The Source Magazine Pdf

[Faustina Trafton]

The Source is an American hip hop and entertainment website, and a magazine that publishes annually or semiannually. It is the world's longest-running rap periodical, being founded as a newsletter[1] in 1988 by David Mays.[2]

In 1999 the Los Angeles Times reported that, based on data from Alliance for Audited Media, formerly known as Audit Bureau of Circulations (North America), the print edition of The Source was "the No. 1-selling music magazine on newsstands in America."[3] By 2009, they were among those losing readership and advertising income.[4]

The 1995 Source Awards were noted for their effect on the hip-hop landscape, particularly in escalating tension between the East and West Coast hip-hop communities, which likely precipitated the murders of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls.

The Record Report is a section in the publication in which the magazine's staff rates hip-hop albums. Ratings range from one to five mics, paralleling a typical five-star rating scale. An album that is rated at four-and-a-half or five mics is considered by The Source to be a superior hip hop album.[8] Over the first ten years or so, the heralded five-mic rating only applied to albums that were universally lauded hip hop albums.[9] A total of 45 albums have been awarded five mics; a complete, chronological list is below.[10]

With over 1,100 members in the State of Florida, including those who manage trade and professional associations, individual membership societies, charitable organizations and other not-for-profit organizations, the Florida Society of Association Executives (FSAE) is the recognized primary resource for information on associations.

FSAE represents associations whose combined membership exceeds 1.5 million Floridians. Florida-based associations are responsible for $1.53 Billion in total expenditures. Florida-based meeting attendees number over 4,100,000. Hotel expenditures by Florida-based associations exceed $1.65 Billion. The total employment impact of Florida-based associations is over 88,000 jobs.

SIDNEY MADDEN, HOST: A warning before we begin - this podcast is explicit in every way. And this episode covers allegations of sexual harassment.For more than a year, LOUDER was working on a story about an almost 20-year-old lawsuit in hip-hop, a lawsuit that alleged sexual harassment and workplace discrimination at a place that was the pinnacle of hip-hop journalism at the time, The Source magazine - a story that centered on the plaintiff in the case, the former editor-in-chief of The Source, Kim Osorio. Kim had sued the magazine's co-owners, Dave Mays and Raymond Benzino Scott, and The Source magazine itself. And through our reporting, we couldn't help but hear the similarities between Kim's case and the stories that were all over the news during the height of the #MeToo movement in 2017. The biggest difference was Kim was taking on hip-hop years before that movement.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)MADDEN: But then, on an early afternoon in March, as we were putting the final touches on it, this story took a turn.SAM J LEEDS, BYLINE: Hey, team. I just received this notice from Dave Mays' lawyer about a cease-and-desist order they're issuing to Kim, saying she violated the terms of her settlement agreement. I haven't read it in depth yet, but I wanted to share it immediately.MADDEN: That's the email my producer, Sam J. Leeds, sent the team. Dave Mays was telling us via a lawyer, he would potentially sue Kim.Sam, I'm not going to lie. When you told me about this email, my stomach dropped. What was your first reaction?LEEDS: You know, honestly, I actually didn't think that the email was real. I thought it might be spam. But then I took a second look at the subject line, and I saw Kim's name in it. And I was like, oh, damn.MADDEN: Yeah. I mean, we've been working on this story for over a year. And we fact checked this episode under a microscope.LEEDS: Yeah, we really did. And as a final step, like, you know, all journalists do, I decided to reach out to the former co-owners of The Source for comment on the story months before it was set to drop. And, Sid, I will never forget getting that DM from one of the guys Kim had sued.MADDEN: (Laughter) Oh, my gosh. No, you got to read it. You got to read it. Pull it up.LEEDS: All right, all right. So we started off by emailing Benzino multiple times for comment. We never got a response. So we were like, all right, what if we try DMing him on Twitter? And...MADDEN: You know, journalism (laughter).LEEDS: Yeah, you know, got to try all your avenues. And he got back to us on Twitter. And the DM came through. It has his little photo with him in a hot tub, shirtless. He's got his arm propped up on the lip of the hot tub. And he's, like, mean-mugging the camera with some sunglasses on. And the contents of the DM was just, is there a check involved? Question mark.MADDEN: Right, one line. And he wouldn't agree to participate unless there was. And y'all should know, NPR does not pay for interviews.LEEDS: Right. And as for the other co-owner, Dave Mays, we reached out to him back at the end of last year and never heard anything back, and reached out again, never heard anything back. And then about six weeks before the story was set to drop, we got CC'd on that cease-and-desist from his lawyer.MADDEN: Yeah. They were saying if she violated her settlement agreement or defamed Dave, they'd sue her.