Speaker 1: What's up. We're all We're back continuing season four in
Speaker 1: the atl my backyard. Always good to do some shows
Speaker 1: in a tilS a lot of people that we need
Speaker 1: to talk to. Um. Today we have the founder of
Speaker 1: the Source magazine, The Legend, who has a lot of stories.
Speaker 1: Also the co founder of hip Hop Weekly, my guy,
Speaker 1: Dave Mays. Welcome to all the smoke guys. What up?
Speaker 1: Always good to see great, Thank you guys for his
Speaker 1: life right now. What's going on with you? Oh man,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm excited. I got some some new things going
Speaker 1: that are starting to really uh take off and I
Speaker 1: think can have an impact. Out Here created a platform
Speaker 1: about a year ago called Breakbeat. You know. It's designed
Speaker 1: to be a content and technology company for the hip
Speaker 1: hop community. Obviously, I've been involving hip hop, you know,
Speaker 1: pretty much my whole life now, but I see like
Speaker 1: avoid out here still to create a platform that's a
Speaker 1: little more authentic, that really has the interests and perspectives
Speaker 1: of the culture and the community more front and center,
Speaker 1: and is going to stand behind those across the board
Speaker 1: and also really try to bridge the gap of the ages.
Speaker 1: Because hip hop spans over three generations now, but they
Speaker 1: kind of divided us through the music, where the older
Speaker 1: people kind of don't like the younger people's music, and
Speaker 1: it's all that narrative back and forth. But beneath the music,
Speaker 1: hip hop is a way that you think, a way
Speaker 1: that you view the world if you've been you know,
Speaker 1: grown up and been influenced by it. And I think
Speaker 1: whether you're you know, forty nine or nineteen, you're gonna
Speaker 1: have a lot of same point of view and perspectives
Speaker 1: and a lot of things in our world. A lot
Speaker 1: of times people underestimate hip hop. They still just think
Speaker 1: of it as music and entertainment. There's still not really
Speaker 1: respecting the culture and everything that comes, you know, really
Speaker 1: the foundation of it. Talk to us about your upbringing. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: I'm born and raised in Washington, DC. Um so, I
Speaker 1: grew up in the city, went through the public schools. Uh,
Speaker 1: just kind of fell in love with the music and
Speaker 1: the culture of the city at a young age. You know,
Speaker 1: so in those days, this was really when go go
Speaker 1: was emerging in in DC. So that was really you know,
Speaker 1: among my first love as well as you know, so
Speaker 1: R and b M. I just kind of got into
Speaker 1: all of that from a young age, and yeah, you
Speaker 1: know that's stuff where it started. I mean, hip hop
Speaker 1: has never really made it in DC because of Go
Speaker 1: Go the way it did in so many almost every
Speaker 1: other city. So I was you know, I got some
Speaker 1: hip hop when I was in DC. You know, I
Speaker 1: heard rappers. The Light that I was the first song
Speaker 1: I heard when I was in sixth grade and knew
Speaker 1: all the lyrics to it. But it wasn't until I
Speaker 1: left DC to go to college. I went to Harvard
Speaker 1: this is nineteen eighty six that I became more fully
Speaker 1: like really immersed in in hip hop. Well obviously Harvard
Speaker 1: Historical School. Uh what drove you that direction? Um? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, my family was a family that you know
Speaker 1: kind of valued education and achievement, and so I always
Speaker 1: kind of was instilled with the idea that I would
Speaker 1: go to a really good school. You know, I was,
Speaker 1: you know, fortunate that I did well, you know, grade wise,
Speaker 1: but also you know, extracurricular activities and sports. You know,
Speaker 1: I played a little basketball back in the day. We
Speaker 1: get what was your game? Like? This is still all right?
Speaker 1: Still you know a little little Elvin Hayes. You know,
Speaker 1: I grew up school. Yeah, but uh yeah, so um,
Speaker 1: you know, just um, you know, I had the opportunity
Speaker 1: because of all that, coming out of a public school
Speaker 1: that was considered diversity for for Harvard back in the
Speaker 1: end of the days. Um and uh so, yeah, that
Speaker 1: was really it. But when I got there was it
Speaker 1: was kind of different because I didn't really know what
Speaker 1: to expect in terms of, like, you know, the the
Speaker 1: culture and the people there. You necessarily don't think hip
Speaker 1: hop Harvard. Those aren't really synonymous with each other. So
Speaker 1: what was that? Was it a huge culture shock or
Speaker 1: you know, I know you were being you, but was
Speaker 1: it a little different? Yeah? Absolutely. I mean it's Harvard's
Speaker 1: come a long way now. I've seen some things coming
Speaker 1: in the last few years where they you know, definitely
Speaker 1: hip hop as a as a strong presence there. But
Speaker 1: back in those days, no, it was a total culture shock.
Speaker 1: I'm walking around campus with my Fielaw sweatsuit on and
Speaker 1: you my bringing my DC style up there. People are
Speaker 1: looking at me like who is this guy? And I
Speaker 1: couldn't really fit in with anybody there. I started, you know,
Speaker 1: making friends with people off campus, people that would come
Speaker 1: into the gym and play ball from the neighborhood, and
Speaker 1: you know, I ended up starting a radio show and
Speaker 1: that it was called street Beat, and that really became
Speaker 1: like a passion for me. Back in those days, there
Speaker 1: was no rap music being played on a radio commercial radio.
Speaker 1: The only time place you really could hear it was
Speaker 1: college radio. So I was able to actually build a
Speaker 1: big presence in the city with street Beat because you know,
Speaker 1: I was just very dedicated to getting the newest music
Speaker 1: and building relationships with the record labels around around the country,
Speaker 1: and it gave me an outlet to the city. So
Speaker 1: when concerts would come to Boston, I'd be able to
Speaker 1: go down and you know, tend them in the city,
Speaker 1: different things like that. So, uh, but I was always
Speaker 1: an entrepreneur growing up. Um, you know, lemonade stands and
Speaker 1: had a lawnmowne business and Junior High with you know,
Speaker 1: eighty clients and business cards. I used to loans too.
Speaker 1: I didn't have eighty of it, but yeah, yeah, we
Speaker 1: had a gun, yeah my boy David Scribner. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so I always had that entrepreneurial bug. And so through
Speaker 1: the radio show. You know, this really leads into how
Speaker 1: the source was created. Because I had listeners all over
Speaker 1: the city. People would call in. You know, it was
Speaker 1: late night, you know, Friday night, midnight, one of them
Speaker 1: type of thing. But people would be calling, so I
Speaker 1: knew we would building an audience. And one of the
Speaker 1: reasons I picked the radio station was you could make
Speaker 1: commission on ad sales, which was unique. Most colleges you
Speaker 1: can't sell ads, so but Harvard had a thing where
Speaker 1: you could sell sponsorships. So that was my thing. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go around to all these businesses and buston
Speaker 1: and try to get some sponsorship dollars. And people were
Speaker 1: laughing at me, like, man, nobody's listening to, you know,
Speaker 1: rap on a on a Harvard radio station. Because the
Speaker 1: Harvard station was known for classical music and played almost
Speaker 1: all classical music all day long. So I got frustrated
Speaker 1: and came up with the idea, let me start building
Speaker 1: a mailing list of my listeners. So every week I
Speaker 1: would go on the areo, you know, call in join
Speaker 1: the street beat mailing list, and I would write down
Speaker 1: names and addresses of everybody that called in. I would
Speaker 1: set up a little sign up boxes around town for
Speaker 1: people to drop their name and address, and I built
Speaker 1: up like maybe a thousand something names and addresses or
Speaker 1: hip hop fans in Boston. And then that's when the
Speaker 1: idea came, let me create a newsletter to give out
Speaker 1: this news and information because answering those phones all the
Speaker 1: time and talking to people, what I kept hearing is,
Speaker 1: you know, people were thirsty for any information about hip
Speaker 1: hop because again in the eighties, hip hop was big.
