Many of you may have been too young to remember the days when The Source truly was the bible of Hip Hop, I look at those days as fondly for the magazine as I do the music. Reginald C. Dennis was the music editor in those days; those days when Dre didn’t get 5 mics for The Chronic; those days when Nas did get 5 for Illmatic; those days when you didn’t need to be a multi-platinum rapper to get coverage. In his four years at The Source, Reginald saw the magazine go from the bottom to the top, but left after Dave Mays and Ray Benzino created an environment that could not be tolerated. For the first time in the 11 years since he left the magazine, Reginald C. Dennis tells all the tales. “Everything you are about to read is something that I’ve seen, heard, or know. It’s all opinion, of course, but as you’ll see, my positions are highly informed. You can hate it or love it.”

“Growing up in Harlem during the 70s, I pretty much had a ringside seat to the birth of Hip Hop. I lived in the Polo Grounds Projects, right across the street from Rucker Park and spent a lot of my childhood doing what I could to participate in the ongoing cultural narrative that was everyday Harlem life. By 1979 I was already well versed in the areas of emceeing and graffiti, but it was “Rapper’s Delight” that pretty much galvanized my generation and inspired me to step up my participation. I got my hands on every mixtape that I could beg, borrow or steal: Grandmaster Caz, Theodore, Busy Bee – I couldn’t get enough.”

Like many in the early generation of Hip Hop, Reginald found his place within the culture, “I was always pretty nice in my art classes and was an avid collector of comic books, so when the graffiti bug finally bit I knew that I’d found my place. From 1980 to 1984 my entire life revolved around graffiti.” With his complete obsession with Hip Hop culture he enrolled in Rutgers University and double majored in English and Africana studies. Things changed for him at Rutgers, “I got involved with campus politics and in the spirit of various anti-Apartheid movements I became quite militant and spent a lot of time being angry at the world. Back home in Harlem, many of my friends started getting caught up in the streets. Crack, guns and fast money was what it was all about and we all wondered what, if anything, we were going to do with our lives.”

In 1988 he discovered a record store called Varsity Records, owned and operated by a man named Bill Moss. It was there he discovered a whole new side of Hip Hop. “I began uncovering hundreds of rap records that I had never heard of. Too Short, NWA, The Ghetto Boys, 2 Live Crew – I didn’t know who these people were, but once I started listening I couldn’t get enough.” One day Bill handed him a magazine that he had received in the mail, and asked him to read it over to see if it was worth stocking. That magazine was The Source, and according to Reginald, “I am not exaggerating when I say that in that moment the course of my life was forever altered. This was the first time that a magazine ever spoke to me in a meaningful way. I had read a lot of good writing on Hip Hop – I was always looking through the Village Voice and Spin – and sometimes even Word Up and Fresh – but The Source was the only place where the music and culture were being discussed in the proper context and with the proper enthusiasm. And it just got better. I started with the third issue and never missed a beat. The Too Short/NWA cover, the Malcolm X issue, the "Decade of Rap" – it was as if I’d been spending my entire life waiting to read something like this, and somewhere in the back of my mind I began to wonder how I might become a part of it.” Continued on page 2 »