If rich white guys can subscribe to The Robb Report, why not a market-specific publication for all those bruthas with bling, babes and Berettas? The Washington Post reports today on the funky lifestyle quarterly for Gangbangers, Don Diva (free req. req.). The 23rd issue is out, and there are 150,000 subscribers, only 10 percent of them behind bars (versus about 90 percent earlier). Still, at first blush, it might appear the magazine glorifies gangsta culture.

Each issue has two covers, one in front, one in back. The "street cover" features a scene of gangster life: a staged shot of kids cooking up crack cocaine, for example, or an authentic photo of a dead Chicago dope dealer laid out in a coffin built to resemble his Cadillac El Dorado. The "entertainment cover" features a rapper and is used mainly by newsstands too squeamish to display the street cover. Inside, Don Diva has three main editorial features: stories about gangsters, stories about gangsta rappers and photos of scantily clad women, most of them shot from behind to emphasize their thong-clad posteriors.

...Don Diva...(also provides)...handy advice on where to hide your stash, how to beat money-laundering charges and where to get the latest gangsta accessories, such as diamond-studded gold teeth, portable money-counting machines and automobile tires that keep rolling even after they've been shot.

...this issue also contains....a piece on Luis "Money L" Santiago, a former New York rap producer who has gone into the custom-fur business. His first product was fur-lined sneakers. His latest project is customizing his clients' fur coats by adding "diamond encrusted zippers."

But the magazine packs a moral wallop, explains editor and publisher Tiffany Chiles:

"Most of the criminals we write about end up dead or in prison," she says. "To say that's glorifying is to say my readers are stupid. We have to shed light on things that are happening."

Um, excuse me, but. Isn't death part of the glorious gangsta legend? Like, ah, say, the one buried in the faux-Cadillac casket? Of course, young white males, and Asians, as well as blacks, appropriate gangsta shtick and gangsta chic. Don Diva is really just an edgier version of the other hip-hop magazines out there, which are crucial tools in marketing scuzzy rap personalities, hip-hop lifestyle apparel and accessories like diamond-encrusted zippers and gold teeth grills for "ghetto" arrivistes. Consumerism cuts across social mileus, but class remains the great divider. Plus ca change, plus la meme chose, n'est-ce-pas?

TECHNORATI TAGS: DON DIVA, GANGSTA, MAGAZINE

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Posted by Matt Rosenberg at October 25, 2005 11:23 AM