I DIDN'T even turn on the television this year. Commercials promoting this year's Source Awards Show televised on the Black Entertainment Network spoke to me loud and clear: This establishment is going nowhere, fast. For years, the Source Magazine has been the hallmark publication in the hip-hop game, and unfortunately, it still is -- promoting an unfortunate mix of high-gloss street thugs, incessantly violent music, macho bravado and an assortment of buy-this-even-if-you-can't-afford-it advertising -- somehow continuing to hold down the number one position for hip-hop rags in the market. Although there is always room for one or two wayward journals on newspaper stands everywhere, it's too bad that this one is still the literary emblem of hip-hop culture, and now they're pouring their energies into mass-marketing their dollar-crazed ideology onto my television screen.
For a decade on and off now, the Source Magazine has been producing an awards show that purports to promote the best in the name of hip-hop, but underlying the showmanship and even crass behavior of some audience members in the past (remember the 1996 melee aired even in re-runs on network television?), the awards show itself hardly boasts the best that the world of hip-hop has to offer. Now that is not to say that I doubt the quality or the popularity of some of today's mainstream artists. But how can we say that these artists are pushing the envelope of hip-hop, leading the culture and taking it in the right direction with more than just their stage presence or thumping basslines -- but with their lyricism and insight onto our changing world as well?
To me the best hip-hop pushes the boundaries, consumes every part of the culture -- from the intellectuals to the street corner thugs and all the white homeboys in between. The Source Awards show, and the magazine's little sibling television program "The Source All-Access" which has been on the air for a couple of years now, simply chide real hip-hop heads with an over-embellished, money-aggrandizing look at what hip-hop, and mainly black and Hispanic youth culture, has to offer. To know that there is so much more to hip-hop than just charm-totting, gun-packing, simple bars and hooks is to look beyond what the supposed authority on hip-hop is trying to shove down our throats, because any true urbanite knows that access to hip-hop and its tantamount culture rarely ever comes through the mainstream.
If we were all paying closer attention, and grabbed those back issues of the Source Magazine, we'd notice that overtones of money and mayhem are all the Source has kept up with over time, and the literary giant, as far as the hip-hop world is concerned, continues to truck along spitting out that one overarching message to youth: That all hip-hop culture is about is amassing more money.
Forget the fact that white kids in the suburbs are eating this stuff up like birthday cake, and forget the fact that young black youth are continually being encouraged to believe that the only way out of a poor condition is about selling your rhymes, selling your ball court skills or, for little black girls, selling your bodies. Forget about the fact that the Source Magazine, and the music and community it magnifies, affects millions of kids everywhere who can't bear to hear the "truth" that's spoken is merely a marketing tool to get them to keep on buying CDs, keep on buying sneakers and keep on buying into capitalistic ideals that are all well beyond their means. Most of these kids don't know that even in the worlds of journalism and awards shows, money is paid under the table -- and sadly, those artists that we see most are the ones who are being backed by big industry dollar bills, not by natural talent and certainly not by an impartial journal or jury of their peers.
Poor ethical considerations aside, how can true believers in hip-hop culture continue to support an establishment that outright hates on some of the most popular artists in hip-hop? The front-page pop-up on the Source's Web interface (www.thesource.com) currently boasts a notice that insinuates it will expose hidden Eminem lyrics where the rapper "voices his opinions about black women and black people in general," a mid-level media blitz attempting to take down one of hip-hop's lyrical giants.
Now, with all of the fuss made about ethical responsibility made in the fields of journalism and music, a site that outwardly lambasts hip-hop's crossover king and barely pays notice to the music game's thug ingénue, 50 Cent, but still wants to claim to be the site of "hip-hop, music, culture and politics," is obviously on one side of the fence. A magazine, or a Web site for that matter, that simultaneously shuns parts of what it heralds it will champion by defaming so many of the hip-hop world's most renowned artists, while obliterating the culture with news of nonsense and utter flamboyance might be the most recognized brand, but cannot hardly be the most "authoritative" when it comes to hip-hop culture or in keeping with journalistic integrity. The Source, in effect, is a one-sided, biased magazine posing as an authoritative source, but all it really seeks to do is simply promote itself and the distinct mission of selling souls through hip-hop by pumping its fist among few other competitive magazines, and flexing its own insider muscle.
Any awards show the magazine produces could only reflect this kind of poor positioning in the world of hip-hop and can't possibly be representing the culture in an honest and accurate manner as they claim, no matter how many awards they decide to shell out.
(Kazz Alexander Pinkard's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at kpinkard@cavalierdaily.com.)
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