Excerpt from Hip: The History by John Leland

The title was meant to be mildly confrontational- a twist on what its editors politely called the N-word, but pulled back a step, beyond real offense. The articles waxed knowingly about ethnic tropes in the post-Seingfeld era, from jew-fros to kosher lust. But more striking was the cover. The back showed a white woman cradling a 40-ounce bottle of Olde English malt liquor, one of her lacquered nails flashing the letters HEEB. On the front cover the hands of a black DJ worked a turntable, scratching a piece of matzoh instead of a record. The image was recognizably African-American, but recast as the stuff of modern Jewish identity.

Discussing the covers a year later, the magazine's publisher, Joshua Neuman said they "might have been a little minstrel" but that their intent was irony rather than exploitation. He was in a stylish East Village cafe with Heeb's creative director, Nancy Schwartzman, who ordered a BLT on challah bread- a sandwich in the ethnic spirit of the magazine. Schwartzman, a photographer, was also the model in the 40 - ounce photo. As she saw it, the malt liquor and the the DJ deck were ethnic chips to be played with, liberated from their accustomed context. The point was not the origins of the imagery, but the wit and connectivity of the play. "We had to grab onto what people recognize as cool, which is white people playing on black culture and hip-hop iconography," she said. "We put our spin on it. It worked."