Super Empty, The Magazine

First, what you already know: as screen fatigue grows and dead-eyed tech overlords croak out a new misanthropic soundbite every week, a yearning for the tactile and physical is becoming less and less the exclusive domain of ostentatious hipsters or doomer luddites, and more of an everyday, widely accepted thing. MP3 players are back. Personal CD and DVD collections are being assembled and proudly displayed. You might even fuck around and bump into someone playing a Sony PSP (although this is rare, and belongs more in the hipster category).

For obvious reasons, magazines are often lumped in with this phenomenon. But unlike other recently excavated technofossils like Discmans and dumphones, magazines were never fully buried in the first place. Breakthroughs in computing have come and gone, yet the magazine has remained, whether in the glossy but zombified form of The Pope Through The Years, by TIME in a grocery store checkout aisle, or a thumbed-through, six-month-old New Yorker at the dentist's office. Even as new conveniences have popped up and chipped away at the waking time we previously spent with them, magazines have continued to evade the same dusty extinction as other mediums that are only just now returning to the fold.

Now, a decade after it first launched as a local music blog, I'm stoked about Super Empty carrying forward that tradition in its own small way—not only because of my long-held love for the form, but because it could be a model (among others) for how we sustain regional arts journalism in an economy distinctly hostile to it. It's going to take more than casual readers and good vibes—it's going to take paying subscribers who believe in the vision and help to keep it alive, and who receive beautiful, archival objects twice a year for doing so. Which brings me to...

What's Inside, And What It Costs (To Make)

Just like online, the print version of Super Empty exists to be a gathering place, discovery platform, discussion forum, and more for the hip-hop and underground creative community of North Carolina. (You can read more about the mission here.) Even as SE has shifted and evolved over the years, one constant has been a commitment to presentation that honors and respects the subject matter—recognizing it as the vessel of artistry and humanity that it is, rather than a mere source for clicks. Aspiring to that sounds nice in the abstract, but it has a concrete value in real USD terms. In the case of this first issue, that value is somewhere in the neighborhood of $7,000-$8,000 total.

A big chunk of that price tag comes from using quality, local printers, like Barefoot Press in Raleigh, rather than cheaper printers overseas. These are folks in our community we can text, call, and stop by and troubleshoot with, something we've already taken advantage of a number of times in pursuit of the best end product possible. The rest is the journalism itself: an all-star cast of contributors whose backgrounds and credibility—previous work includes The New York Times, GQ, Pitchfork, Pigeons & Planes, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Stereogum, Apple Music, and so on—befits our goals of showcasing the scene we love with the seriousness and depth it deserves.

In Issue 1, that looks like:

• Tyler Bunzey with two different profiles on trailblazing Charlotte creatives, rapper/singer Cyanca and fashion designer Gordon Holliday (photos by Surf Mitchell)
• Dash Lewis talks to BK resident and Raleigh native Kemp Dupri about his ever-expanding catalog and his life outside of rap (photos by Hanna Wondmagegn)
• A photo/poem diptych from poet/emcee James Solomon and photographer Phillip Loken
• Yoh Phillips reflects on growing up alongside the journey of J. Cole, from The Warm-Up to the "Big 3" debacle and everything in between (illustrations by Christian Arnder)
• Dash Lewis and Cornell Watson report from Fayetteville on the release of The Fall-Off, and the place-based mythology of J. Cole
• A roundup of reviews and commentary from 2025 NC hip-hop albums from Dash Lewis, Drew Millard, and Adrian Tillman
• Plus, two-page spreads of photography from Isaac Aiello, Artist Plott, Jeyhoun Allebaugh, and ShotByCozyy.

Beyond compensating the talent, there's a host of other outlays, too: annual payments for the website/CMS platform (Ghost), renting out spaces and DJs and commissioning flyers and buying refreshments for our launch events in April (and others throughout the year, like the Carolina Noise screening last June), commissioning freelancers to write for the site throughout the year, our annual executive leadership retreat in the Seychelles, and more. Even for a somewhat modest venture, the costs add up quick. The more subscriptions we have, the more confidence with which SE can pay those (mostly local, independent) vendors, and the more folks we can bring into the fold.

How We're Selling It, And What It Costs (To Buy)

When it comes to getting issues of Super Empty into readers' hands, the plan is this:

• At our April launch events in Durham and Charlotte, individual copies of SE1 will be available for $30 apiece. More specifics about parties coming soon, but both will be in mid-April. Look out for an announcement and RSVP link later this month.
• On the shelves of a number of retailers throughout the state starting in late March, individual copies will also be available for $30. More specifics on retailers forthcoming, but we already have commitments in Durham, Winston-Salem, and Wilmington, and are talking to others in Charlotte, Asheville and Raleigh as well.
• Online, to save the extra overhead of a separate online store, we'll be offering subscriptions only—with two pay-what-you-can levels of $50/yr and $100/yr. With either one, you get this first issue, and a second one in the fall, both mailed to you as soon as they're available, never with a shipping fee. If you don't live in North Carolina/can't attend our launch events, subscribing is the only way to get Issue 1. You can sign up via the big green boxes throughout this page, or by clicking here.

We're going through a final round of proofs this week, and between now and when we turn the final files in (probably EOD Friday), every subscriber's name is still being added to the Issue 1 masthead. I would love to have you listed there, but if you want to wait to hold the thing in your hands first, that's cool too. I'm optimistic that, when the time comes, you'll like what you see.

Ryan Cocca
Editor/Founder, Super Empty