It lasted four years and 13 issues and distinguished itself based on its irreverence and defiant attitude, eventually adopting the tagline, "the arrogant voice of musical truth."

Sacha and Haji met and brought aboard both Elliott Wilson and later Jefferson "Chairman" Mao.

All three (Jenkins, Wilson, and Mao) also had extensive freelance backgrounds writing for other publications such as Rap Pages, Vibe and URB.

[1] The last core member was designer Brent Rollins who joined the magazine in their third year and took over as art director.

The 13 issues featured the following rap artists on the cover: After closing the magazine, the Ego Trip team (Jenkins, Wilson, Mao, Alvarez and Rollins) continued on to a series of multimedia projects, such as the old-school rap music compilation The Big Playback (Rawkus Records, 2000), inspired by their first book, Ego Trip's Book of Rap Lists (St. Martin's Press, 1999).