Can we discuss the take down of The source magazine?

[EducatedBrothaFromTheBank]

Does anybody even check for the source anymore? I remember I always used to pick one up back in high school. It out me on to a lot of classic albums back then. These days I just see it sitting on the shelf and don't even take a look at it. Can't even say who's on the latest cover.

The Source? breh, nobody even checks for the hip hop website anymore.. when's the last time u seen an interview, article, or story linked to AllHipHop, HipHopDx, HipHopGame, XXL etc..

 

[TEH]

Is Jay Electronica blackballed because of this interview?

 

[Renegade47]

Benzino being a bytch nikka and giving out biased reviews of albums.

The Little Brother Minstrel Show fiasco

What happened with that?

 

[iFightSeagullsForBread]

What happened with that?

For many reasons, the furor surrounding The Minstrel Show overshadowed the music itself. On August 16, 2005, hip hop magazine The Source's Editor-in-Chief, Joshua "Fahiym" Ratcliffe, announced his retirement due to conflicting opinions on the rating The Minstrel Show was to receive in the next issue of the publication. According to Ratcliffe, his original rating of 4.5 (out of 5) was reduced to 4 by the magazine's Chief Brand Executive, Raymond "Benzino" Scott and CEO Dave Mays because Ratcliffe gave then-upcoming artist Young Jeezy a rating of 4.[1] After they refused to change the rating back to 4.5 he decided to step down from his editorial position. For his part, Benzino admitted at the time of questioning, that he had yet to listen to the album for himself and had no problem with Ratcliffe's original rating.

This is the main reason why I could give a shyt about Benzinos fake ass moral crusade against Emniem.

He basically ostracized mainstream and underground hip hop fans with minimal effort and reduced the source to rag status.

 

[Wacky D]

the minstrel show is really a 3.5. they should be happy they got 4.

thats the best thing about benzino. sometimes he would step in and stop the nerds on staff from overrating their personal favorites and chit. thats why niccas stopped paying attention to ratings, once the caught on and got tired of wasting their money.

that man. a true hip-hop hero. him and dave mayes too.

You're letting your dislikes cloud your mind. I can't take you serious the moment you said only CACs like it.

i didnt say cacs. i said white people.

and its true for the most part. only black people hyping it up were weirdos & token eminem fans - theyre usually one in the same.

Did The Source have shareholders at the time? They probably saw Dave Mays and Benzino were fukking with the profits and gave them the boot. I was surprised how much influence and bias Benzino was using when they gave 50 the cover and it turned out just to be articles slandering him. Then they pushed the racist Eminem song and ran another cover with Eminem flipping off readers and had more anti-articles. 50, Em, Dre and Interscope boycotted The Source and jumped to XXL. It was ridiculous when The Source was claiming that Interscope was promoting and glorifying negativity, violence, and cultural appropriation but they had no problem promoting the same shyt and the same people (Eminem cover with the chainsaw when they were cool with him).

But XXL turned out to be just as shameless when it turned out that they lied about the order of protection saying it was all fake. Then 50 Cent/G-Unit was on the cover every other month in seemed. Hip-Hop Weekly became successful and they came out with Juicy.

the thing was, it wasnt interscope boycotting. it was more like interscope blackballing. suddenly, a bunch of companies were pulling ads from the source.

XXL is the biggest culture-vulture rag ever, and theyre still going. them dudes had macklemore on the cover calling him the hottest in hip-hop. they mightve called him the king.

but how you dedicate 2 lines to XXL but write a whole essay tearing down the source. thats that media-influence right there. chit is real. and all the source did was expose a bunch of culture-vultures. yet theyre the bad guys. smh.

 

[untaintedbeats]

At one time the source was like Hot97 was when it first switched to hip hop...great...i think a lot of stuff behind the scene hurt it but also..ppl don't really care about the artist or the culture like that now...i havent read it in years..if its still being printed i would guess its very ratchet now...

 

[EzekelRAGE]

Here is an article I read a long time ago that touched on the subject. The article is about XXL and maybe it's last issue or something, but there is a good chunk of some of what went down at the Source Magazine because XXL was formed from ppl who were ran out of/fled the source due to Benzino and Davy's relationship.