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)MADDEN: That's why my stomach dropped, because with a scare tactic like this of a cease-and-desist being deployed, we knew from then on it was a possibility that Kim could pull out of the story because whether they have a legitimate claim or not, just the threat of filing a lawsuit can intimidate someone.LEEDS: There wasn't really much we could do except for just keep working on the story and see how it all played out. And then at the literal 12th hour, we got another email, a new one. And it had one of those little red exclamation points on it. It really caught my eye when it first came through my inbox.MADDEN: Yeah.LEEDS: And this time, the email said that they had spoken to Kim and that she wouldn't want NPR to feature her interview.MADDEN: Yeah. And so we checked with Kim ourselves. And ultimately, she decided she didn't want to risk getting dragged into another costly, lengthy lawsuit. She requested that we pull all of her interviews from this story. And that's what we did, because from jump, we always agreed if we had to choose between our source's safety and the story, we'd choose their safety.LEEDS: Right.MADDEN: So you're not going to hear Kim's actual voice in this episode at all, but we're still going to tell this story.LEEDS: Yeah. So what you are going to hear is the court transcripts, the archival footage, the many, many interviews that we've done. And, Sid, you're also going to be reading a little bit from Kim's book because we do have her words as she's written them.MADDEN: What you're going to hear in this episode and what went down while we made it, it makes it even more clear why hip-hop still hasn't had a #MeToo reckoning.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)MADDEN: Let's get into it.LEEDS: Let's do it.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)MADDEN: I'm Sidney Madden.RODNEY CARMICHAEL, HOST: I'm Rodney Carmichael. And from NPR Music, this is LOUDER THAN A RIOT.MADDEN: Where we confront the double standard that's become the standard.CARMICHAEL: On every episode this season, we tackle one unwritten rule of hip-hop that affects the most marginalized among us and holds the entire culture back.MADDEN: And one that a new generation of rap refuses to stand for. With one court case, Kim not only changed the trajectory of her career, she put a whole industry on notice because at the time, The Source was hip-hop's gold standard in journalism.CARMICHAEL: Yeah. But what Kim and many other women dealt with behind the scenes at The Source, it was a standard far from gold.MADDEN: And when Kim decided to speak up about it, she learned just how grimy things could get.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)MADDEN: On this episode, we take you through a case that predates the #MeToo movement to show why hip-hop was never really part of it. And we tap in with advocates who continue to fight for one 'cause whether it's in the courtroom or the community, there's still structures in place that show it's safer to keep quiet. On this episode, Rule No. 5 - if you see something, say nothing.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)TIA BOWMAN: Oh. What did you know about The Source before Kim started working there? So before Kim started working there, I just knew it as, you know, one of the magazines, you know, the Bible, if you will, for hip-hop.MADDEN: Tia Bowman is Kim Osorio's best friend. She has been for decades. Both New York natives, the two of them became friends back in law school. Tia's her ride or die, even before Kim's Source days. And like Kim, Tia is a huge hip-hop fan.BOWMAN: I mean, It was XXL, but, you know, it's never in my mind was on the same level as The Source. The Source just had this, like, to-the-streets, like, truth about it, this grit about it. It set the standard.CARMICHAEL: Man, listen - Tia ain't lying. It cannot be overstated how big The Source was to hip-hop.