I suppose it was inevitable. Despite the current generation’s aversion to printed matter, or any written tome beyond 280 characters, the appeal of anything “legit, OG” these days is eventually too much for these kids, starved as they are for substance and anything less fleeting than the latest Kanye-related idiocy, to ignore. So eventually The Source magazine, or more precisely back issues from an era where the magazine not only meant something, but rather EVERYTHING to hip-hop, in particular would be the next big retro thing.

Of course my generation bares some blame. It started in earnest with our hunger for sneakers. Retros and re-releases have dominated the market for so long that even the holiest of grail silhouettes are now subject to any number of colorway and material updates for limited drops. Then Ralph Lauren finally woke up* to the long-bubbling fetishization of vintage early to mid-90s Polo gear and began issuing re-makes of iconic P-Wing, Snow Beach, etc. collections to appease the thirsty, credit-ready, Raekwon-worshipping masses.

And on the heels of Stretch & Bob finally returning to the airwaves with a long-awaited, albeit entirely too structured and forced (and short), if I am honest (Note to NPR: Let them open it up a bit. They are the purveyors of one of THE greatest, most unstructured yet cohesive radio shows of all time. I guarantee their audience is fiending for more of “them” than this tight format is allowing them to give.), radio show, Jonah Hill drops a cinematic opus that is by all accounts an achingly legit, perfectly penned love letter to what many consider the close of the Golden Era, told from the perspective of a uniquely crucial, yet at one point relatively overlooked element of hip-hop culture – skateboarders – in the film Mid-90s. Which for any trained eye features a cameo by issues of the aforementioned magazine (not to mention maker of one of the most underrated hip-hop albums of all time in No Need for Alarm, Del the Funkee Homo Sapien).

Begrudgingly, I will concede that it is a perfect placement. I’ve listened to my man on two of my favorite podcasts this week talking about the passion that went into the movie, the attention to detail of the Production Design, and how visceral he wanted the visuals and audios to be to convey how important this time was in his own life. How legit it simply HAD to be. And I dig it. For the most part.

But there is one aspect, entirely NOT of his doing, that I am already starting to hate about this whole thing that, as a former AVID, if not rabid, reader of The Source magazine from 1991 until I finally couldn’t take anymore in about 1998, seems to have shoved this once-great chronicler and arbiter of hip-hop culture to the forefront of (yawn) re-seller culture. At least if eBay is any indicator. Dammit, Jonah…

I should start by saying I have long admired homeboy’s work, not just comedically, though I think he is brilliant in several senses as a comedic actor, but for his willingness, and more importantly ability, to step outside of the rather ardent and limited constructs that Hollywood puts on weighty funnymen. He clearly has a great sense not just for jokes, but for what is actually “funny”, which are two entirely different things. The nuance with which he approaches his craft allows him to go beyond the silly simplicity with which that craft often paints actors of his physical heft, and allows him to have an emotional depth, and a resultant dynamism, that exponentially increases both his most likable and loathsome qualities all at once. Plus you can just tell he’s fucking funny. Like, hanging around talking shit funny, not Hollywood funny. Real, actual funny.

But though I will hold the hilarity of his performance in the somewhat disjointed, 45 minutes too long “End of the World” up as an amazingly underrated star turn, even by the high standards of that whole crew (sidebar: Danny Masterson is nowhere near funny. Fight me.), this is not an essay in praise of Jonah Hill. It is an essay in praise of a once great magazine, the onetime definitive arbiter of what was quality and notable in hip-hop culture and art. And a lamentation on how difficult it now is to acquire reasonably priced back issues of it now, thanks, like so many other things, to hypebeasts and their Co-Opt and Re-Sell approach to life.

As a kid who grew up head over heels for hip-hop in all its forms, adolescence brought with it myriad opportunities through which to express that affection. Working on the clean-up crew on Sunday nights for my high school’s weekly game of Bingo put some good cash in my pocket – certainly enough to support a burgeoning hat and sneaker habit that quickly became both a central focus of my life and a favorite means of showing the world what I was about. Add to that a rather well-developed artistic sense and relatively decent handstyle, thanks in no small part to my art teacher mother, and let’s just say there was always a marker or three tucked into my jacket or backpack.

But just banging the growing amount of excellent rap music, and expressing my passionate interest in and love for the culture, and in particular its art and fashion, was not enough. I needed more. More information. More insight. Liner notes provided my first hit of that critical uncut good stuff that I keenly craved: info on other associated MCs and crews of note who may be worth exploring with future purchases. Of neighborhoods and lyrical reference points I hadn’t fully understood or appreciated initially. Of artists whose beats and loops and hooks were sampled (which helped begin my love affair with folks like Donald Byrd, the Meters, and others of that ilk, whose music formed the elemental backbone of songs that would re-imagine and re-issue those same musical sentiments in new and more head-noddy ways).

Trips into Boston provided more intimate interactions on nearly every level. Gawking at graffiti out the windows of the Red Line as the war between SBK and pretty much everyone else came to a gloriously colorful and prolific head; marveling at how dudes like Alert, Nerv, and most notably Relm were able to get up so often and so well (did these guys sleep?!). Sneaker and gear shopping among the famously violent and athletica gear-clad Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan posses of that era. Studying with great intent which teams’ gear you best not be rocking in Downtown Crossing or over at Harry the Greeks if you wanted to make it out of there with your gear (and cranium) intact. Going to where the culture lived to experience it firsthand was a favorite pastime of me and my man Taco, a fellow committed head, back in an era when having such a lifestyle was actually kind of perilous: you’d catch heat from suburban white kids, headbangers in particular, for “trying to be Black”, and you’d invariably get chased or harassed or worse by city kids who were coming for your kit. It wasn’t like today when seemingly everybody dresses at least some iteration of how Black kids do.