Speaker 1: You have you know, run DMC and you know many
Speaker 1: others that had had created a huge market, but there
Speaker 1: was no information anywhere. You couldn't find it on the radio, newspapers, TV,
Speaker 1: nothing like that. So people would always call in, when's
Speaker 1: the new you know, Public Enemy album coming out? Or
Speaker 1: who produced that you know remix for EBMD or you know,
Speaker 1: different things like that. So that kind of sparked the idea, Man,
Speaker 1: I can you know, get information from my contacts at
Speaker 1: the different record labels and then put it into a
Speaker 1: newsletter form and sell the advertising on the back. So
Speaker 1: that's what I did. The first issue of The Source
Speaker 1: was one single page yellow sheet, front and back. I
Speaker 1: saw four ads on the back, total of maybe one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty two hundred dollars. But I was happy,
Speaker 1: but crazy and just kept flipping it from there. Remember,
Speaker 1: what it was about. What it was about that first one.
Speaker 1: I mean basically it had a chart of the top
Speaker 1: maybe twenty songs of the month. It had a column
Speaker 1: of news that just kind of had little tidbits of
Speaker 1: different news and information I had. We had like a
Speaker 1: list of sneak preview of upcoming albums when they were
Speaker 1: coming out, concerts coming to town, and like a trivia
Speaker 1: question it was, you know, do you feel that whole page? Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly exactly After college you take your talents to New
Speaker 1: York to try to build your brand. What was the
Speaker 1: ups and downs of of doing that and starting that off? Man, Well,
Speaker 1: so I start the source between my sophomore and junior years,
Speaker 1: so it gets going, you know, into junior year, senior
Speaker 1: year's growing. You know, very quickly I saw, you know,
Speaker 1: the vision of trying to create kind of the Rolling
Speaker 1: Stone for the hip hop generation, because I had been
Speaker 1: given a book on the history of Rolling Stone magazine,
Speaker 1: which I didn't know anything about, but I saw all
Speaker 1: kind of parallels between rock and roll and hip hop
Speaker 1: and how this guy, Yan Winner had created a kind
Speaker 1: of underground newspaper and built it up into you know,
Speaker 1: like the biggest pop culture you know, voice in America
Speaker 1: in the age in the nineties. So I'm like, you know,
Speaker 1: I can do the same thing for hip hop. So quickly,
Speaker 1: you know, it started going to you know, become more
Speaker 1: of a booklet and a magazine, and I began to
Speaker 1: distribute it around the country. I would call up mom
Speaker 1: and pop record stores in every city around the country
Speaker 1: and say, hey, I got this new magazine. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: ship you, you know, ten copies on consignment. You know.
Speaker 1: I would just get it out there and people started
Speaker 1: buying it. And you know, because that was how people
Speaker 1: got information back in the day. You went to your
Speaker 1: local record store. Yeah, that was really the only place
Speaker 1: you can kind of get anything, so the source would
Speaker 1: be right there on the counter. We started selling hundreds
Speaker 1: thousands of copies. So it became, uh, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: in college, but now I got to figure out, how
Speaker 1: do I move to New York, How do I set
Speaker 1: up an officer in New York? How do we start
Speaker 1: kind of paying salaries to ourselves. I was able to
Speaker 1: get maybe four different record companies that really believed in
Speaker 1: what I was doing and the impact that the US
Speaker 1: was having, and I got them to prepay for a
Speaker 1: year worth of ads. So that's how I raised a
Speaker 1: little bit of capital, maybe seventy five eighty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: And that was the capital I used to move to
Speaker 1: New York get things, you know, rolling down there and
Speaker 1: just kept it pushing. Um. I mean New York was
Speaker 1: was incredible. I mean you know that was you know,
Speaker 1: I moved there in nineteen ninety. Um, and you know,
Speaker 1: this is again the height of hip hop. New York
Speaker 1: is still you know, the the central you know, uh
Speaker 1: place of hip hop, although it's obviously you know, getting
Speaker 1: bigger and bigger you know, everywhere else around the country. Um,
Speaker 1: but you know you're you're kind of in the in
Speaker 1: the center of it all the big the big city
Speaker 1: and uh but you know we we uh we just
Speaker 1: took it on and and uh um became great. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I ended up being in New York like
Speaker 1: fifteen years and um, you know, just a great, great experience.
Speaker 1: But like you know, a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: challenges along the way. But you know, or did you
Speaker 1: get and I said, there's a old respect did you
Speaker 1: get any pushback you know, respectably being a white man
Speaker 1: trying to kind of I mean, you set the tone
Speaker 1: for you know, hip hop information getting out. There was
Speaker 1: there any pushback because of sure, you like there was
Speaker 1: there was some pushback in the beginning, Like when when
Speaker 1: I was still at Harvard, I had three other partners
Speaker 1: that were Harvard students, but my first partner, his name
Speaker 1: was John Scheckter, and he was white and also Jewish. Um.
Speaker 1: So there was like stories coming out, you know, the
Speaker 1: two Jewish guys from Harvard started Hip Hop Magazine, and
Speaker 1: so some people were you know obviously like hold up,
Speaker 1: hold up, um. But you know, I always let the
Speaker 1: magazine speak for itself, you know, the credibility or the magazine,
Speaker 1: the way that I ran the company from the beginning
Speaker 1: to the end, you know, and the commitment that I
Speaker 1: had to uh, you know, to the culture and to
Speaker 1: keeping it real and you know, not being afraid to
Speaker 1: you know, get into the you know, into the mud
Speaker 1: and deal with what comes with with with that to
Speaker 1: be you know, really accurate about things. So in you know,
Speaker 1: in the early time, a lot of people began to
Speaker 1: endorse the source, you know, Caress One and all kinds
Speaker 1: of you know, he became like a contributing editor or
Speaker 1: something that those the source in the early days, and
Speaker 1: John Singleton and different people that you know were getting involved.
Speaker 1: So you know that really brought more credibility when when
Speaker 1: you get those kind of stamps from people. But it
Speaker 1: was the work, you know, it was the work that
Speaker 1: spoke for itself. And I was always in the background anyway.
Speaker 1: I was always a guy that you know, just kind
Speaker 1: of wanted to be in the back and be head
Speaker 1: down focused on building you know this uh, you know
Speaker 1: this empire. You started legendary columns like the five Mics.
Speaker 1: I got a homeboe. His name is five mics right now,
Speaker 1: but m and a lot of people rated themselves. I
Speaker 1: was in rating music off that five mics standard. How
Speaker 1: did you start that? Um well, five mics started like
Speaker 1: early nineties. It actually the first we started with the
Speaker 1: rating system for albums that was one to five. But
Speaker 1: in the beginning it wasn't actually mikes. It was like
Speaker 1: these little broken kind of record images. But we had
Speaker 1: the rankings from like whack as number one all the
Speaker 1: way up to a hip hop classic number five five rating.
Speaker 1: So maybe a year or so in the idea, somebody
Speaker 1: on on my editorial team came up the idea to
Speaker 1: change it to to mikes, and you know, we had
Speaker 1: the logo that the Source was known for the hand
Speaker 1: holding the microphone. So yeah, it just became you know,
Speaker 1: it became the standard in the industry. I mean again,
Speaker 1: I think it was just, you know, the Source was
Speaker 1: a place where people that really loved hip hop, you know,
Speaker 1: could have an opportunity to you know, get involved in
Speaker 1: the business of journalism and media, whether they were writers, editors, photographers,
Speaker 1: graphic designers on the business side, you know, executives, advertising production.
