At one point, Kim Osorio seemed to have it all. As the first female editor of The Source, she was at the helm of the premier magazine for Hip Hop music, culture, and politics. But everything isn’t what it appeared to be on the surface.

Kim’s dream of Hip Hop supremacy later turned into a nightmare as former Source co-owner Ray “Benzino” Scott embroiled the magazine in a heated and bitter feud with Eminem—which nearly tore Hip Hop’s Bible apart at the seams, taking much of the staff down with it. Inner office conflicts seemed commonplace and an unwelcome sexual advance led Osorio to file an official claim with the company—which subsequently led to her termination as editor-in-chief.

Four years and a legal battle later, Osorio arrives at the forefront of The Source controversy again—this time to tell her story. Her first book, Straight from The Source: An Expose from the Former Editor in Chief of the Hip-Hop Bible hits bookstore shelves. HipHopDX caught up with the former first lady of the Hip Hop Bible to discuss her tenure at the magazine, the Eminem-Benzino beef, and industry double standards.

HipHopDX: A lot of the Internet coverage thus far has centered on your relationships with Nas and 50 Cent, do you feel like the overall message of the book will be lost?
Kim Osorio: I think there’s always a little concern about that because I want people to know why I wrote it. But you’re always going to have haters and people that want to have something to say. Ultimately, smart people that go to the bookstore and read books are going to understand the meaning behind the books. It’s important to note that the relationships I talk about in the book, those are big names. But none of those names are on the cover, or the back cover or the inside flap. This is stuff that other people are running with. This is not something I’m putting out when I talk about why this book was done.

DX: To the average reader, this will look like another industry tell all book like Superhead’s or Carmen’s. What separates Straight from the Source from other industry tell all books?
Kim Osorio: I don’t wanna take anything away from anyone who’s written a book, and that includes the two authors you just mentioned, and also artists like Faith [Evans] and Queen Pen and Pepa. Everybody has a story. For people to automatically pigeonhole any book that’s written by a female in this space is frustrating to me as a writer. I am a writer, this is what I do. This didn’t start here, this whole book-writing genre. Barbara Walters wrote a book about her career and talked about an affair with a married man. You don’t see the mainstream media going as hard on her as Hip Hop goes on the women [who write books]. I’m not saying she didn’t catch any criticism, but when I look at how Hip Hop treats women, it’s a lot more critical than I’ve seen versus the mainstream. When we look at these books, we have to look at each of them separately, and my story is different from everything else out there.

DX: Why do you think those women are criticized so heavily?
Kim Osorio: Nobody likes to acknowledge the fact that there are intimate relationships that go on behind the scenes in the industry. If you want to talk about conflict of interests, we can talk about that all day. It’s not exclusive to people who have sexual relationships. You have radio program directors who are friends with artists. It’s the way the business works. As an individual, you have to separate those relationships from the business, whether they’re intimate or not.

DX: Was there anyone who try to warn you about The Source before you took a job there?
Kim Osorio: Yes. A lot of people tried to deter me because of things we had heard about the magazine. I had a job at XXL and Elliott Wilson [click to read] was the editor-in-chief there and I was the lifestyle editor. I actually had a higher position at XXL than I was initially offered at The Source, which was an associate editor position. But I had grown up on The Source and on Hip Hop culture. Elliott told me he understood why I would want to leave and said I’d need to see things for myself. You hear all these stories, but you don’t necessarily know how things are going to unfold until you’re there.

DX: When the Source-XXL beef was really heating up, Elliott went hard at not only the magazine, but you as well. Was that awkward?
Kim Osorio: I think it was awkward because we had a professional relationship before I got to the magazine. He was the first person that gave me an assignment in The Source. But I understand the way the industry works. To be at the top, which is where The Source was, we had to have this rivalry. He did what he had to do, and I don’t hold any personal feelings towards him. At the time, I did.

DX: When the Eminem-Benzino beef first jumped off, did anybody in the office think it’d go as far as it went?
Kim Osorio: Initially, no one could foresee just how crazy it was about to get. It started off as something small. It was like a rap battle and we didn’t think Eminem was going to respond. The more he responded, the more disappointed we got, like “Please stop,” we don’t want to continue. I’m not saying I don’t stand behind a lot of the stories that were written, because we felt that way. When the tapes came out, we had to report on that. The real purpose was misguided because of one person’s agenda and a lot of what we did went to waste because of that. Continued on page 2 »