(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: The Source magazine, home of hip-hop, music, culture and politics.THE NOTORIOUS B I G: Subscribe? I mean, it's the s***. F***. Everybody be reading it.UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: The Source is No. 1 with me.UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: If you ain't got it, you ought to get it.MADDEN: We're talking '90s to early 2000s Source, when it was the ultimate in hip-hop journalism. It didn't just capture the biggest moments of the culture. It set the tone.CARMICHAEL: Yeah, and no one rapper was bigger than The Source. That's 'cause The Source made rappers. I mean, even Puffy signed Biggie after Matty C wrote him up in the magazine's Unsigned Hype section.MADDEN: Right. It was a publication that respected the art of hip-hop and wrote about it with prestige.ALIYA KING NEIL: I had a friend who had every issue, and I would go to his house and read it 10 times in a row just to remember the writing.BOWMAN: The Source - it's the truth. Whatever you see in The Source is what's happening. It's what's hot. It's what it is.TARANA BURKE: The emergence of The Source, you know, that's really what solidifies culture. You have to have something to document it. And The Source did it and did it really, really, really well.CARMICHAEL: One of the best ways they did that was with the Record Report, The Source's album review section. Now, this was the ultimate in hip-hop taste-making. And if you were skilled enough to cop a five-mic review, you had an instant classic on your hands.MADDEN: The source got so big they threw their own Source Awards.(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)KID CAPRI: And now, people all over the world, it's the Source Hip-Hop Music Awards.TUPAC SHAKUR: The rap community is very diverse, and that is being represented here at the Source Awards.UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: I think The Source is, like, right on the money.UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: Call right now and get a year subscription for only 19.95.UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: We knew what time it was from the first issue of The Source. We knew they was going to blow.CARMICHAEL: Yeah, The Source was the hip-hop Bible. If you wanted to cover the culture, this is where you want it to be. Now, Sid, I know you spent a lot of time talking to people who came through The Source back in the day.MADDEN: And I started with Aliya King Neil.NEIL: Before I get to The Source, I have this vision that it's like - I don't know if the term ghetto fabulous is a thing yet at this time - probably. But that's what I'm thinking.MADDEN: Back in the late '90s, The Source was Aliya's dream job. Walking in on her first day, she was hyped.NEIL: I don't have to tap into that memory because I remember that moment like it was literally this morning. The Source at this time was organized with cubicles and offices that lined Park Avenue South. The cubicles were known as the projects because it's just all these personalities and all these people crammed together trying to get out. So I'm in the projects. The main thing I can see or hear is just noise.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)NEIL: It was just so loud and so raucous and so - like, I could barely think when I sat down to start getting myself together. I was just like, why doesn't anybody use headphones? Like, why is everyone playing their boombox at maximum level when you're sitting next to somebody else playing - I just didn't understand.MADDEN: And it was all different songs?NEIL: All different songs.(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CHERCHEZ LAGHOST")GHOSTFACE KILLAH: (Rapping) Brothers try to pass me, but none could...NEIL: Behind me is Gotti with "Supreme Clientele." Eminem's "Stan" 20 times in a row.(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "STAN")EMINEM: (Rapping) ...Jealous because I talk about you 24/7.NEIL: Our West Coast editor playing anything West Coast.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)MADDEN: Y'all were two of the only women on the floor in the room...NEIL: No, there were lots of women on the floor. In the music department, it was just us.MADDEN: And with it being just them two, Aliya admits she wasn't exactly happy to see Kim on that first day.NEIL: I have to say that when I first met Kim, I was not feeling her. I felt very threatened. I was very nervous. And I was the only woman in the music department, and I just was concerned. Like, is she coming here to try to get my job? When she came, somebody parked her at my desk. Like, just sit here. Aliya is traveling for a story. Just sit here. We'll get you together. I had come back early. I come in, and this person is at my desk. And I could tell within three seconds that she was powerful and that she was dope, just like me. We both looked at each other like, oh, this b****. Like, we just know. You know when somebody is on your level.MADDEN: But after Aliya got over that initial competitiveness, her and Kim got cool. Being the only women in the music department was part of what bonded them. They figured out how to navigate this office together.NEIL: Of course, I can only speak on myself, you know, and Kim as well because we had two different forms of that is needing to be nonthreatening.MADDEN: For Aliya, the strategy was to hide in plain sight.NEIL: Backpack, baggy pants, Timbs. I can't look like a guy, obviously, but I'm trying to be as tomboyish as I can. It's as deep as rounded shoulders when I'm not a rounded-shoulders person. I'm a back-straight-up person. So I give off this aura of nonthreatening, still cute and dressed down and quiet. Just be quiet, you know?MADDEN: So you had to be cute but not too cute...NEIL: Correct.MADDEN: ...And not sexy.NEIL: Definitely not sexy.MADDEN: Because they - because why?NEIL: 'Cause you would just stand out. You would just look weird.