Speaker 1: And you know, the whole office in those days was
Speaker 1: under twenty five years old, like it was nobody over
Speaker 1: twenty five and the Source quickly became you know, like
Speaker 1: just that place. People would come and want to just
Speaker 1: roll up in the office and you know, people would
Speaker 1: smoke in the office or out in the stairwell or whatever,
Speaker 1: and uh it was just a you know, just a
Speaker 1: cool vibe. So a lot of a lot of artists
Speaker 1: would come up to the office. I remember Ice Cue,
Speaker 1: you know, coming up in the in the early days
Speaker 1: and like, hey, he wants to play us his album,
Speaker 1: and you know, everybody gathered around the conference room when
Speaker 1: he's playing his album. And so people really you know
Speaker 1: respected the Source, just because again we you know, the
Speaker 1: way that we wrote about stuff, people really felt like
Speaker 1: it came from people that really understood, you know. And
Speaker 1: unfortunately that's that's going back to breakbeating what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to do now. It's like you don't really have that today. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, most of the people that are in the
Speaker 1: media space, you know, I don't feel a lot of
Speaker 1: them are really uh, you know, committed to the culture.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, it's become you know,
Speaker 1: just a business for everybody and a hustle or what
Speaker 1: have you. And you know, we've lost some of that
Speaker 1: authenticity and that integrity, um, and things that will help
Speaker 1: to unify the community and the culture better. You know,
Speaker 1: every artist in the nineties one in five mics. People
Speaker 1: will go into the studio to make an album, and
Speaker 1: that was their goal. I'm going to get a five
Speaker 1: mic album. I got to come up with something that
Speaker 1: the Source is going to give five mics to. So
Speaker 1: you know, people were always uh, you know, coming at
Speaker 1: us and and um, you know, we got a lot
Speaker 1: of things right, you know. You know, we became famous
Speaker 1: with Naas for example, you know, with Illmatic, you know,
Speaker 1: we gave him a stamp very early on because at
Speaker 1: the time he dropped Illmatic. He you know, he had
Speaker 1: a little buzz, but it wasn't like it was crazy
Speaker 1: at the time, and the source you know, five mics
Speaker 1: stamp like gave him that boost, you know, the Launch's
Speaker 1: career before that, you know, Tribal Quests they got five mics.
Speaker 1: Taylor's Soul u Cube had got one as a few
Speaker 1: more glad album bet sure man, But we made we
Speaker 1: made some mistakes too, like you know, the Chronic I
Speaker 1: still take pride in it. We gave it four and
Speaker 1: a half mics is obviously a five mic album. Um,
Speaker 1: we did go back some years later and revised ratings
Speaker 1: just you know, we had to just kind of I
Speaker 1: don't recall about Southern playlistic. I mean, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: Southern playlist. He is an incredible classic album, I mean,
Speaker 1: and so influential. I mean Outcasts as a whole is
Speaker 1: such an influential, uh you know group in the evolution
Speaker 1: of hip hop and what they brought to the table
Speaker 1: and the doors that they opened. Um, and they made
Speaker 1: amazing music. But I think they got five mics. Forum
Speaker 1: Stankonia or I'm forgetting, but they definitely got a five mic.
Speaker 1: They didn't get it on or Southern playalistic, but they
Speaker 1: did get it. Yeah. Was there was there a time
Speaker 1: or a cover or anything where you felt like, okay,
Speaker 1: like we're here, where we are official? Was there a
Speaker 1: point of time when you felt like that. Yeah. You know,
Speaker 1: it's hard because, like I was beginning, I'm the guy
Speaker 1: that like never stopped to like, oh man, we made it,
Speaker 1: or you know, I'm already on the next five moves
Speaker 1: down the road. So it's like, I don't really I
Speaker 1: wasn't taking the time to really sit back and say, man,
Speaker 1: But I can say one of the most you know,
Speaker 1: kind of exciting moments for me in that era was
Speaker 1: the first time I heard Juicy playing on a radio
Speaker 1: in New York and with Big, you know, shouting out
Speaker 1: the source miles every time I face is up in
Speaker 1: the Source. Now we had to scu Big. That's another
Speaker 1: legendary column from the magazine is the Unsigned Hype column.
Speaker 1: You know, we we're the ones that reviewed Big demo
Speaker 1: tape that he made just for the Source, and mister
Speaker 1: C brought it up to us put him in Unsigned
Speaker 1: Hype and maybe March of ninety two, a few months later, well,
Speaker 1: a few weeks later, I get a call from Diddy
Speaker 1: Puffy at the time, who's telling me about his new
Speaker 1: imprint deal that he's been given at Uptown. You know,
Speaker 1: he was in our uptown and that he was looking
Speaker 1: for rappers. So I called up my boy, Mattie C.
Speaker 1: Maddie is the guy who really ran the Unsigned Hype
Speaker 1: column for years and was the one who picked a
Speaker 1: lot of the big names that came through that column,
Speaker 1: including Biggie. So I told him. Matt was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we just put big you know in the magazine. Let's
Speaker 1: get him that And Matt ended up bringing the tape
Speaker 1: to him and he I signed, you know, a few
Speaker 1: weeks later. So y'all connected the dots between Big, Impup, Absolutely,
Speaker 1: Common Mob, Deep, DMX, all those type of guys, Higned,
Speaker 1: eminem Component, Noriega, David Banner, Joel Santana, Jail Electronica, Pitbull,
Speaker 1: Joel Ortiz. There's a few more I'm forgetting, But yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a very legendary column and it's actually the
Speaker 1: subject of the first documentary audio series that Breakbeat is
Speaker 1: releasing in the next month or so, The history of
Speaker 1: the source. Well, we're doing Unsigned Hype History of the
Speaker 1: sources is coming soon. As I say, that's not all,
Speaker 1: you know, that's something that we need to talk about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: got be talking more about that. Come on bringing out
Speaker 1: the show time. But the story of Unsigned Hype is
Speaker 1: called um it Was All a Dream, The Untold Story
Speaker 1: of Unsigned Hype. It's an eight episode limited series. We
Speaker 1: tell the whole story. You know, how do we get
Speaker 1: Biggies dem or how did he get the deal? What
Speaker 1: was going on? And you know Common's life and you
Speaker 1: learn so much because this is parts of their lives
Speaker 1: that people don't really know. I haven't really heard these
Speaker 1: stories before they got signed or right when they get signed.
Speaker 1: So I'm really excited. We just finished that and we're
Speaker 1: getting ready to put that out and we have more oops.
Speaker 1: We have more in that vein coming behind it. I'm
Speaker 1: also been working for over a year now on the
Speaker 1: Larry Hoover Life Story. You know, we're the first to
Speaker 1: ever get the authorized rights to Larry's life story. You know,
Speaker 1: that's going to be an eight to ten part audio
Speaker 1: documentary as well. So I've been in Chicago, you know first,
Speaker 1: you know, hand like right on the scene with his
Speaker 1: family and a lot of his people helping, you know,
Speaker 1: get that together. But such an important, untold story also
Speaker 1: that I'm really really proud and excited we're going to
Speaker 1: be bringing later this year to everybody. Rest in piece,
Speaker 1: First and foremost to DMX, one of my favorite artists.
Speaker 1: When you first heard DMX, what was your thoughts? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I didn't really I don't really remember hearing
Speaker 1: his demo. So the thing with DMX is, and you'll
Speaker 1: hear it when you listen if you listen to the
Speaker 1: podcast we had. We played some of his early music
Speaker 1: that was brought to us. He sounded totally different. We
Speaker 1: put him in unsigned hype, I believe in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1: He didn't get on until like ninety seven ninety eight really,
Speaker 1: so his career went through a lot of ups and downs,
Speaker 1: different record deals before he kind of landed with Rough
Speaker 1: Riders and Deaf Jam. So we had him an unsigned
Speaker 1: hype before he really got with the Rough Riders. So
Speaker 1: when you listen to his demo back then, his voice
Speaker 1: is totally you know, and his style is totally different.
Speaker 1: So I don't really remember hearing DMX until like, you know,
Speaker 1: get Out of Your Dog came out and you know,
Speaker 1: he's one of the most amazing artists of all time.
Speaker 1: I mean so prolific, so talented, such a gifted, you know,
Speaker 1: lyricist and just you know, storyteller and and just figure.
