Now, with that bit of back-story out of the way, I’ll answer your question about record albums I regret not giving 5 mics. The answer is both yes and no. See, when I took over as music editor, one of the first things I did was put a moratorium on awarding albums 5 mics. My reasons were the following: I believed then – as I do now — that a piece of art can only achieve classic status in retrospect. How can you expect someone to receive an advance cassette of an album on a Thursday, listen to it and complete the review by the following Monday and be 100% confident that this particular record is not only better than everything out now, but will have a cultural impact that will loom over everything to come in the future? I mean that’s what we are really asking. And back in the day you were lucky if you had three days to make that kind of determination (Nowadays I think you are only allowed to listen to albums a few times in a label conference room while you busily scribble notes about what you are feeling. So the process seems to have gotten noticeably worse).

And what about records that are amazingly dope, but will probably not have any sort of enduring cultural resonance? Do you give them 5 mics? I mean, I like TI but I’m not prepared to put him up there with Eric B & Rakim, y’know. Scarface had a record out a few years ago that damn near had me doing back flips, but can’t even remember the album’s title today or recite any song lyrics. I think that record got 5 mics, but was it a situation of that record being the best thing out in a watered down, mediocre field, or did they truly believe that this was a record that folks would still be talking about 20 years from now? That’s the dilemma: temporary dopeness versus enduring dopeness. And a lot of people, in the initial excitement of being one of the first people on the planet to hear a dope record, get caught up in the moment and lose sight of what they are supposed to be doing.

In 1992 we gave Dr. Dre’s The Chronic 4.5 mics. Had I the opportunity to press reset, I would have given it a 5. Here’s the story:

We got the advance of the album in October of 1992 and it immediately became an office favorite. And our version was a little better than the one everyone else got to hear because we had the joint that was sequenced differently, had different song arrangements and in some instances, different lyrics. It was all good. In fact it was too good — and I didn’t want to let the album out of my sight, so I decided that it would be reviewed totally in house, meaning that a fellow Source editor would handle the task (I didn’t want to risk the tape coming up missing, which was always a concern if you were mailing things out of state for review or dealing with Hip Hop writers who, due to their weed habits, tended to misplace things or drop the critical ball from time to time). Continued on page 8 »