the target audience with this by having the artists face covered up with a hood and bandana. But if this fails, all will be well, I will have sell lines that show off the creative and exclusive articles that my magazine has in store with the biggest names in hip hop.