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Deconstructing hip-hop from its Source
By Meriah Doty
(CNN) – David Mays started The Source in '88 as a simple newsletter to promote his Harvard radio show. What started out as a Xeroxed piece of paper has grown beyond its now glossy pages into a multi-platform business and brand. The Source celebrates its 15th anniversary with a special issue on stands now. Founder and CEO Mays discussed his curious hip-hop roots with CNN.com. He also talked about the direction from which hip-hop has come and where it is going as well as artists, including Notorious B.I.G. and Eminem, who were discovered from inside the pages of his top-selling magazine. CNN: Harvard University seems to be an unlikely birthplace of The Source. I would have imagined Philly, the Bronx, South Central or Long Beach as more likely places. What do you have to say about this? MAYS: It's just kind of a curious fact about The Source that definitely gets people's attention. ... I grew up in Washington, D.C., and ended up going to Harvard. I wasn't the typical Harvard student. ... My radio show was on a Harvard station but my listeners were kids from the Boston area. That's how The Source was started -- as a newsletter for listeners of my radio show. CNN: How did you get interested in hip-hop? MAYS: I'd been listening to hip-hop basically since "Rapper's Delight," you know, Sugar Hill Gang. D.C. wasn't particularly a big hub for hip-hop -- still isn't today. Stuff that made it onto the radio down there is stuff that got me interested in hip-hop from the beginning. Sugar Hill Gang, Kurtis Blow, Run-D.M.C., you know that type of stuff. CNN: Do you rhyme or make music? MAYS: No, never have. ... I sing in the shower. CNN: How do you ensure The Source stays in touch with its core audience? MAYS: First and foremost, I try to stay in touch and very much connected to the audience, community [and] the street. Hip-hop has a way of keeping you young. Surrounding myself with the right people and young people -- people that are in touch with what's going on in terms of our editors and other positions in the company. Evolution of hip-hopCNN: What's the limit to the entrepreneurial side of the business along the lines of what Russell Simmons and P. Diddy are doing? MAYS: That's one of essences of hip-hop culture -- entrepreneurialism. It's one of hip-hop's greatest accomplishments. ... That's one of many things I like to hold up to people who tend to look down on hip-hop as being this negative music and movement. You have an entire generation of young kids who are starting their own businesses. There's really no limit to it. CNN: Is The Source responsible for pushing any one artist that the public may not have otherwise been made aware of?
MAYS: The Source has discovered some of hip-hop's biggest acts and literally helped them get record deals before any of them did. We have a column called "Unsigned Hype" that's appeared every month for over 10 years in the magazine. Through that column we discovered Notorious B.I.G. and literally brought his demo tape to Puffy who signed him. We discovered Eminem, Mobb Deep, DMX, Common [and] several others before they had record deals. [They] were featured in The Source. It helped launch their careers. Also in the fashion world the model Tyson Beckford -- we found him 10 years ago on a basketball court here in [New York] City. We featured him in his first modeling job. And of course he's gone on to become one of the biggest male supermodels ever. CNN: What bothers you the most about mainstream media coverage of hip-hop? MAYS: What bothers me the most is they consistently misrepresent the music and culture. They consistently promote all kinds of negative and false stereotypes about it. They assign people to write about it in television who don't understand it, don't respect it. It's kind of like a vicious cycle. The media continues to fuel these inaccurate, negative perceptions. It's so obvious in the coverage done by the mainstream. It's very bothersome that much of the mainstream media operates in that way. CNN: It seems that was more of an issue in the past. Do you think it's getting better? MAYS: No. It's not getting better at all. It's still a very very very big problem for hip-hop right now. You would think as the generation that's grown up on hip-hop gets older and then you have more people in positions in these companies that have grown up with hip-hop, that that would improve. I don't think we're there yet. You still have too many 45-year-old white guys who are the pop music critics at newspapers that are fashioning themselves -- some of them are black too. You have 45-year-old black guys who don't understand hip- hop -- they're fashioning themselves as experts on it. ... Hopefully there will come a time where it would improve dramatically. Especially being around New York. The New York Post, Daily News -- their coverage of hip-hop is horrific. It's some of the most disgusting thing cast off as journalism that you could ever see. CNN: I was reading over the top 115 artists you chose for your 15th anniversary jump-off issue. What, do you have something against Del tha Funkee Homosapien? MAYS: When was Del out though? This [list] was just [of artists] since 1988. He was out around '87, '88. It could be an oversight on our part. CNN: What about Kid Rock? He raps! MAYS: That one was not an oversight. [Laughs] He would not have made the list under any circumstances. CNN: How has hip-hop changed since its rise in popularity in the '80s? Where is it going? Where would you like to see it go? MAYS: The music is constantly evolving and going through different cycles, trends [and] directions. I think that's going to continue. No one can say exactly where it will end up 5 or 10 years from now. I think now we're at a critical point in the evolution of hip-hop where it has reached an incredible level of commercial acceptance and commercial success both in terms of record sales, radio airplay and corporate interest in the market place. ... In order to preserve its cultural validity, going forward, it's a crucial time for the music. I think it will go back to the streets a little more. It's gotten to this peak commercial saturation point. We just came out of a party and "bling bling" era of the music. I think it's heading back to more socially conscious perspectives and points in the music. The Source provides some content for CNN Headline News, which is a part of AOL Time Warner, as is CNN.com.
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We discovered Notorious B.I.G. and literally brought his demo tape to Puffy who signed him.
