The Awl

What It Was Like To Work At 'The Source'

Dave Bry — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 12:30:43 +0000

"I rarely interacted with Mr. Scott at The Source until November 2004, when I wrote a cover story on his friend, the rapper Ja Rule. I thought I’d written a fair piece, despite the fact that Ja Rule, like The Source, was feuding with 50 Cent. I was wrong. On the Monday morning after publication, Ms. Osorio told me that Mr. Scott was furious about the story and I was going be fired. Mr. Mays and Mr. Scott met with the editorial staff that afternoon in Mr. Mays’s office. The meeting quickly turned into an inquisition on the cover story, and Mr. Scott asked if I was a fan of Ja Rule’s music. I rambled about objectivity and journalistic integrity. He then asked if I preferred 50 Cent’s music. It was a yes-or-no question. I told him I did. Throughout the meeting, Mr. Scott picked at his cornrows. After an hour or so, half of his mane was an unruly mess while the rest remained braided. His hair looked wild. A colleague said that it was an intimidation tactic he often used during long meetings."
—Awl pal Thomas Golianopoulos writes in this week's Observer about his time working for magazine moguls Dave Mays and Ray "Benzino" Scott, who used to own The Source and now own Hip Hop Weekly.

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Haikus About Rap

Dave Bry — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 14:40:37 +0000

"Fif states he’s on 'it'
But whatever 'it' may be
'It' is not the beat"
—Ego Trip reviews eight new rap songs in haiku and it is just the thing today.

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Will 50 Cent Adopt Phila The Black Rhino?

Dave Bry — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 11:30:21 +0000

Wow. A South African community group has mounted a campaign to get 50 Cent to adopt an endangered black rhino name Phila-because Phila, like 50 himself, has survived being shot nine times. 50 named Darryl "Hommo" Baum, who was killed shortly thereafter, as his shooter in the 2003 song, "Many Men." It was poachers who shot Phila, in two separate incidents this past summer, both attempts to harvest her valuable horn.

"We want to ask him if he wants to become the godfather of our rhino so that he can create awareness worldwide about rhino poaching," said Andre Snyman of the anti-poaching organization, eBlockwatch.

Who knows, if this works, maybe someone can find a Bengal tiger who put out a sex tape of the mother of Rick Ross's child!

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50 Cent Wants In On Cee-Lo's Action, Will Take His Gold Digger

Dave Bry — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 14:10:59 +0000

"Ironically, this week the Pajamas Media site ran a piece reporting that Egyptian Islamic scholar and self-proclaimed jihadist Abd al-Muti Bayum has condemned the 'Ground Zero mosque' as a devious 'Zionist conspiracy' to discredit Islam by linking it to the September 11 attacks. This was cited as an argument against the Cordoba Center. This is strange logic: the center shouldn't be built because radical Islamists will like it.... or because they will hate it." That's Reason's Cathy Young, whose colleague Radley Balko gave us such a good angle on the "NYC Terror Mosque" controversy last week.

This thing has had me very upset lately. I'm worried that they're going to preemptively "move" this thing that does not and might not ever exist, and that that's going to send the same kind of message to the world as George Bush's re-election in 2004. Basically, this. Which is not the message I think we should be sending.

And I'm all wringing my hands and spitting when I talk about it and mad at Obama for soft-pedaling and feeling like sending that same message back to the people who oppose the mosque.

But then I read this interview with Muslim rapper Lupe Fiasco wherein he comes across as far more accepting of the other side's viewpoint that anything I can muster, and it makes me feel stupid. But I still really hope they build it where it's planned.

Also, 50 Cent has already recorded a rap over the super new Cee-Lo song everybody loves so much. It's a response, from the rich-guy jerk's perspective, calling out Cee-Lo for crying sour-grapes. And there's a new video for it, too, adding the verse to the original's excellent typography treatment. It's kinda great.

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Tony Yayo, "Pass The Patron"

Dave Bry — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 14:40:23 +0000

Parental alert!!! Following yesterday's important warning about the "digital drugs" craze, newly discovered video evidence indicates that rapper Tony Yayo is DOSING young internet nerds with extremely potent Patron tequila THROUGH THEIR COMPUTERS!!! Also, Yayo's boss 50 Cent has become Max Headroom.

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Robots Taking Over Sooner Than Expected--They Got Janet, Too!

Dave Bry — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:36:48 +0000

I'm starting to think that the singularity has already occurred and I just didn't notice it up to this point. Apparently, computer intelligence has already gotten more advanced that the human brain and figured out how to fuse itself with human cell tissue and that the robots are already reprogramming themselves and re-enhancing themselves and regenerating themselves-into today's leading hip-hop and R&B stars.

It should have been obvious, I guess, when all that autotune started making Hot 97's broadcast sound like one long conversation between HAL and C-3PO. But our carbon-based brains are simple, and usually require physical evidence to be convinced. Still, no one really noticed that Beyonce had a robot hand after she morphed into Sasha Fierce mode last year.

The, maybe a month ago, Chris Brown displayed his own prosthetic claw-piece, one that traveled higher up the arm.

When Lil Wayne and Swizz Beatz joined him in transforming into cybertronic Autobot sports cars and firetrucks in the video for the hit "I Can Transform Ya," I started to suspect something fishy was going on. Normal rappers and R&B stars can't turn into sports cars and fire trucks. The cover to 50 Cent's new album, Before I Self Destruct, makes it pretty apparent, too, as his synthetic outer layer cracks apart and melts away, revealing the titanium core within.

Now the lovable, sweet-voiced, former child star Janet Jackson has apparently disassembled and rebuilt herself as a bionic half-woman-half-machine with shiny, metal, six-million-dollar shoulder hinges-as evidenced by the snippet from the video to her new single, "Make Me."

We're totally dead.

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