The next morning many of us showed up early for work and had an informal meeting. Since most of the industry had yet to make it back to their desks, the phones where strangely silent. We all agreed the awards were a disaster and wondered what the effect would be on our professional reputations. Jon and James wanted to meet with Dave to go over the night’s events, but Dave never met with them. He was holed up with the marketing staff watching the videotape of the show and editing it down to a promotional reel that would be used to secure the television broadcast of next year’s show. When they asked Dave why they weren’t invited to the meeting, he told them that since they wouldn’t have had anything worthwhile to contribute they didn’t need to be there. It was just one more log on the burning fire of resentment.

And speaking of Source Awards, here’s something that you might find interesting. Did you ever wonder why Suge called out Puffy during the 1995 broadcast? Well a couple of Source staffers were hanging out at the venue during the rehearsals when Biggie and later Suge happened to wander by. Biggie began to voice his displeasure about being on Bad Boy and was talking about possibly making a change. Suge told him that he would be happy to have him at Death Row and that they should talk about how they could make that happen. And that’s how the whole mess started.

DX: What are some of the other events that were the writing on the wall for this downward spiral?

RD: The Source has been the subject of so much revisionist history over the years that even the people who work there don’t know what is what. There is a lot of stuff that has yet to come out, and really those stories for other people to tell, but I’ll definitely toss a few gems put there to get the debate going and also do my best to clear up some of the erroneous information regarding our groups initial departure. I’ll do my best to keep it brief, but you know how I do.

In 1994 people said we were crazy, but the arc of the universe bends towards justice and today, in 2005, I don’t think there are many people outside of Dave and Ray who would doubt the veracity of our actions. The very same industry that once sided with Dave has now abandoned him. We accused Dave of managing The RSO, thus giving them an unfair advantage causing a huge conflict of interest. Today Dave will happily tell you that he was indeed the manager of the group and his actions were totally justified. Dave accused us of being unprofessional, of being unmanageable, of using the magazine to air our petty beefs and start vendettas that were bad for business. Well, that seems to be their standard operating procedure these days. We were accused of using Hip Hop as a means for us to live out ghetto fantasies that we were never really built for, but really, that seems to describe David Mays far more than any one of us. Continued on page 4 »