With Mass Appeal shuttered and Vibe rumored to be near collapse, it's probably safe to assume the other New York-based hip hop magazines – The Source, XXL, etc. – are currently shaking in their Timberlands, waiting for the axe to drop. If the horrifying ruination sweeping media offices throughout Manhattan does indeed lay waste to all the rap magazines, which publication in this city, the birthplace of hip hop, should carry the torch?

New York Times
Leave it up to the yoga-going softies at the Grey Lady to make the world's most feared music genre (save for black metal) into a feel-good inclusion-fest. Liberal dinosaur that it is, the New York Times' hip hop coverage is very often about bridging cultures, using the music as a passport to slip into different societies, not as a means to get the party going. "Now, Hip Hop, Too, Is Made in China"; "Hip Hop's Crossover to the Adult Aisle"; "India's New Partnership: Bollywood and Hip Hop"; "Child's Garden of Hip Hop (for Mom to Love, Too)." This is the rap game through Times-colored glasses. Not to sound all disgusted with culture-blending, but this isn't the kind of reporting one needs when trying to get to the bottom of a botched carjacking in which Cam'Ron gets shot in the arms in his blue Lamborghini at Howard homecoming. And god knows how much four-letter word editing they'd do on a big interview with, say, Ghostface. Like crying in baseball, there's no politeness in rap.

New York Post
If you search the Post archives for stories about rap, don't make the mistake we did and expect to find a bunch of standard Newscorp racism. The pleasant surprises end there, though. Because while the Post's hip hop coverage isn't as terrible as one might expect, it's still abysmal. For reasons we can't understand, SO MUCH FAWNING FOR T-PAIN! Here's a sampling of quotes from three Post pieces about the tophatted rapper, two of which were published within two days of each other:

• "The time has come to pay the hip-hop piper."

• "When Lil Wayne and T-Pain share a rap, the two hip-hop stars become different sides of the same coin; and it was that Lil/Pain currency that bought the biggest pleasure at the Nassau Coliseum Friday."

• "T-Pain who soloed in a supporting slot, was so off-the-hook bizarre you couldn't help but enjoy the surreal circus atmosphere he created…"

• "Hip-hop's hookmaster general T-Pain has found inspiration under the big top for his third record…"

Two out of three of the articles also use the word "funk" in them, which we hate because it's how moms describe rap.

The New Yorker
Sasha Frere-Jones, the New Yorker's pop music scribe, is to rap writing what Wu-Tang is to rap music, hyphenated, cerebral (sometimes too much so) and very often good. Counterintuitive as it sounds, a magazine so pretentious that it's dishonorable to read it while getting a shoe shine is actually quite a reliable source for hip hop coverage. Granted, next to the price, Frere-Jones' Devin the Dude blurb was probably the most ignored bit of text in New Yorker history, but it's nice to know it's there, like a blinking smoke alarm. We also appreciate that the New Yorker's online edition now boasts the keyword "Fadanuf fa Erybody," one of the Dude's old albums.

New York Magazine
Plenty of "snark" (ha ha! That word!) to go around here, so don't expect a lot of earnest rap coverage. Which is unfortunate for two reasons: a. because the magazine's namesake is hip hop's hometown, and b. because when New York does do serious rap coverage, it's good. Take for instance "The Holy House of Hip Hop," a historical look at the exact apartment building and moment in time in which hip hop music was born – 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, August 11, 1973 – and that building's current role in the struggle for affordable housing. It's a sparkling, interesting piece not just about hip hop, but New York City, and there's dozens of them. Unfortunately, New York's demographic is composed heavily of sneering indie kids, thus rendering most of the mag and its Web site's rap coverage to whimsical jokes about how silly the genre's purveyors can be: "We've finally — finally — got more information on the Phillips de Pury auction of a giant collection of jewelry worn by hip-hop stars … We're surprised no one's thought of this sooner because there are boatloads of cash to be made off this stuff."

The Dregs
We checked the Wall Street Journal for hip hop articles. It had nine online, all of them concerning the money side of the music (obviously). Then, just for shits, and because we were so disappointed that the Post wasn't as outrageously and dismissively racist as we had anticipated, we went for the sure thing: the now defunct New York Sun. Bingo!

…Pete Rock grouses that "library broken down is lies buried," while Dead Prez tells us that high school is a "four year sentence" with teachers "tellin' me white man lies." Message: black people should be wary of education. Deep.
…
Black people usually are killed by other black people. Conscious rappers touch on this now and then, but are much more interested in telling us that black criminals are victims of the system.

Awwww. So sweet. We miss ya, Sun!

So who to turn to for hip hop journalism in New York once the traditional rap magazines go the way of Big and Pac? If we had to take our pick, Frere-Jones's rap coverage would run in place of most everyone else's. But he's going to be 42 this year—there's only so many more Wu-Tang shows that that man's body can sustain before he moves on to the classical beat. Then who? Dunno, and we don't care. By the time Frere-Jones is well gone, we'll be brunching at fancy restaurants, listening exclusively to Art Tatum and getting shoeshines while thumbing past the pop music criticism in the New Yorker.