HipHopDX: After Benzino threatened to start “puttin’ niggas in bodybags” if his next album didn’t get at least 4 mics, I suppose you weren’t surprised to see his Made Men album get 4.5?

Reginald Dennis: Nope, not at all. But to be fair, I never listened to as much as one song from that joint, so I really can’t say what it deserved. Who knows, maybe it was worth the rating? People still bump that album, right?

DX: You said the ’94 Source Awards were such a disaster that you can’t bring yourself to talk about it…thus making it an even more enticing topic. Can you shed a little light as to why it is such a painful memory?

RD: The Source Awards began in 1991 as a simple reader survey bound into the magazine. In 1992 things took a small step forward as an embryonic version of the awards ran during a couple of consecutive episodes of Yo! MTV Raps. At the end of 1993 Dave informed us that he was planning to turn The Source Awards into a major event and that he needed the editorial staff to pitch in wherever necessary. This was right as the conflict between Dave and editorial began to escalate and many of us were not looking forward to the prospect of spending our few moments of downtime slaving away on one of Dave’s side projects. But at that point we were still a team and we all understood that to the outside world if the Awards didn’t come off as advertised the blame would fall mostly on editorial, so we tried to make the best of the situation. It was tense, though. Dave was in the habit of handing out unsolicited critiques of the editorial side and only really treated people in a civil manner when he needed something. If he didn’t need to parade advertisers through the editorial plantation or need brown faces to accompany him on meetings, Dave treated us as little more than a bunch of chattering voices that he was under no obligation to listen to.

With the Awards Dave needed us to come up with 99% of the content. We suggested categories and nominees. Jon Shecter produced a really nice short film on the history of Hip Hop that was shown during the production. We did our best to strike a balance between what Dave needed for his business purposes and what we as fans wanted to see included in an awards show dedicated to Hip Hop. But ultimately Dave went in a different direction and basically used The Source Awards as a vehicle to take advertising executives on a wild African safari.

As the launch date drew closer – the show was in April, right when Ray really started bugging out – it became clear to us on editorial that Dave wasn’t nearly as adept with dealing with the politics of such an undertaking as he thought he was. The guest list was a disaster, with dozens of Hip Hop pioneers not even invited. And who had to deal with those explosive situations – the editorial side! We all have our horror stories, but I had to spend a very tense 15 minutes in the hallway outside of the office trying to stop two old school legends from rushing into Dave’s office and hanging him out of the window until he coughed up some tickets. And if it wasn’t for Russell Simmons stepping in and basically tearing Dave a new asshole, the 1994 Source Awards would have had very little in the way of old school representation and participation (DJ Hollywood was the best part of that night, and Dave had no clue who he was!). Continued on page 2 »