Main Task: Front Cover Texture Analysis

-Denotation:
This Hip Hop magazine has a picture of five male rappers that are directly looking into the camera, all of their faces are serious except one. The front cover is a long shot showing them all from head to toe. The background of this magazine front cover is very nutural with darker shades at the top which is 'grey'. This colour contrasts with what the men are wearing in the photo because they're all wearing dark colours. Behind two of the guys heads is the magazine masthead 'XXL' and infront of them bellow the waist are four cover-lines which are in white and yellow with the stroke of black giving the words boldness to allow it to pop out to the readers. The five rappers names are bellow the cover-line 'A new breed of hustlers featuring' in correct order of where they're standing/sitting in order to tell the readers who's who. the bar code is rotated but clearly placed on the bottom left corner.

-Connotation:
There's five men, they all look like rappers or represent the individual cover-line 'Hustlers'.

Mise en scene

Costume: They all have on dark colours which are blue denuim and black. They're all wearing shirts and one of them is wearing a jumper. These clothes are very casual maybe an everyday outfit for men. Three of them are wearing black baseball caps which seem to be new era hats, what americans are known to wear. Two of them are wearing flashy jewellery i.e. big diamond chains.

Props: The fact that this photograph is very basic and straight forward there arent many props just a few which are the chair that the guy in the middle, 'Nipsey Hussle' is sitting on which then allows the rest of the men to crowd around giving different levels of height. The second prop included in this photo is the wires on the floor which is indicating a mic to probably be attached to the end of it or wires of a dj set and speakers.

NVC: Their non-verbal communication is very strong and serious to make them look like hard as nails. One of them are smiling which portrays him to be the funny one out of the bunch but the rest of them are sending a non-verbal message to the readers that they're ready for business.

Lighting: The lighting in this magazine cover is low key as it's not very bright, infact it's kind of dull and dusty but it gives the effect of a grimey look.

Setting: The front cover of this magazine does not have a background as it is a two shaded colour. This may be due to the style they were trying to portray for this Hip Hop magazine.

Anchor: For this genre of this music magazine the font of the masthead and cover-lines that have been used go with the 'Hip Hop' genre. This was purposely done so that the readers immediately identify what type of magazine it is.

Magazine Conventions

Masthead: The 'XXL' masthead is pretty distinctive as it has a background colour of red with large, bold white writing. this is very effective. The masthead connotes a young and fresh hip hop magazine.

Dateline: The dateline on the front cover of this magazine writes, "April 2010" which connotes that the release date was for that month.

Main Image: The main image on this magazine front cover is shared by five successful American hip hop rappers, J. Cole left end, Pill right of J. Cole, Nipsey Hussle sitting in the chair, Wiz Khalifa the right of Nipsey Hussle and Oj Da Juiceman on the right end. They are placed to represent gangsters with the clothing and the body postures. They all look confident.

Cover-lines: The cover line that says, "A new breed of hustlers" represents the new generation of hip hop. This connotes that the old hustlers/ hip hop artists' are old news and they should now be looking into the new and improved 'hustlers'.

Main Cover-line: The main cover-line links to the image, which says '10 freshmen for 10'. This is refering to the image although there are five men who are on the front cover but its showing thats the first five who are the new up and coming rappers for 2010.

Selling line: The selling line is 'Hip Hop on a higher level' which indicates to hip hop fans that the normal standard of hip hop has just been raised by the guys on the front cover. The selling line is very short but it drags the reader into wanting to know how and when this has happened.

Website link: The website link is 'xxlmag.com' it is placed on the bottom of the bar code. The connotation of the website link is for people to be able to go onto the site to further their knowledge on behalf of hip hop and the new hustlers in town.

Target audience: I think the target audience is for the ages between 13-30 depending on the level of hip hop interest. This magazine applies to both genders but more over to boys/man as the magazine is male dominated considering the photo is of men and they're talking about hustlers and not ladies.