Speaker 1: And it's you know, obviously a huge, huge loss to
Speaker 1: hip to have him pass away. So yeah, rest in
Speaker 1: peace to any stories you can share with us, some
Speaker 1: behind the scenes of any photos, photo shoots, iconic photo
Speaker 1: shoots you've got, Um, well, let me see. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I like to go back to The Doctor Dre and
Speaker 1: The Chronic because even though we only gave it four
Speaker 1: and a half mics, we did that like before it
Speaker 1: came out. Okay, I remember getting the Chronic uh an
Speaker 1: advanced copy of some songs. Now at this time, you know,
Speaker 1: Dre had left NWA. People didn't really know what was
Speaker 1: going on with him. He didn't you know, have a
Speaker 1: deal he had gotten with Sugar and they were, you know,
Speaker 1: making this album. Um, and it ends up coming to
Speaker 1: me and I'm like, man, you know this is going
Speaker 1: to be amazing, Like we got to put Dre on
Speaker 1: the cover. You know, I started making calls. I ended
Speaker 1: up having to fly out to LA and got introduced
Speaker 1: to Sug and had to basically go sit with him
Speaker 1: and convince him like, hey, lets the Source have his
Speaker 1: first cover. You know, we loved this album. We want
Speaker 1: to be behind you, you know from the jump, and he,
Speaker 1: you know, he blessed it and we ended up doing
Speaker 1: that photo shoot with with Doctor Dre with the gun
Speaker 1: to his head. That's one of my favorite and one
Speaker 1: of the most classic, uh images of the Source covers
Speaker 1: of all time. H So that was you know, I
Speaker 1: was out there for that cover shoot and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it was definitely like a view into some of the
Speaker 1: la you know, life and culture having you know, sug
Speaker 1: and all the guys that we that So, yeah, that was.
Speaker 1: That was definitely a one of the one of the
Speaker 1: memorable ones. You're in the you're in the midst of
Speaker 1: building uh you know, a hip hop monster machine. Um,
Speaker 1: you end up partnering or coming together with Benzino. Can
Speaker 1: you speak to the early partnership that you guys had developed. Sure? Um,
Speaker 1: so when I'm in Boston, like I was saying doing
Speaker 1: my radio show, Um, Benzino is part of a local
Speaker 1: rap group that was big in the city and they
Speaker 1: were putting out their own records independently. So Um. I
Speaker 1: had gone down to one of their shows, introduced myself
Speaker 1: to the crew and it it was like, you know, you guys,
Speaker 1: come on up to the radio station and do an interview.
Speaker 1: That's how we all met. UM started to become friends.
Speaker 1: His DJ at the time, my man Well, he was
Speaker 1: known as Deaf Jeff back then. Um. He ended up
Speaker 1: joining the radio show and becoming our official DJ for
Speaker 1: a street bat. Um and I liked their music, so
Speaker 1: I was trying to help them with their music. I
Speaker 1: ended up getting them their first record deal with Tommy
Speaker 1: Boy Records. So you know, he was a friend and
Speaker 1: someone that I was working with on the music side
Speaker 1: in the early days. He really didn't have an interest
Speaker 1: at that time in the source. He was focused on
Speaker 1: what he was doing, the music and everything else. But
Speaker 1: we stayed friends. When I left Boston moved to New York,
Speaker 1: we stayed in touch and I continued to help him
Speaker 1: with the music. Got them, you know, deal at Flavor
Speaker 1: Unit Records, a deal with RCA Records with Steve Stout,
Speaker 1: different things like that. So there came a time in
Speaker 1: around ninety four, late ninety ninety four where I had
Speaker 1: a dispute with two of my original Harvard partners that
Speaker 1: were the editors of the magazine. They had been kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, putting The Source, in my opinion, in a
Speaker 1: bad light because I felt like the success of The
Speaker 1: Source was going to their heads and instead of being
Speaker 1: this kind of supportive voice for the culture and the artists,
Speaker 1: we were starting to get into these kind of personal
Speaker 1: beefs with artists. A lot of people don't remember this,
Speaker 1: but in ninety three ninety four, you know, Public Enemy
Speaker 1: made a music video depicting them trashing the officers of
Speaker 1: the Sauce magazine, and you know Snoop had gone on
Speaker 1: BT and was like, you know, fuck the Source. And
Speaker 1: Cypress Hill, who was another group that we really helped
Speaker 1: discover and helped blow them up at the early stages
Speaker 1: of their careers. They end up touring the country burning
Speaker 1: copies of The Source on stage because of things that
Speaker 1: in my opinion were unprofessional by the writers and editors
Speaker 1: of the magazine. And so we started to have a
Speaker 1: dispute behind that, the Iced Tea conflict. We had a
Speaker 1: big conflict with Iced Tea over cop killer that went
Speaker 1: public so ultra Lee. That led to a situation where
Speaker 1: the editors stage to walk out on me and put out,
Speaker 1: you know, basically a press release and said, you know,
Speaker 1: Dave May's has to step down. He's doing all these
Speaker 1: terrible things, and you know, we're not going to work
Speaker 1: anymore until Dave May steps down. And it got like
Speaker 1: a petition of writers and journalists, um, you know, to
Speaker 1: to sign this petition. Um. So I ended up getting
Speaker 1: through this. It was you know, very challenging time, but
Speaker 1: I was able to basically replace my staff. I brought
Speaker 1: in some amazing new writers and editors, people like Selwyn
Speaker 1: Hines and Carlito Rodriguez and um, you know many others
Speaker 1: that are still doing incredible things, you know in media
Speaker 1: and the culture today. Um. But it was a time where, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I was feeling a tremendous amount of disloyalty
Speaker 1: from people that you know, I had put on you know,
Speaker 1: I started, So I put these guys down, gave everybody
Speaker 1: you know, percentages, that type of thing. So when they left,
Speaker 1: I kind of reached a point where I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I think Penzano, I think you could you know,
Speaker 1: help me with the source now, and he kind of
Speaker 1: helped me. Had kind of had my back during that
Speaker 1: time because things got a little bit you know rough
Speaker 1: at that at that moment, and that's when I said,
Speaker 1: hey man, you know, I want to you know, give
Speaker 1: you some interest with me in this, and you know,
Speaker 1: have you come on board? So this is around ninety
Speaker 1: five ninety six is when he starts to get involved
Speaker 1: in the Source, and you know, he basically worked with
Speaker 1: me for maybe another ten years until you know, we
Speaker 1: all left. We both left the Source in two thousand
Speaker 1: and six. Um, what was your point of view? Because
Speaker 1: you guys were right kind of in the midst of it.
Speaker 1: The social word started in two thousand, excuse me, nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one. Plenty of iconic performances and moments in hip
Speaker 1: hop history, but particular one that stands out is the
Speaker 1: East Coast West Coast Beef. What was your point of
Speaker 1: view on it? Because you guys are literally writing the
Speaker 1: thick of it. Yeah, definitely, definitely. Well, this is the
Speaker 1: type of thing that me and Stack were talking the
Speaker 1: other day about the importance of documenting our history properly
Speaker 1: and how it's not being done accurately. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of misconceptions around this. You know, I haven't told
Speaker 1: my story yet. I'm you know, part of what I'm
Speaker 1: doing now with this new platform is you know, bringing
Speaker 1: my voice out a little more coming and doing stuff
Speaker 1: like this, and working on other projects that are going
Speaker 1: to tell my story and the story of the Source.
Speaker 1: So the Source Awards was an idea that I came
Speaker 1: up with in the early nineties. You know, hip hop
Speaker 1: was being disrespected across the board. It was super popular,
Speaker 1: like I was saying earlier, you know, he was selling
Speaker 1: millions of records, but it was being disrespected across the
Speaker 1: board by anything in the mainstream, the Grammys, any type
Speaker 1: of awards or institutions for music. Old body took it seriously.
