Well, the whole block literally stopped whatever they were doing and converged on the van in order to get a better listen. People were astonished by what they were hearing and began to pepper us with endless questions about the album. It was quite a moment. And when Nate Dogg came in with the "You picked the wrong mutha-fuckin’ dayeeeee…" part, I thought I was going to see people’s heads explode. Fab 5 Freddy actually climbed in the van and damn near put his head on the speakers. It was unreal. So yeah we knew early on that this was going to be the shit. The streets had spoken.

[click here to read more about The Chronic and what the four-and-a-half rating established]

DX: Any albums you regret giving five mics?
RD: I only gave one five under my watch and it went to Nas’ Illmatic. It was the only time I ever broke the no five rule. Jon Shecter [click to read] had gotten his hands on the album like eight months before it was scheduled to drop. And just like I was with The Chronic a few months earlier, Jon didn’t let the tape out of his sight. Not only that, but he constantly raved about it. Every day. He played it in the office about a million times and very early on began to lobby for this record to receive five mics. Now I was cool with Nas and had been a fan since [Main Source's] "Live At The BBQ," but I wasn’t really stressing his album. It wasn’t coming out for at least half a year and I had other shit to do. But Jon couldn’t wait. And he began to micromanage everything concerning Nas’ coverage in The Source. He’d be like, "So who are you thinking about getting to review this album? This is going to be an important release and we can’t give it to just anybody, and I think I should be in on that decision." I told Jon that we’d work all of that stuff out when it was time to review the album. But every day, Jon was like, "Yo, this album is five mics — seriously, Reg, five mics."

[click here to read more why the “no five” rule was broken for Nas]

DX: Going back 10 plus years, is there any album that blew you away like no other?
RD: Back then there were so many good albums that it’s really hard to narrow it down to just one. But I will say that Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt will always have a special place in my heart. I’d known of Jay from his appearances with Jaz-O, but it wasn’t until I heard the single, "Dead Presidents," that I felt that this artist was going to make a huge major impact. And when the album dropped in ’96, I was about as far out of Hip Hop as I had ever been in my entire life, and I really credit Reasonable Doubt as the event that really motivated me to get back into the game.

[click to read more about Jay-Z's as an underdog]

DX: So would it be fair to say Jay is largely responsible for XXL existing?
RD: Well, I’m sure Harris Publications would have eventually put out a magazine called XXL no matter who the editor happened to be, but had Jay-Z not been able to articulate the things he did, I certainly wouldn’t have been inspired to go that extra mile and create the magazine that I did. I mean, Reasonable Doubt and the original twelve-inch version of "Dead Presidents" was Hip Hop for grown-ups; Grown man stuff, responsibility, living with regrets and facing the consequences of your actions. It was about depth, subtlety and layers, and I knew that my next magazine would have to embody those qualities.

[click here to read about Jay and Big’s impact on the creation of XXL]

DX: In 1994 you left the most sought after position in Hip Hop journalism. Why?
RD: By ’94 we’d been on the grind for a minute, and after many years of struggle things were finally beginning to pay off. The Hip Hop industry was in a mode of constant expansion. There were all sorts of new and exciting business opportunities popping up every day and The Source was institutionally positioned to take advantage of them all. There were struggles to overcome, to be sure, but most of us felt we were in a good place. Unfortunately, because 90% of our attention and energy was focused on growing the business, we neglected to confront and solve a problem that had taken root within our little enterprise and was now beginning to expand at an alarming rate. The problem I’m referring to is Dave Mays’ troubling association with Boston criminal Raymond Scott a.k.a. Ray Dogg the Jackal a.k.a. Ray Benzino. The conflict started small — and for a long time was successfully contained by Mays — but by the time things reached their inevitable climax, everything would be forced into the light and our once tight knit family would be fractured beyond repair. When the smoke cleared, Source Owners Jon Shecter and James Bernard; Assistant Art Director Carlos Vega; Editors Shawnee Smith, Sonya Magett, Julia Chance, Robert Marriott, Carter Harris and myself would be forced to leave everything we had struggled to build. The Source — the institution that we had been privileged to serve — had become irrevocably corrupted by a creeping plague and we simply couldn’t stay. Continued on page 3 »