Here at Cult Status, we love ourselves some Paper Magazine. Paper Magazine is known for its unique aesthetic and highly conceptual cover art and photo shoots. They are also known as genius marketing mavens who coined the now-famous term: Break The Internet. Whoever came up with that catchphrase deserves a serious raise.
When Kim Kardashian’s 2014 Break The Internet cover first hit the scene, the world collectively gasped. Fans loved it. Critics hated it. But no matter which side of the fence you sat on this issue one thing couldn’t be denied…Kim broke the damn internet. Boom.Â
 Let’s break down the covers that have made Paper Magazine a tour de force in the publishing world.
KIM KARDASHIAN: BREAK THE INTERNET
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If you know nothing else about Kim Kardashian, you know that she is very, very famous. Some would say that’s all you need to know. At press time, she has 25 million Twitter followers, about a million less than Oprah Winfrey and nearly 5 million more than CNN Breaking News. Her Instagram account, where she is a prolific purveyor of selfies, is the site’s third most popular. You can’t walk through a supermarket without glimpsing her on a multitude of tabloids whose headlines holler about her relationships, her parenting style, and the vicissitudes of her ample curves. But she has also graced the covers of highbrow fashion bibles like W and Vogue; with her now-husband, Kanye West, she appeared on the latter above the hashtag #worldsmosttalkedaboutcouple, creating a furor that made it perhaps the #worldsmostcontroversialcover.
Her millions-strong popularity and inescapable media presence have made her grist for think pieces galore. She is variously seen as a feminist-entrepreneur-pop-culture-icon or a late-stage symptom of our society’s myriad ills: narcissism, opportunism, unbridled ambition, unchecked capitalism. But behind all the hoopla, there is an actual woman — a physical body where the forces of fame and wealth converge. Who isn’t at least a tad curious about the flesh that carries the myth?
READ KIM KARDASHIAN’S FULL INTERVIEW HERE
MILEY CYRUS: USE YOUR VOICE
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What is less discussed is that Cyrus is a very good pop singer and occasionally a great one. She has a porous, burly voice that recalls Rumours-era Stevie Nicks — the kind that’s good for communicating particular strains of duress (specifically: what it feels like to love too hard). But what she has managed to do better than nearly anyone — save, perhaps, Andrew W.K. — is legitimize partying as an ideological choice. In Cyrus’ hands, “La da dee da dee / We like to par-tee” becomes a resonant generational credo. That she has been persecuted for these things — or at least openly mocked — makes her commitment to love-yourself-no-matter-what activism even more poignant.
…For Cyrus, it’s less about renouncing her past than imagining a wild new future, one in which people are free to buck expectations and live whatever kind of life feels truest to them. She remains refreshingly cognizant, meanwhile, of everything that’s left for her to learn. Which sounds unremarkable, maybe, but is anomalous among people for whom all the traditional signifiers of success (fame, adulation, profit) have been realized. It gives her a specific charm — an uncommon openness.
READ MILEY CYRUS’ FULL INTERVIEW HERE
PARIS HILTON: FANDEMONIUM
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Globe-trotting model, business magnate and DJ Paris Hilton was as busy as ever this year, hosting her Foam & Diamonds party (an all-night dance rager that, yes, ends with the audience soaked in foam) in Ibiza and debuting a new fragrance line. In honor of our Fandemonium issue, dedicated to exploring what makes fans go crazy and photos and stories go viral, PAPER styled Paris like you’ve never seen her before and talked to her about her Internet habits.
READ PARIS HILTON’S FULL INTERVIEW HERE
RITA ORA: LIVING FOR FASHION
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It might come as a surprise, but Rita Ora would love to have beers with you. In fact, a pub full of people drinking pints and watching soccer — preferably dressed in comfortable sweats and sneakers — is her idea of one hell of a night. To put things in perspective, the Kosovar Albanian singer known for her great style and performances (most recently for the canonization of Mother Teresa at the Vatican, where she wore Marchesa with a Grace Kelly-inspired veil) moved to London with her family when she was a year old, and grew up hanging out with regulars at her father’s pub in West London. “I worked in my dad’s pub from the time I was 14, and I’d meet crazy alcoholics and become friends with them,” she says. “They’d tell me football stories, and now I know all the football anthems.”
READ RITA ORA’S FULL INTERVIEW HERE
TEYANA TAYLOR: LIVING FOR FASHION
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On August 28th, Kanye West took the stage at the MTV Video Music Awards. The network had given him four minutes of airtime to do with as he liked — another presidential stump speech? A new dig at Taylor Swift? Instead, after a few words, he premiered the video for The Life of Pablo track “Fade.” The song’s famed artist was completely overshadowed by the clip, a Flashdance-inspired choreographic tour de force featuring a single dancer: Teyana Taylor.
…While the fall of 2016 has seen Taylor’s star explode, she’s hardly a rookie. Born and raised in Harlem, the 25-year-old Taylor has been a part of the pop culture consciousness for nearly a decade. At 16, she signed a record deal with Pharrell’s Star Trak Entertainment and appeared in an episode of MTV’s My Super Sweet Sixteen, where she threw an ’80s- and ’90s-inspired skater bash. As a teenager, she also created choreography for Beyoncé’s “Ring the Alarm” video and danced in Jay Z’s 2007 “Blue Magic” video.