Speaker 1: So the idea was, you know, let's create a platform
Speaker 1: where we can really honor and celebrate these amazing, you
Speaker 1: know contributions that people are making, artists, producers, DJs, all
Speaker 1: the different parts you know that we're contributing to the culture.
Speaker 1: So it started like as a column in the magazine
Speaker 1: at the end of the year. It was like, we're
Speaker 1: going to name the best artist of the year, the
Speaker 1: best album of the year. And I brought that column
Speaker 1: to the guy who was producing your MTV raps at
Speaker 1: the time, and I said, hey, let's do a segment
Speaker 1: on your MTV raps where we give out these awards,
Speaker 1: and they agreed. So the very first Source Awards were
Speaker 1: given out I think in the spring of ninety two
Speaker 1: on your MTV raps over the course of the day
Speaker 1: or two and we just had these little trophies and
Speaker 1: people came on and got them. But that was a start.
Speaker 1: Then a guy named Mike Elliott had joined working with
Speaker 1: me at the Source. Shout out to Mike. He's done
Speaker 1: amazing things. Also, Mike is the the writer of Brown
Speaker 1: Sugar the movie, and he's done many other things in
Speaker 1: Hollywood and continuing too. But he got involved, and he
Speaker 1: and I came up with the plan to like actually
Speaker 1: take the Source Awards and make it into a real
Speaker 1: event with thousands of people. And we rented out the
Speaker 1: Paramount Theater at Madison Square Garden in nineteen ninety four
Speaker 1: and you know, put on an incredible show. There's only
Speaker 1: a little bit of footage that still exists from that
Speaker 1: that night out there, but you know, Tupac was there
Speaker 1: at that first awards. I mean, everybody from Hip Hop, Run, DMC,
Speaker 1: you know, Wu Tang, the list goes on. It was just,
Speaker 1: you know, it was an idea like, hey, I'm going
Speaker 1: to bring all of these different parts of the hip
Speaker 1: hop world together in one place that's never been done,
Speaker 1: never been done. It never been done. And I was
Speaker 1: really the only person that had those relationships. Because you know,
Speaker 1: the Source gets some flags. Sometimes people try to say
Speaker 1: we were biased towards the East Coast or what have you,
Speaker 1: but we actually, you know, went out of our way
Speaker 1: to recognize hip hop coming from other parts of the country. Um,
Speaker 1: from very very early on. You can go back to
Speaker 1: the earliest issues of the Source in the eighties, late eighties,
Speaker 1: and you'll see the coverage we gave to you know,
Speaker 1: certain mix a lot or you know NWA or different
Speaker 1: people coming from other parts of the country. UM. So
Speaker 1: you know I had the relationships with the you know,
Speaker 1: the Puffies, the Sugs, the Jay Princes, the you know,
Speaker 1: all the different players at the time to be able
Speaker 1: to kind of get us on the same accord like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, we want to do this for for hip hop.
Speaker 1: Let's have a show of our own that we can
Speaker 1: really you know, celebrate. So that's how it started. Um.
Speaker 1: The second year ninety five is the one that you're
Speaker 1: talking about. That's the probably you know, one of the
Speaker 1: most famous ones of course, um and that was the
Speaker 1: first televised Source Awards. I paid a syndicator um to
Speaker 1: get it out on to uh, you know, different affiliate
Speaker 1: stations and all the major markets you know, NBC, Fox
Speaker 1: affiliates and different cities. And that's how I got the
Speaker 1: first Source Awards televised sold sponsorships to pay for it.
Speaker 1: But that show in particular, you know, this whole idea
Speaker 1: of the East West and everything that happened, there's there's
Speaker 1: so many layers, you know, to that. But one of
Speaker 1: the narratives that I want to make sure gets you know, corrected,
Speaker 1: is you know, people kind of try to blame the source,
Speaker 1: like we kind of the whole East West thing started
Speaker 1: at the Source Awards that night with the sugar and
Speaker 1: the puffy stuff. But I mean the East West thing
Speaker 1: as a whole. In hip hop goes back to the
Speaker 1: late eighties, okay. You know, the Ghetto Boys and other
Speaker 1: people were making songs basically you know, saying, fuck New York, y'all,
Speaker 1: don't play our music, y'all, don't give us no respect.
Speaker 1: You know, that kind of back and forth have been
Speaker 1: going on for some years now. You know, the Death
Speaker 1: Row bad Boy beef was a whole different you know,
Speaker 1: a whole different thing. Um that kind of gets lumped
Speaker 1: into this idea of East West, but you know, it
Speaker 1: really came down to, you know, to a personal beef
Speaker 1: that developed between Shug and Poc and Big and Puff.
Speaker 1: But that night, going into that awards, there was no
Speaker 1: like concern, like there wasn't any beef or any you know,
Speaker 1: at that point, you know, there was no back for
Speaker 1: Poc was in jail. He had been talking to his
Speaker 1: shit about you know, Big and stuff from jail and
Speaker 1: he was mad. But but nobody knew he was joining
Speaker 1: Death Row. That yeah, he got out like a month
Speaker 1: later after the Source Awards, and that's when now you
Speaker 1: see Sugar shout him out. You know, we want to
Speaker 1: tell Tupac keep your guards of So you kind of
Speaker 1: got a hint that you know, he was it was
Speaker 1: cool with him, but nobody knew that that was going
Speaker 1: to happen. So, um, you know that night to me, Um,
Speaker 1: you know a lot of people, you know, Sugar has
Speaker 1: has been given a bad name and image over the
Speaker 1: years by a lot of media outlets, and so people
Speaker 1: tend to blame him. One of the things that I
Speaker 1: think contributed to that night when Puff performed because death Row.
Speaker 1: First of all, Sugar Knight was the biggest supporter of
Speaker 1: that Source Award. For me, I went to all these
Speaker 1: guys and you know, you know, rounded them up to
Speaker 1: support it. But sug actually put up a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars to build that set the opening show where it
Speaker 1: is like the jail cell. You know, that was crazy.
Speaker 1: So you know for us, that made the show on
Speaker 1: TV look like a million dollars. And you know, he
Speaker 1: was the only one that really put up that kind
Speaker 1: of money, um, you know, and put it into helping
Speaker 1: us with the show. So you know, I had given
Speaker 1: him a lot of tickets, you know, like maybe sixty
Speaker 1: seventy tickets that night. You know, I did all the
Speaker 1: seating charts for every Source Award, so I'm knowing where
Speaker 1: everybody's sitting and trying to manage manage that. But again,
Speaker 1: there was no concern going into that. But Bad Boy
Speaker 1: gave an amazing performance that night as well. Craig mac
Speaker 1: Big fathe total you know, legendary performance. But if you
Speaker 1: look back at the beginning of that performance, segment Puff
Speaker 1: comes out. He kneels down in the middle of the
Speaker 1: stage under a spotlight, and he starts talking and he
Speaker 1: says something to the fact of, you know, I live
Speaker 1: in the East and I'll die in the East to me,
Speaker 1: and I haven't had a chance to ask sug and
Speaker 1: I planned to ask him one of these days. But
Speaker 1: in my mind, that's something that that Sugar was probably
Speaker 1: sitting there like, oh, really, okay, you live in the East,
Speaker 1: down the East, okay, Because it was shortly after that
Speaker 1: when he got called up to stage and made the
Speaker 1: comments like you know about that, so I think he
Speaker 1: was just talking shit or whatever. He definitely wasn't like
Speaker 1: scared or worry. He goes video because like I said,
Speaker 1: he had he had maybe seventy tickets puff for them,
Speaker 1: had maybe twenty twenty five tickets, so you know, he
Speaker 1: knew he was in there deep and he wasn't really
Speaker 1: worried about it. Of course, you know, there was some
Speaker 1: you know, I was walking around the theater when that happened,
Speaker 1: and you know, I get to you know, call like
Speaker 1: you know, back here, and I'm rushing backstage and there's
Speaker 1: all kinds of chaos going on, but there was no
Speaker 1: you know, violence, there was no beef. No punches were
Speaker 1: thrown that night, you know, as you guys saw, you know,
Speaker 1: Puff came out and kind of took the high road,
Speaker 1: and credit credit him, you know for that. But the
Speaker 1: back to the original question, the real beef starts between them.