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)MADDEN: But no matter how Aliya tried not to stand out, she couldn't always hide. Some men in the office were just always trying to overstep.NEIL: There was this one person - I want to say, not in the music department - who I had to get to sign off on paperwork sometimes. And his desk was a couple offices away from where I sat in the projects. I learned really quickly that you don't want to be alone in the office with him. His hands were - he was a little touchy-feely. He was a little - reaching in for a kiss and all kinds of stuff. And I was like, ooh, I don't like this. So my first step was to make sure that I left the door open when I came in. My second step was to take a buddy, take one of my friends and be like, I got to go to so-and-so's office. Can you please come with me? My third thing was, hey, I got to go to dude's office. In two minutes, if you don't see me coming back to my office, come get me.MADDEN: As time went on, Kim and Aliya would learn the environment at The Source was overall foul. It was everywhere. Men would slap women's butts, buy inappropriate gifts for them. They tacked pictures of porn to their cubicles and even watched porn in the office. Sexism at The Source was the norm, and it wasn't a secret. It wasn't even seen as bad, especially by management, 'cause in reality, it was top down.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)NEIL: If it's a boys club and it's smacking girls' butts in the office - if it's all this happening, where did that start? If it's intense, were the people intense when they came, or did it become an intense environment once they got there? That I'm not sure of.MADDEN: How does this environment happen? Who was in charge of the boys club? Well, at The Source, it was the two co-owners, Dave Mays...(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "DRINK CHAMPS")DAVE MAYS: We did it the right way, you know? I mean, you know, we kept it street, kept it real, kept it hip-hop. We didn't answer to nobody. We owned and controlled our own thing. We wasn't...MADDEN: ...And Raymond Scott, aka Benzino.(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "DRINK CHAMPS")RAYMOND SCOTT: Dysfunctional as it may have seemed, the relationship between me and Dave and how it was kind of made The Source what it was. Dave being from college, I'm being from the streets, it just came from two perspectives, and that's how we ran the magazine.MADDEN: That's the two of them on "Drink Champs" back in 2020. When Ray says they had two different perspectives, he's definitely right. Standing next to each other, they even look like polar opposites - Dave, a white Jewish guy with a short slicked-back cut and a quiet presence; and Ray, a light-skinned Black guy with arms full of tattoos and a boisterous, loud mouth. The Source actually started as a newsletter out of Dave's Harvard dorm room in 1988. But after staff shakeups along the way, Benzino was brought in - or forced his way in, depending on who you ask - as a partner to give the mag more street credibility. Ray took that power, and he ran with it.KHARY TURNER: Dave was almost at Benzino's mercy. It seemed like Dave was almost in an unenviable position. He was the guy who had to carry out Benzino's will as it related to The Source at least.MADDEN: That's Khary Turner, a former freelancer for The Source.TURNER: He could be erratic. He could be combative. He wanted to be seen as creative. He wanted to be respected as an MC, but that sometimes the combative side and the hard edge outshone his talent as an artist. Reputation-wise, he was a street cat. You know, he was hard, and he had a large crew. And Benzino was not a code switcher. In hip-hop, as an artist, it was appropriate. But in The Source, it wasn't always appropriate.MADDEN: Aliya remembers one specific time that Benzino tried to flex his power.NEIL: So Ray comes out with the stack of checks. And I was like, well, this is unusual. Like, why do you have the checks? But OK, fine. Just give me my check. He has a stack of the checks, and he has a stack of CDs of his new CD. So he puts your check on your desk, and then he takes the CD and puts it on top of your check and gives you a look like, don't forget where this check is coming from.MADDEN: All this was the culture Kim was dealing with, too. But she figured out a way to work with Ray and Dave. And at one point, she even considered her relationship with Ray friendly. To keep it that way, she had to ignore how Ray was treating other women in the office. But you know what? Despite all this, she was killing it at the mag, and she was having fun.