GANGSTA CONTENT.(The Talk of the Town)(quarterly magazine, 'Don Diva')

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 05-JUL-04

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COPYRIGHT 2004 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

The summer issue of Don Diva, which bills itself as "The Original Street Bible," has just reached newsstands. Don Diva is a glossy quarterly, with a circulation of about a hundred thousand, in whose pages readers can follow the bloody rise and fall of ruthless crime lords, learn about advances in drug-concealment techniques, look at models in thong bikinis, and find out where to buy fifteen-thousand-dollar alligator jackets, three-thousand-gallon aquariums, and 9-millimetre submachine guns. Each issue has two covers: an "Entertainment" cover, featuring a popular hip-hop artist, such as Ja Rule, 50 Cent, or D12; and a "Street" cover, featuring staged photographs of grim scenarios, among them a young man being shot in the face and a group of boys weighing and bagging crack around a kitchen table. A parental-advisory label warns of "gangsta content."

Don Diva's editor-in-chief is...

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