Speaker 1: And this is also maybe a month or so later
Speaker 1: in Atlanta right here when Jake Big Jake, who was
Speaker 1: an executive for death Row excuse me, one of Sugars homeboys,
Speaker 1: but he I knew Jake, Jake Roboles rest in Peace.
Speaker 1: I knew him very well because we worked together on
Speaker 1: marketing and things for the label and the source, and
Speaker 1: he was a cool ass dude. And he's the one
Speaker 1: that got killed down here allegedly by Kitties Man Wolwolf
Speaker 1: or somebody around them that night. That's when the beef
Speaker 1: became a violent thing and it escalated dramatically from there.
Speaker 1: And that had nothing to do with the source of war.
Speaker 1: BMF had something to do that. That was all a
Speaker 1: BMF night. That was a big old whole bunch of stuff.
Speaker 1: So I started that night, That's where it started. And
Speaker 1: the source was always the media outlet, like we were concerned,
Speaker 1: like we're not trying to put out like incendiary things
Speaker 1: just to sell magazines. If you go back and you
Speaker 1: look at the Source, I put sugar on the cover
Speaker 1: and this is in the height of the beef going
Speaker 1: on in mid ninety six. On the cover of the Source,
Speaker 1: it's a class of cover Sugar in front of the
Speaker 1: Rose Royce in the red suit. But if you look
Speaker 1: at the words on the cover, it says Sugar night quote.
Speaker 1: This ain't no East West thing. So like that was
Speaker 1: my thing, Like, let me put that message up front
Speaker 1: and center to try to diffuse things. And you know
Speaker 1: that type of thing. Now, Vibe Magazine was the ones
Speaker 1: that were putting out kind of stuff versus West on
Speaker 1: the cover and like hyping shit up. And you know
Speaker 1: a lot of people blame them, but sometimes they try
Speaker 1: to throw the Source in the mix. So I gotta
Speaker 1: make sure that people know, you know, the differences that
Speaker 1: were there and the way. It just comes back to
Speaker 1: the way these businesses and these magazines and media outlets
Speaker 1: we'll run. You know, one of the things I take
Speaker 1: the most pride in and continue to is being independent.
Speaker 1: You know, the Source was started. I had two hundred
Speaker 1: dollars to run that first news letter off never took
Speaker 1: any investors, just kept flipping it one issue after another.
Speaker 1: So I was able to build this company up and
Speaker 1: own it one hundred percent, you know, all the way
Speaker 1: up until the late nineteen nineties, never had to take
Speaker 1: loans or investors, and that gave the Source a lot
Speaker 1: of control, you know, because we were very influential, but
Speaker 1: we didn't have to answer to anybody. We didn't have
Speaker 1: some corporate backer that was going to come in and
Speaker 1: say you can't do this, you can't into that, or whatever.
Speaker 1: So that's that's one of the things that was really
Speaker 1: important with the Source was that I was able to
Speaker 1: build it into something big and remain independent and put
Speaker 1: a lot of people on, you know, put a lot
Speaker 1: of people on. Not just through Unsigned Height, of course
Speaker 1: we went down the list of those, but there's many
Speaker 1: many other people that got discovered through the Source. I
Speaker 1: discovered Tyson Beckford, a supermodel, put him in his first,
Speaker 1: you know, little fashion page in the Source in the
Speaker 1: early nineties. I was how his modeling career got started.
Speaker 1: I discovered Aaron McGruder of the Boondocks. He was doing
Speaker 1: a cartoon for University of Maryland's newspaper that I've seen
Speaker 1: and I was like Boom, I put him in the
Speaker 1: Sources national platform and he got his you know, newspaper
Speaker 1: deals and everything else. You know, a lot of like
Speaker 1: I mentioned a few of the people that worked at
Speaker 1: the Source already, and then there's you know, different women
Speaker 1: like Dream Hampton who's become a very successful author and
Speaker 1: TV producer, and Karen to Mayou and many many, many others.
Speaker 1: So yeah, those those are some of the things that
Speaker 1: I really you know, take a lot of pride in
Speaker 1: and trying to kind of reinvent and bring back into
Speaker 1: this new age with what I'm doing now with Breakbeat.
Speaker 1: As you see, the unfortunate kind of beefs continue to
Speaker 1: escalate and then turn tragic, you know, obviously losing Big
Speaker 1: and Pock, and then fast forward everything between then and
Speaker 1: til now we know recently lost Takeoff, Rest in Peace,
Speaker 1: we have the YSL trial. What do you feel like
Speaker 1: the state of hip hop? The music first and foremost,
Speaker 1: but then obviously the beefs and to me, the unnecessary
Speaker 1: violence behind it. Yeah. Um, you know, there's a few
Speaker 1: different things that at play here. I mean, the music
Speaker 1: aspect of hip hop has become you know, corporate driven
Speaker 1: for a long time now, the corporations. There's a handful
Speaker 1: few companies that control all music distribution in the world
Speaker 1: at the end of the day. And you know, they,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, the music companies found a way to
Speaker 1: control hip hop in the early two thousands and up
Speaker 1: till today. And you know, I think there's still the
Speaker 1: you know, it still comes. You know, there's still an authenticity.
Speaker 1: It's still coming from people that are speaking you know,
Speaker 1: their pain, their struggle, their you know, whatever they're going through.
Speaker 1: You know. But um, you know, I just think that
Speaker 1: that between the way the music industry has sort of
Speaker 1: pushed a certain style of music, I think that's how
Speaker 1: a negative impact. But the deeper issue is just you know,
Speaker 1: America racism, systemic racism, all that it's done to contribute
Speaker 1: to the poverty and the other conditions of our inner
Speaker 1: cities and of many of our you know, poor black communities. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, you look at what hip hop was
Speaker 1: talking about in the late eighties and nineties with fuck
Speaker 1: the Police and you know, bringing life destruction. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: for a self destruction another one of those. But then
Speaker 1: you look, you know, twenty thirty years later, and things
Speaker 1: are the same or worse than they've ever been. And
Speaker 1: to me, that's a that's a failure on hip hop's part.
Speaker 1: You know, hip hop as a business, you're talking about
Speaker 1: a multi billion dollar business. These resources should be being
Speaker 1: put back into these communities where you know, hip hop
Speaker 1: kind of originates and where again that kind of raw
Speaker 1: energy that really still fuel as hip hop comes from.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, I think it's just it's a
Speaker 1: reflection of what's going on, you know, in in our
Speaker 1: impoverished communities and the gun violence, you know, the increase
Speaker 1: of gun violence, and you know, the breakdown of of
Speaker 1: of structure and a lot of these cities. You know,
Speaker 1: look at Chicago and what they did taking out you know,
Speaker 1: the Larry Hoovers and other leadership and you know kind
Speaker 1: of designed a pathway to create more more chaos out here.
Speaker 1: So I think hip hop needs something like what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do with Breakbeat, you know, to bring a
Speaker 1: kind of you know, different perspective to create a you know,
Speaker 1: an outlet where you know, voices that maybe aren't being
Speaker 1: heard can be heard. Um, you know, I'm doing it
Speaker 1: through a lot of influencers right now and social media
Speaker 1: folks who have been admiring you know, over the years
Speaker 1: on social media and see a talent in them to
Speaker 1: kind of become you know, successful in the podcasting game.