READ TEYANA TAYLOR’S FULL INTERVIEW HERE
TRAVIS SCOTT: LIVING FOR FASHION
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With the release of BITTSM, Scott has matured from the promising protégé rubbing shoulders with rap’s elite to a full-fledged solo star. But as much as his profile and platform have grown, Scott says he still finds himself confronted with people who doubt his opinions and talent. “I feel like people don’t want to trust the young idea,” he laments. This theme is echoed in the title of his new album, which, he clarifies, is neither a direct reference to drug dealing nor to the R&B crooner Brian McKnight. Instead, it’s a metaphor for the feeling of inhibition that comes with having limits imposed on your creativity. The phrase itself, he told Billboard, comes from a line Migos rapper Quavo spat on “Pick Up the Phone,” a track the two collaborated on with Young Thug.
READ TRAVIS SCOTT’S FULL INTERVIEW HERE
BELLA HADID: OUTSPOKEN
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While this positivity and optimism might seem natural for a born-and-bred California girl, Hadid has, perhaps unfairly, been cast by the media and fashion world as the mysterious, sullen sister, the Veronica to bubbly, blonde Gigi’s Betty. And although Hadid has perfected an intense gaze and pout that remind many of a young Carla Bruni, away from the camera she’s all smiles, laughter and kinetic energy. “People say that I don’t smile, or that I don’t have a personality,” she says, before expressing her excitement over getting to show a new side of herself in the photos that accompany this story.
READ BELLA HADID’S FULL INTERVIEW HERE
KYLIE JENNER: YOUTH
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This month we’re highlighting the art, music, fashion, and entertainment leaders of today (and tomorrow) and we can’t think of anyone better to be on the cover of our YOUth issue than Kylie Jenner. She’s literally grown up on our screens since she was nine years old and, in that spirit, we turned to our phones for our cover story, asking fans and followers to send questions to us via Instagram DMs. In the resulting interview, Kylie shares her thoughts on fame, family and the future.
READ KYLIE JENNER’S FULL INTERVIEW HERE
RIHANNA: BREAK THE RULES
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It’s been almost ten years since Rihanna first graced our cover back in August 2007….
…In the decade since, she’s certainly found that freedom. She’s dropped five more albums, including last year’s hit Anti; was named CFDA’s Fashion Icon of the Year in 2014 (and accepted the award in that unforgettable, crystal-studded see-through Adam Selman gown); designed two Fenty Puma collections with the athletic brand (and will debut her third in Paris on March 6th); received the MTV Video Vanguard Award last August; and even traveled to Cambridge, MA, earlier this week to accept Harvard’s Humanitarian of the Year Award. And, amidst all this, what’s nearly as remarkable as her creative and professional accomplishments is the fact that she’s remained the cool, DGAF chick who will bring a bedazzled flask to the Grammys and often returns home to Barbados to don a bejeweled bikini and feathered headdress for carnival.
READ RIHANNA’S FULL INTERVIEW HERE
ZENDAYA: EXTREME
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Zendaya speaks in a cool monotone so collected you almost overlook the trauma she’s outlining, which she says is the definitive end to her happiness. She tells you that she was crushed by her mother’s cervix so matter-of-factly that it takes a few seconds to register that she’s describing… birth. It’s all part of the monologue that begins Euphoria, the new HBO drama that sees Zendaya starring in what is undoubtedly her most challenging role yet. In character as a 17-year-old named Rue, Zendaya speaks candidly about her experiences with anxiety and depression, and we watch her navigate a mental health system in which adults, sometimes condescending, sometimes well-meaning, but generally uninformed, don’t have the tools to help her.
READ ZENDAYA’S FULL INTERVIEW HERE
LADY GAGA: TRASFORMATION
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This experience, Gaga says, further proved her newfound appreciation for the power of nature over technology. Prior to filming, Gaga rehearsed for three days and her dancers immediately followed with five of their own. Her longtime choreographer, Richard Jackson, who’s responsible for movement in everything from “Telephone” to “Applause,” had the challenge of creating and teaching dances that would last the duration of “Stupid Love” without stopping. Gaga gushes, “I want you to imagine people dancing for eight to 10 hours straight. I watched them work so hard — the blood and sweat. Scrapes from dancing in the desert or getting poked in the eye from a stud that knocked them in the face. They’re breathing in sand, they can’t see. The conditions alone were ridiculous.”
After extensive rehearsal, a drone was finally used to film the scene on-site, though it didn’t have nearly the same drive as Gaga and her dancers. “The damn thing lasts three-and-a-half minutes” before dying, Gaga laughs. “I was like, ‘Oh, are you tired? Was that choreography too hard for you?’ And I had another epiphany: I said, ‘I can’t even rely on this drone to capture this shot for me. But these dancers behind me? Their bodies are killing them, they all feel like fainting. That is more powerful than anything. The human spirit is remarkable.’ I told the dancers before we left for the desert, ‘This might be the hardest thing you’ve ever done, and if it’s not, I did it wrong. But you can do it, and when you look back on this time, you’ll remember how strong you are.’