XXL was founded by guys who had to leave The Source because they were having problems with founder Dave Mays’ old, good friend from Boston, Ray Benzino, then known as Ray Dogg or something to that effect (or am I confusing him with the guy who sings “Why Must I Cry?”), and his rap group/vicious street gang The Almighty RSO. The Almighty RSO would show up to the Source offices, steal promo copies of great ‘90s-era rap albums from people’s desks while they were out having lunch, threaten to kick people’s asses and demand for articles on The Almighty RSO to be run in the magazine.

Source staffers didn’t want to run articles on The Almighty RSO for a number of reasons, including the fact that Dave Mays had been managing the group since he was at Harvard, so that would probably constitute a conflict of interest (I was pre-med), and perhaps most importantly, the fact that, if an article on The Almighty RSO said that The Almighty RSO sucked balls, i.e. if it were accurate, The Almighty RSO would probably beat the living shyt out of the magazine’s staff, if not pull a Jaylen Fryberg on the Source offices.

At any rate, Dave Mays chose to insert an article on The Almighty RSO in a 1994 issue of The Source. He waited until the people who actually put the magazine together sent it off to be printed up, then called the printer and told them to insert a few extra pages, ostensibly for a last minute ad.

He then inserted an article on The Almighty RSO, the rap group he’d been managing for years, that he’d written himself. It didn’t mention the fact that The Almighty RSO sucked balls, for a number of reasons, including the fact that Mays himself had a financial interest in the success of the RSO, and maybe also because Benzino would have put a shoe on Mays if it had. Again, it’s just not possible to speak on the nature of someone else’s friendship.

Source staffers, including editor in chief Jonathan Shecter, now editor of Medium’s own Cuepoint, and XXL founder James Bernard, who I suspect also works with Cuepoint in some sort of administrative capacity, essentially ratted Dave Mays out in a fax sent out to all of their contacts in the music biz. I seem to recall once reading that it was sent to 6,000 people, but that doesn’t seem right, does it? They then took their proverbial marbles and went home. Shecter and Bernard reportedly later received $1.5 million for their stake in the magazine.

 

[Wacky D]

i'd rather read an article about how XXL has always been a shuck-n-jive rag, especialy when they became jimmy iovine's bottom b*tch.

aint nobody gonna write an article about that tho.

 

[EzekelRAGE]

i'd rather read an article about how XXL has always been a shuck-n-jive rag, especialy when they became jimmy iovine's bottom b*tch.

aint nobody gonna write an article about that tho.

It touches a bit on that as well

Somehow word got back to the label that the Roots planned to reveal all of this in XXL, and believe it or not, they didn’t like the idea. Word on the street is that MCA’s parent company, Universal Music Group, threatened to pull its ads from not just XXL but other Harris Publications magazines, like Guns and Ammo for Law Enforcement, if they ran the article.

At the time, Interscope Records CEO Jimmy Iovine was rumored to secretly run the entire Universal Music Group. In Ja Rule’s autobiography Unruly, in which he claims to have beat up 50 Cent twice, he breaks down how Iovine forced Def Jam to drop him because he was going at 50 Cent and 50 Cent was making way more money for Interscope than Ja was making for Def Jam.

The article on The Roots was pulled from XXL. In its place ran a photo of the group bound and gagged with duct tape, beneath the headline “The Greatest Story Never Told.” Interscope is alleged to have increased its support of the magazine in subsequent issues as a show of appreciation. A version of the article later ran in Philadelphia City Paper.
Most likely, Interscope didn’t mind buying a shedload of ads in XXL because XXL couldn’t charge very much for them, because hardly anyone read XXL back in the early 2000s. I’m not sure if I believe that 175,000 people copped XXL each month. Researching past issues to write this essay, I don’t even recall seeing them in stores.

 

[KingsOfKings]

 

[Mr. Negative]

The Jay Electronica aspect is stranger to me. Why was he there? Is he a journalist? How was he there? How is he still around after that? He became known like 5 years later...His career is fishy as hell, lots of behind the scenes moves and very little music...

Quote Bizzare:

" nikkas singing like Monica.
And what the fukk is a "Jay Electronica". (who is that? Im trying to remember-)
Oh you mean "Jarice"! The one that carried the bags!
The one that used to sleep on the floor and call Denaun 'Dad!'
'The one that sold the (em racist "Fools Pride") tape to The Source!?'
Let me chill. I'm gettin off course."