Speaker 1: And uh, we're going to be getting more into the
Speaker 1: music aspect of it with some some new shows that
Speaker 1: we have coming up as well. Um So, but I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we need you know, better leadership, better you know,
Speaker 1: awakening uh to and finding ways to connect those dots
Speaker 1: so we can become more unified. If if we can
Speaker 1: connect the dots between the fifteen and the fifty five
Speaker 1: years old people that have all grown up on hip
Speaker 1: hop and still have a certain passion and love for
Speaker 1: this culture, uh and bring them together, we can really
Speaker 1: affect change in a much greater way than we have.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if I answered it took it directly,
Speaker 1: but you know, I kind of have a bigger picture
Speaker 1: kind of view on that stuff. I mean, we really
Speaker 1: want to, you know, give you your flowers for being
Speaker 1: a troupe laser in the hip hop culture. I think
Speaker 1: what you brought to this community obviously it hadn't been
Speaker 1: done or seen. And your ability to be able to
Speaker 1: galvanize and bring everybody together like you said, you know,
Speaker 1: you were in touch with a lot of the people
Speaker 1: they were kind of running the shows, and you were
Speaker 1: someone they were able to get them together. So I mean,
Speaker 1: we really want to, you know, obviously give you your
Speaker 1: flowers for your imprint on what you did and continue
Speaker 1: to do for the hip hop culture in the community. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I want to say this today to like you
Speaker 1: do need your flowers because in the day of hip
Speaker 1: hop and day and time's too many people that we
Speaker 1: can said as culture vulchers, but you are. You were
Speaker 1: more of the of the door opener for a lot
Speaker 1: of people in hip hop, you know, and I and you,
Speaker 1: I can't wait till we hopefully get a chance to
Speaker 1: tell your story and you tell your story because it's
Speaker 1: going to be beneficial for hip hop for the younger
Speaker 1: generation to understand how it started. You know, a lot
Speaker 1: of the ups and downs of the artists that we
Speaker 1: look at and that we know about how they got
Speaker 1: they started. A lot I don't even know that. They
Speaker 1: just think now like all you got to do is
Speaker 1: put them on SoundCloud and you become a big rapper.
Speaker 1: That's what you can do now, you know. But when
Speaker 1: they hear about the biggest the DM makes the stories,
Speaker 1: the guys that are pioneers to to this hip hop game.
Speaker 1: I think it's important that that you tell little stories,
Speaker 1: so I can't wait to hear it. But I want
Speaker 1: to give your flowers as well. Yeah, I mean the thing,
Speaker 1: if you look at what I'm doing with Breakbeat, I
Speaker 1: am doing those kind of documentary things, But the first
Speaker 1: stuff that's popping right now is, you know, don't call
Speaker 1: me white girl, Funny Marco Cornbread TV. You were just
Speaker 1: with us Bubba Dug a couple of days ago, shown
Speaker 1: mug Boy. I just did a show that's gonna be
Speaker 1: our premier show coming up soon, trash Talk. So again
Speaker 1: finding these voices out there that are like just really
Speaker 1: talented and bringing them out and these are people that
Speaker 1: are connecting with the younger generations more. That was emjoying
Speaker 1: to me. Yeah, with Breakbeats, to make sure that the
Speaker 1: younger people connect with us and respect what we're doing. First,
Speaker 1: you don't try to shove the history down their throats
Speaker 1: or whatever. I think the interest is there, but a
Speaker 1: lot of times it comes off as like you're trying
Speaker 1: to make people. You know, you have to let them
Speaker 1: kind of find it and on their own in a sense.
Speaker 1: So Yeah. That's that's really key with breakbeat is you know,
Speaker 1: letting people know we got all these shows that they
Speaker 1: are watching now that that that they love, and we're
Speaker 1: going to be adding more to that roster. Um, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna be just mixing it up with you know,
Speaker 1: the history, the classic and the current hip hop? Is
Speaker 1: hip hop fifty this year? It is fifty, right, I
Speaker 1: mean what does that mean to you? Knowing that you
Speaker 1: had a huge part in just kind of everything we
Speaker 1: discussed on this interview. UM. I mean it's it's definitely
Speaker 1: a landmark UM, and I'm excited about it. But I,
Speaker 1: like I was saying before, my mind is like where
Speaker 1: we need to be a few years from now, Like,
Speaker 1: because like I said, hip hop, Yeah, it's in a
Speaker 1: great place commercially, you know, as far as generating money
Speaker 1: for individuals that are participating in it, but it's not
Speaker 1: at a great place you know, holistically as something that
Speaker 1: can really be a force for change in the community
Speaker 1: and more of a movement for change like it was
Speaker 1: in its earlier days. I still think we can bring
Speaker 1: bring that back. You just got to go and create
Speaker 1: that platform. It's going to start to open people's minds
Speaker 1: up to seeing and feeling about things that way and
Speaker 1: seeing these commonalities that we have. So yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to see where we are, you know in five years,
Speaker 1: hopefully hip hop can really be making a change in
Speaker 1: a bigger way to you know, like I said, some
Speaker 1: of the I mean the most underlying, important, worst problems
Speaker 1: this country has, you know, racism, systemic racism, and the
Speaker 1: failure to uh you know, accept and address and deal
Speaker 1: with it. All of that, you know, is stuff that
Speaker 1: hip hop was in the eighties and nineties, you know,
Speaker 1: opening people's minds too, and becoming a movement towards and
Speaker 1: you know, we have Black Lives Matter now these last
Speaker 1: you know years of course, and you know, of course,
Speaker 1: I know how close you were stacked to um, George
Speaker 1: Floyd and the movement that you know, his his murder
Speaker 1: you know, created UM. But if you notice, you know,
Speaker 1: the hip hop and Black Lives Matter, there wasn't really
Speaker 1: a convergence of those things. You know, there have been
Speaker 1: people in hip hop that have obviously been vocal, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't like it, you know, a movement within hip
Speaker 1: hop as a music and a culture, so that I
Speaker 1: think can make it even bigger if we can get
Speaker 1: that fuse ran together. You know, I just want to say,
Speaker 1: it's harder today because when they made self Destruction, you
Speaker 1: had a lot of rappers around that time that was
Speaker 1: on that that was speaking in social sus, that was
Speaker 1: talking about that community. It was talking about the betterment
Speaker 1: of black people in non neighborhoods back then when they
Speaker 1: when they created self Destruction. Now you got more rappers
Speaker 1: talking about shooting each other gag, yeah, doing the destruction.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of hard for that. But I'm glad
Speaker 1: you said today because that's a big part of where
Speaker 1: we need to go to get to where we need
Speaker 1: to get. Yeah, I believe there's some artists out there,
Speaker 1: you know, that that will emerge that will bring that
Speaker 1: voice and be able to you know, stay you know
Speaker 1: in a in a lane that people you know who
Speaker 1: are are not as focused on those things will will enjoy,
Speaker 1: but also elevate their thinking. And you know that's again
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to do with some of my shows
Speaker 1: is you know, keep it fun and entertaining, but also
Speaker 1: you know, put some jewels in there and really get
Speaker 1: people to kind of you know, elevate their thought process
Speaker 1: a little bit, right quick, hitters. First thing to come
Speaker 1: to mind. Let us know an album you can listen
Speaker 1: to on repeat one album, Uh, I would say, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go back to the Chronic that's is
Speaker 1: personally probably my favorite album of all time. And you
Speaker 1: know maybe Fromatic and then you know, uh Biggie Life
Speaker 1: After Death and that was a double album all classics.
Speaker 1: If you could redo one cover of the source, which
Speaker 1: one would it be? Oh man redo? Oh uh? And
Speaker 1: not even in a way of just changing the rough
Speaker 1: experience again, this was the one that like sticks out
Speaker 1: to me, okay, okay, um man, that's tough, all right.