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)BOWMAN: I went to so many interviews with her - like, so many people.MADDEN: Kim's best friend Tia was definitely enjoying the perks of Kim's success.BOWMAN: She interviewed Destiny's Child in the Hilton Hotel on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan. And we were in a little single room with two twin beds. And so all four Destiny's Child, you know, members were there and Kim and I. So we were all in a very close space 'cause it was a small hotel room.MADDEN: Right. Right. And you were her ride or die. Every step of the way, you were always, like, her plus-one?BOWMAN: Always her plus-one. You know, always her let-me-run-it-by-Tia.MADDEN: Between 2000 and 2002, Kim landed interviews and cover stories with the likes of Snoop Dogg, Trick Daddy, Trina, Wu-Tang Clan, Lil Kim, Foxy Brown and more. It was Kim who was responsible for writing Nas' five-mic review on "Stillmatic." It was Kim who brokered the Jay-Z and Rocafella cover. In early 2002, after all this work, Dave and Ray offered Kim the position of editor-in-chief.BOWMAN: It was huge. She was the first female editor-in-chief, and it was The Source magazine. You know, this is a huge, big deal in anybody's career. And then her being a female from the Bronx, you know, out here doing this on her own, this was a phenomenal achievement.MADDEN: It may have been a big achievement, but Ray and Dave weren't going to make it easy. In Kim's book, she writes that after initially telling her she got the job, they made her wait eight months before officially announcing it, and they were making her do the work the whole time without the title. She didn't let that stop her, though, 'cause she had a vision for the mag. She wanted to get more enterprise reporting into the pages, like a freelance story by Khary about rape culture in hip-hop.TURNER: I wanted to give the culture an opportunity to take an honest look at itself. I wanted to use my platform and my position as a writer to advance that conversation, to give artists and executives an opportunity to comment on it. She responded really favorably when I pitched the story to her. She told me up front, you know, I think it's a great idea. I would love to do it. Let's see if we can make it happen.MADDEN: Kim was with it. Ray and Dave? Not so much.TURNER: I think their response was that nobody wanted to read about that. I felt that any man asked to support such a story meant that the answer could be no because men's perspective on rape and rape culture can sometimes be like white people's perspectives on Black life.MADDEN: According to Kim's book, they told her, quote, "N****s ain't trying to hear all that. They want to f***," and that the story was, quote, "women's s***."TURNER: If your response is it's women's s***, well, how do you feel about that women's s***?MADDEN: Ray and Dave's opinions on women's s*** went beyond that story. One time, another male executive in the office told Kim that because she was a woman, Ray and Dave thought she was, quote, "too weak-minded" to stay EIC. They weren't just saying it behind her back, either. Benzino told Kim repeatedly he, quote, "needed a man to do her job." The long hours, the boys club, the office politics - it was starting to wear on Kim. And on top of all that, Ray started pressing her. Pretty soon after she got the EIC title, Ray started talking to her about his sex life and asking about hers. He would not let up. This wasn't unusual for Benzino when it came to other women on staff, but it was new for Kim.He was especially obsessed with who in the industry she was sleeping with, and he would ask her again and again and again. Kim details this in her book. Let me just read from it. Quote, (reading) "'Come on, Kim. Why don't you tell me who you slept with? I already know. Just tell me. Admit it.' It's not that I was ashamed to tell Ray whom I'd been with. It was that I knew exactly what he wanted to know. And more importantly, I knew that he would use it against me."Kim tried to dodge these questions, but he only got more persistent. And according to her, one late night as they were leaving the office, Ray got way out of pocket. They were in an elevator together when Ray said, quote, (reading) "Why don't you come out to Atlantic City with me? We'll have a good time." "Atlantic City? For what?" "Come on, think about it. We can have fun. Don't you think we'd make a good couple?" "Couple?" "We would be the king and queen of The Source." I was running out of ways to be nice as we made our way out the elevator. "Come on. I got a room in Atlantic City. You could stay with me." "I'm not going to Atlantic City with you."As the elevator dinged open, Kim thought it was over. But Ray didn't leave it there. Kim says she never gave him her home number, but later that night, he called her repeatedly at home, 10 times on her cell and five times on the house phone, trying to convince her to change her mind. And from what he did next, it was clear Ray did not like to be told no. If he couldn't have Kim, then she couldn't have her privacy. Kim got worried that he started spreading her business all around town, saying that she was sleeping with rappers. She writes, (reading) I wasn't surprised that both Ray and Dave had been talking behind my back. I've spoken to former male editors of the magazine who were never asked the same questions. So why was my situation so different? Why the