“Hustle Is The New Talent…” Beyonce Rocks Rollers for GIANT Re-launch

GIANT Editorial

Issue #13

Wow. It’s not often an opportunity comes along that lets you, as a creative person, flex the lessons you’ve learned, relationships you’ve fostered, or vision you’ve worked on since you were an oversized suit-wearing intern some ten years before. It’s not often an opportunity comes along when you’re given the keys to a house and asked to redecorate the place. Strip the paint, tear down the walls, buy some new furniture, add some color.

That opportunity for me is now, and somehow I didn’t quite hear that walk before you can run adage. I got the hit-the-ground-as-fast-as-you-possibly-can lesson. Maybe that’s because I’m part of a generation that works and hustles and aspires as part of our everyday lives—a GIANT generation, where, if you’re fortunate enough to add some smarts and skill to that race you just can’t bow out of, you might win a prize, pass GO in a real big way.

This will explain why my first cover star is the great BEYONCE KNOWLES.  She’s been passing GO, collecting those hundred dollar bills, for a long time now. Hers isn’t play money, either, and she deserves it all. The spectacular photographs by Ellen Von Unwerth that make up “If I Was Your Girlfriend” show private, intimate images of the most beautiful girl in the world. It’s a special story that embodies GIANT’s new purpose: a thoroughly modern entertainment magazine that uses great photographs and engaging journalism to celebrate the skill and charisma of the best of ourselves.

PHARRELL WILLIAMS knows about being the best. The reluctant music man defines our cultural identity with his incredible beats, smooth falsetto, and scary good looks without even trying, and, as writer Joan Morgan found out, sometimes without even wanting to. In My Mind is his best work yet.

After beauty, my biggest turn-on has always been creativity, so the gorgeous JESSICA BIEL gets to touch me twice, before 18-year-old RIHANNA takes a turn with her youthful passion, and the bands of our first ever GIANT PORTFOLIO begin to live their dreams. The portfolio is a new section debuting this issue along with FLASH, a collection of striking personalities in music, film, fashion & art, POP (formerly Index), a trend-driven, topical front of the book section, and OBJECTS OF DESIRE.

If “hustle is the new talent,” as my friend, mentor and editorial director, likes to say, then I’m turned-on by putting them both together. My name is Smokey D. Fontaine, the new Editor In Chief of GIANT magazine.

Good morning, world. It’s time to get big.