Speaker 1: I had everybody, Uh, let me come up with a
Speaker 1: good one. Um m m man um kind of kind
Speaker 1: of kind of got me stumped on that um when
Speaker 1: we spoke. When we spoke on it, the first one
Speaker 1: you thought was it was the Doctor Dre Yeah. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: Mary Mary is one of my other favorite covers. I
Speaker 1: will speak to that. Yeah, Mary j We gave a
Speaker 1: cover very early on in her career. It's a classic
Speaker 1: cover where she's sitting on an ice sculpture in an
Speaker 1: all silver outfit, shot by one of the greatest photographers
Speaker 1: and creative you know, visionaries of hip hop Chi Modou
Speaker 1: rest in peace. That was my photographer, chief photographer of
Speaker 1: the Source, who passed just a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: Some of the most iconic images you know that we've
Speaker 1: all seen we're taken by che including that that cover
Speaker 1: and again, like that was a step for the Source
Speaker 1: because we really hadn't been put in R and B
Speaker 1: artists on the cover yet, so you know, that was
Speaker 1: a kind of a little kind of edgy move for
Speaker 1: us to take. But you know, Mary was like she
Speaker 1: was straight hip hop. You know, she was R and B,
Speaker 1: but you straight straight hip hop, so it made made sense.
Speaker 1: So yeah, just going back, I was there for that cover. Shoot,
Speaker 1: I remember that I did go to that one and
Speaker 1: had a chance to talk a little bit to Mary,
Speaker 1: so probably would have wished I might have talked to
Speaker 1: a little more, um built a relationship with her. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's this one right here. We're gonna put you on
Speaker 1: the spot for real. Top five hip hop artists in
Speaker 1: your opinion, man, all time, all time. This one's gonna
Speaker 1: this is the viral one. So Dave May said, top five. Okay,
Speaker 1: I gotta I've been practicing this. It's hard. I switched
Speaker 1: people in and out. I mean, I go, I gotta
Speaker 1: say Park first, you know, the most important you heard them,
Speaker 1: most influential artists You didn't start time, Yes, sir, Um,
Speaker 1: you know I'll get big in there. Um, it's only right,
Speaker 1: you know, I think, Um, it's hard. I mean I think,
Speaker 1: you know, when when you look at just impact and influence,
Speaker 1: Uh you know, le Wayne, I think has to get
Speaker 1: get in there just because of you know, so prolific
Speaker 1: and so influential least last you know, fifteen years in
Speaker 1: hip hop. Um after that, I mean it's hard. Like
Speaker 1: you know, I have like more of a personal favorite
Speaker 1: of like probably a nas um you know. Um you know,
Speaker 1: I mean I don't. I don't know if Drake quite
Speaker 1: makes my top five yet He's probably in the six
Speaker 1: to ten right now. I mean, you know you can't
Speaker 1: overlook rock him. I mean, he's really the foundation of
Speaker 1: so much that that happened with hip hop in the
Speaker 1: years that that followed. So um man, I'm probably leaving
Speaker 1: out Jay somebody. But somewhere around five did I did
Speaker 1: I get? Yeah? You got laughing the dream concert? Who
Speaker 1: do you have opening your kind of your dream concert?
Speaker 1: And who do you have closing that are alive, that
Speaker 1: are alive some probably some of these same same folks.
Speaker 1: I mean, um, I gotta show outcasts some love. I
Speaker 1: was talking about them earlier, but they are also one
Speaker 1: of the most incredible groups in the history of hip hop.
Speaker 1: So I would definitely want to have them on the show. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, and I would have to close with pop Um.
Speaker 1: You know. They would be the grand finale and there'd
Speaker 1: be some other great stuff in between. M pots the
Speaker 1: closer for Shore five Dinner guests that are alive oh man,
Speaker 1: um Malcolm x uh Muhammad, Ali, Bob Marley, um shit,
Speaker 1: tupoc um more and uh m hm um. I was
Speaker 1: on a roll. I need another good one. Um oh man,
Speaker 1: that's tough. Nelson Mandela nice nice, But it ended last question.
Speaker 1: If you could see a guess on this show, who
Speaker 1: would it be? But before you answer, you have to
Speaker 1: help us get your answer on the show, like like
Speaker 1: Will Smith said Denzel Washington. So we said, well, we
Speaker 1: need you to get Denzel Washington's coming on the show. Yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, who do y'all want? You got a lot
Speaker 1: of connects, don't don't do that? Tell me who y'all
Speaker 1: trying to get that I can help. I mean, Jay
Speaker 1: Prince would be great. That's my man. That would be
Speaker 1: a great one. That's my guy as well. Um, and
Speaker 1: he's doing a lot of interviews right now too, that
Speaker 1: would be a yeah, he would be nice. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: got hooked. Jay Prince would be nice. We'll take what
Speaker 1: I would definitely take the Dawn of the South. Should
Speaker 1: from prison? Yeah? Should from prison be a hard one.
Speaker 1: J J. Prince would be special for me for sure
Speaker 1: because I've been raised under that so being from Texas,
Speaker 1: so yeah, Yeah, he's one of the few guys you know,
Speaker 1: really respect and have looked up to since the beginning,
Speaker 1: you know, in this hip hop industry because it's it's hard,
Speaker 1: you know, this industry, uh breeds a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: selfishness and greed and divisiveness, and it's hard. And he's
Speaker 1: one of the you know, the only real ones being
Speaker 1: able to keep it real and and you know, remain
Speaker 1: you know, central to things um and the music and
Speaker 1: the culture all these years. He's done a lot of
Speaker 1: great things in music, but being from Texas, we respect
Speaker 1: his morals the things he stand on more than anything.
Speaker 1: I gotta show up to Nipsey Hustle too. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: up there with he maybe should have been my fifth
Speaker 1: on the list. I might put Nip up there because
Speaker 1: I really believe it being in Lauren Hill category. You
Speaker 1: drop one album like that and be alleged forever Lauren
Speaker 1: Hills gonna drop one album, right, I'm crazy to think
Speaker 1: about it right now. She only dropped one album, bro
Speaker 1: of course. Yeah, she only dropped one album though, and
Speaker 1: she's a legend. We had one album. We had the
Speaker 1: Fuji's on the cover, and then Lauren had her own covers.
Speaker 1: She performed at the Source Awards. Um, yeah, you get
Speaker 1: a chance to meet Nip No nipa Ni Briefly, we
Speaker 1: did get to meet, Um he was in DC for
Speaker 1: a concert and I got connected to him and you know,
Speaker 1: we spend an hour just chopping it up that type
Speaker 1: of thing. And I've been on FaceTime with him because
Speaker 1: he knew about me and my story and he was
Speaker 1: interested in, you know and learning more and building with me.
Speaker 1: So we were kind of having those conversations. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, another just just huge loss. I mean just
Speaker 1: because again he's like one of those few that was
Speaker 1: really committed to giving back to the to the community
Speaker 1: and you know, trying to make a change. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: so few when you think of all the people in
Speaker 1: hip hop, you know that really have been dedicated, you
Speaker 1: know to that. So I've you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: love and respectful nipping what he represents just in peace
Speaker 1: and the well. Man, Dave, we appreciate your time. We're
Speaker 1: definitely looking forward to you continuing to tell your story
Speaker 1: because I think it's obviously such an integral part of
Speaker 1: should our lives, to be honest with you, So let's
Speaker 1: exchange numbers if we can help on this side of
Speaker 1: a y, on this side of the branch. Showtime would
Speaker 1: love to do that. You know, Showtime was looking for
Speaker 1: stuff for this year, for fifty, you know, for the fifty.
Speaker 1: So who better to tell it? Let's make it? Who
Speaker 1: better to tell it? Before you get up at every man,
Speaker 1: we got some merch for you. Awesome Showtime merch jack.
Speaker 1: Where can you get that at? And all the Smoke
Speaker 1: Dot Store. Let me say that again, All the Smoke
Speaker 1: Dot Store. Pick up your gear there and thank us later.
Speaker 1: That's a wrap, man, Dave made Showtime all the smoke
Speaker 1: you can catching some Showtime basketball YouTube and the iHeart
Speaker 1: platform black Effects. We'll see y'all next week. He beat you.