Word: hip-hop
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...common. They're multimillionaires, they're white guys, and they made it all in the rap business. In addition, both have enormous persecution complexes. Eminem's paranoia is famous. "Half you people got a f______ problem with me," he raps on Till I Collapse. Mays, who started the hip-hop magazine The Source on a photocopier 15 years ago and turned it into the top-selling rap publication, is less celebrated but just as tortured. "The Source is constantly disrespected and bashed," he says. "It hurts...
...racist phrase--yet somehow it isn't. Eminem has already issued an apology, explaining that the tape is 10 years old and he made it just after breaking up with an African-American girlfriend. "I reacted like the angry, stupid kid I was," he said. Almost all the hip-hop community has accepted Eminem's contrition as sincere, and outrage has boomeranged on the questionable journalistic judgment of Mays and The Source...
Ever since Mays, as an undergraduate at Harvard, founded the self-proclaimed "magazine of hip-hop music, culture and politics," ethics have been a sore spot. While much of the magazine's early journalism was daring, some of it was also tainted by Mays' friendships with the rappers he covered. One of them was Ray (Benzino) Scott. "I met Ray when I had just got to Harvard and started my rap radio show," says Mays. "He had the hottest group in Boston, and yes, I became their manager, just as he helped me with my dream to start The Source...
...pulled its ads from the magazine, and Mays concedes that the past year has been "very tough financially." But The Source's long-term problem is not money but credibility. Unearthing the Eminem "black girls" tape required journalistic initiative, and Eminem's rise has had real consequences for hip-hop. "This is a huge story," says Mays. But David Mays is probably the wrong man to tell...
...Shaheed Muhammad, pictured above working on the forthcoming reunion album by A Tribe Called Quest, knows a thing or two about recording studios. As a founding member of the legendary hip-hop group, he's put in plenty of hours behind the console. But why should pros have all the fun? For a price, anyone can be made to sound good?and even make the Top 40 (not that we're naming names). So if you've ever wanted to properly lay down that song you wrote on a battered guitar at college, here's the tab at some...