After helping to launch ego trip, Elliott "YN" Wilson served as music editor for The Source before taking over as Editor-in-Chief of XXL Magazine where he reigned supreme for 87 issues. Wilson currently serves alongside the rest of the ego trip collective as executive producer of Vh1's "Miss Rap Supreme." This week YN weighs in with his favorite moments in the media as well as advice for aspiring hip-hop journalists.

Study Your Lessons
Study the game, study your lessons. It’s important to know who else is out there and who came before you. Go back and pick up old issues of the Source's, the Vibe's the XXL's, even other magazines, like the great Tupac stories from the New Yorker —especially now that we have access to so much old stuff on the internet. Really do your research and find out who these people were who used to write about the culture. Know the bylines, know the history, go back and study it. If you want to be a journalist you need to know about not just me, but the people who came before me. Really just read a lot of other people’s work. Your style develops from reading other people’s stuff and then figuring out what your perspective is. Obviously we all read each other’s work and we all get inspired by each other. You need to put yourself in that fraternity and go back, even if you are 18 or an 80's baby or whatever you are, go back and read the old magazines and really see who was out there and who wrote the things that connect to you. Don’t be afraid to go back and study your history. Study your lessons.

Greatest Moments in YN History:
The second big moment was getting the Source job. My only career goal was to be Music Editor at The Source. I was a big Source fan even before I met Sacha and got down with him and wrote for a magazine he had called Beatdown, then we created ego trip together. My dream was to be music editor at The Source. I used to read The Source and look at Reggie Dennis’ music editor column, he’d talk about all the new music and hear every advance cassette before everyone else. I wanted to be that guy that gives the mics out and says what’s good and bad and gets the record before everyone else. That was really my career goal and I was able to achieve it in 1996. I was 25. Selwyn Hinds was Editor-in Chief and he hired me as Associate Music Editor because at the time he was music editor and then he got bumped up to EIC and I became Music Editor. I was Music Editor from 96-98, actually that era of The Source was when it became the dominant juggernaut of selling ridiculous amounts of copies on the newsstands so I was a part of that. I was number two to Selwyn in terms of the music coverage and I’m very proud of that era of my life.