f*** are they so obsessed with my sex life?Kim had put up with a lot for her love of hip-hop, but she was reaching her breaking point. She met with a lawyer who listened to her situation and told her to file a complaint with human resources. The lawyer told her, they can't fire you for complaining. But she was still nervous. Kim knew it might have been against the law for them to do, but she writes, (reading) The Source didn't always follow the letter of the law anyway.BOWMAN: And I remember us talking about this because she was going to lose her job. She thought she's going to be blackballed in the industry because she's, you know, making this sort of accusation.MADDEN: On the night of February 23, 2005, just like when Kim first got offered the editor-in-chief job, she called up Tia.BOWMAN: She was scared to do it. And she'll tell you sometimes, like, I bully her into things. Like, but I'm not bullying her. I'm giving her...MADDEN: (Laughter).BOWMAN: I'm pushing her in the direction that I know she wants to go, but she's sometimes, you know, nervous to do it.MADDEN: Kim needed Tia's help writing an HR complaint, one that would make it all official.BOWMAN: We were choosing the sentence structure and the words very purposefully and concisely.MADDEN: The email was short and to the point. (Reading) As the head of human resources, I am notifying you that I have been discriminated against on the basis of my gender. This unlawful discrimination must come to an end.BOWMAN: Once you hit send, there's no coming back. She knew it.MADDEN: Kim hit send. And after that, all she could do was wait.(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)MADDEN: What did you hear about the lawsuit, and what did you think of it when you heard it?NEIL: I heard about it just, you know, I guess in the news or whatever. And my first thought was, why? Like, why? Why are you doing this?MADDEN: Aliya had already left The Source when she first heard about a lawsuit involving her former employer and her friend Kim.NEIL: Because in my mind, you know, you got to get thrown out of a window to want to file a lawsuit because we were all so trained to think, if it's just this, then it's OK. Just deal with it. As sad as it is, my first thought was, was it really that deep? Whatever happened, was it that deep that you now want to go through a whole thing? I want to make it clear that I'm talking about my 25-year-old self, and I'm 50.MADDEN: Right, and the internalized misogyny that we all carry with us. Right.NEIL: Exactly. And so if you're a woman in hip-hop, if you're not ready to accept a certain amount of misogyny, you need to go someplace. You need to just go listen to hip-hop in your room. There's not a single woman in this industry, in hip-hop, who can say, I never had to deal with any of this stuff, and if I did, I always did X, Y, Z. No, you didn't. You had to deal with it, and you didn't always do something about it. None of us - absolutely none of us. So my thought was, is this what it had to be?MADDEN: Aliya's first thought wasn't wrong. After sending that HR complaint in February of 2005, Kim didn't hear anything. It was crickets for two weeks, until she got a call from Ray and Dave cursing at her. They wanted her to retract her complaint. She refused. So they fired her. And just like that, Kim's time at The Source, her dream job, was over. In her book, she writes that she was jilted, angry, but also prepared. (Reading) A lawsuit was my next step. I knew it wouldn't be easy, but in the end, it was a step I had to take - not for monetary recovery, but because of principle.In April 2005, Kim filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Then she filed the suit that Aliya had heard about against The Source, Dave and Ray. Kim was suing them for workplace sexual harassment, gender-based discrimination and retaliation. Aliya was worried for Kim about how ugly the trial might get.NEIL: I remember asking her, like, what if they bring up, like, dudes or, like, relationships? She was like, what are they going to say? I don't have - what? They're going to talk s*** about me. They're going to talk about who I had sex with. They're going to talk about, you know, what I did here, what I did there. That's fine. I can take that. And if it means that you feel more comfortable, good. And, you know, for me at that time, I would have just been horrified to have my business in the street. But, you know, I knew she did her homework. I knew she was prepared. And I knew that if she did it, she was ready to do it.MADDEN: Aliya had reason to be worried, though, because as soon as the suit went public, they did drag Kim's name through the mud. In a radio interview, Ray said she was incompetent, a slut and liked the fast lifestyle. In a written interview with allhiphop.com, Dave said, quote, "It is a fact that Miss Osorio had sexual relations with a number of high-profile rap artists during her employment as editor-in-chief." Because of all this talk, Kim added a defamation claim onto the suit. Now, on top of all this mess - or maybe because of it - no one would give Kim a