On the same day as the reveal of this year’s XXL Freshmen cover, the publication’s Editor-In-Chief, Vanessa Satten spoke with The Breakfast Club about the selection process for those on the annual cover.
According to Satten, the selection process begins as early as October and consists of staff attending shows across the country, speaking to people in the music industry, interviewing those close to the Freshmen cover candidates, and more.
“October, November we start,” Vanessa Satten said. “We go for months. It’s exhausting. I mean there’s harder jobs out there, definitely in the world. But we sit with artists over and over and over again. We go to shows. We travel out of town to go to shows. I think we sat with 75 different artists. They come to the office. We’ll sit with them multiple times as we narrow it down. We talk to you guys. We talk to anyone that we come across in the industry. We talk to little brothers and little sisters and nephews and pretty much everyone. And then we start arguing and narrowing it down in different long, long meetings…We never do your next door neighbor. We never do your boy…There’s definitely some good ones out there. There’s hits and misses.”
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Satten later spoke on the addition of two female artists, DeJ Loaf and Tink, on this year’s cover. She explained that including those two artists on the Freshmen cover is merely “a reflection of what’s going on in Hip Hop right now.”
“The cover’s supposed to be a reflection of what’s going on in Hip Hop right now,” she said. “I think that we saw R&B last year cause R&B was a little bit more heavy. And we didn’t have as many pitches or as many artists that were as actively in the conversation with R&B. More with females this year, which was great to see. So, we didn’t really want to be forced to pick between DeJ and Tink. You don’t really have to. We’re treating them all as valid artists. Not as female artists. Not as white artists. Not as black artists. As valid artists based on the same credentials for the solo album and all that. So, we went back and forth and was like ‘This is a reflection of what’s going on.’”
Among the artists featured on the 2015 XXL Freshmen cover are Fetty Wap, K Camp, Raury, Kidd Kidd, and OG Maco.