But that all transformed a bit when on one fateful trip into Boston, a jaunt over to Newbury Comics put me in the crosshairs of a level of fienddom I hadn’t realized was accessible to me. There on the magazine was a semi-glossy cover photo of EPMD, the dopest duo in the game and to this day perhaps my favorite hip-hop couple, gracing a magazine that I’d only ever seen one issue of, that for all I knew was an apparition, a ghost, a fairytale: The Source. Gimme that.

As I flipped through its pages I could barely contain my excitement. So much content. So much information. So much to learn. Didn’t hurt of course that that particular issue also happened to contain one of the most legendary pieces of hip-hop promotional material (certainly in and around Greater Boston) ever to grace a mailbox or lightpost: the FINE MALT LYRICS House of Pain sticker. Man, this may as well have been an issue of Penthouse, given how thirstily agog I was over its content. But without having to randomly stumble across it while wandering aimlessly through a stretch of woods, nor subsequently hide it under your mattress.

It is hard to overstate how transformative this magazine was not only for me personally, but how important a maypole it served as for hip-hop as a whole on nearly every level. And how sadly its demise would both reflect and foretell the crumbling of hip-hop music as we know it (more on that, sadly, later).

The Source started as a newsletter, out of publisher David Mays’s college dorm room (Harvard, incidentally). Mays was, like many of its eventual readers, a rabid hip-hop head who was simply obsessed with the still-burgeoning culture of hip-hop, and began chronicling it, via a stable of other-worldly-talented writers and tastemakers, in the late 80s. From there it grew rather quickly, as both a hungry audience and a rapidly growing number of astute advertisers who craved that audience’s attention caught onto its signature straightforward style, its no-nonsense approach to the music, and its poignant cultural insights and signature humor.

But The Source was more than just a great monthly publication with eminently readable articles, thoughtfully-written and thorough reviews, and relevant ads. It reported in real time the most necessary information for all hip-hop heads: music, yes, but also fashion, sports, social commentary. It showcased lyrics (remember those?), broke new artists via the legendary chronicler of next-level talent in ‘Unsigned Hype’. Showcased graffiti from various cities in its monthly ‘Graf Flicks’ spread. It was THE authority on that part of the universe, the be-all-end-all for the game. It not only was flavor, it defined what flavor was for an entire culture. Period.

In no realm was this more the case than in its once legendary Album Ratings. Such was the indisputable taste level of its record reviewers that this Mic-based system quickly became the definitive determinant of a particular record’s worthiness, in literally no uncertain terms. You could beef all you wanted with your rating, but once it was written, it was fact. As a result, established artists got panned for poor efforts as equally as new artists popped for impressive ones. Anything under 3 mics was not worthy of your time and money. 4 mics was a bonafied guarantee. When you saw another half (or, gasp, a FULL) mic past the 4, you knew it was big time. Earth shaking. Must. Cop. Now.

It was like clockwork. I remember the first 4.5 mic rating I ever saw in print – Redman’s debut Whut… It nearly took my breath away, seeing that extra bit of graphic. Whoa – beyond dope? Not terribly surprising of course, given how much damage Reggie had inflicted on an album that to this day gets nowhere near the shine it deserves, EPMD’s effort from earlier that year, Business As Usual. Rarely has an MC come with the fire on a few guest verses in such a hungry and menacingly singular way, save of course Nasty Nas, as Redman did on ‘Hardcore’ and even more filthily on ‘Brothers on My Jock’ (bonus points for referencing Lowenbrau). And sure enough, it delivered.

Same went for Illmatic, of course, a legendary album in its own right with what seemed like its own gravitational pull for months leading up to and after its release (and to this day, depending on who you ask). There it was: a full 5^th Mic. Etch it in stone. Even their retrospective “mistakes” – giving Breaking Atoms, The Chronic, Ready to Die, Enter the Wu Tang, and The Infamous, among a few others, 4.5 mics initially, only to re-rate them years later, rightly so, as 5s – were made with the right intent and integrity in mind (okay, I refuse to believe Fesu’s album was a 4 mic, but I digress).

All that came apart of course as hip-hop started to expand at a rate that, like a black hole in outer space, would cause its eventual implosion. It became too big, with too much money both attached to it and woven into its content, that it was bound to die of its own excesses. Advertisements from up and coming streetwear brands like Triple 5 Soul, and Fuct, and Kani, and of course Cross Colours. And even those AACA hoodies that were everywhere for a minute, repping historically Black colleges in nearly every video you saw, were replaced by big brand media buys. There was a promotional polybag with a big co-brand every issue. It got more glossy and less gritty. The content seemed to soften as a result. Internal power plays were tearing its famous cohesiveness apart.

But even that wasn’t necessarily what killed The Source, though many of its founding writers had since moved onto other ventures, jaded and angered by an increasingly corporate influence in The Source’s editorial model. Consensus is that it was the rather obvious poisoning influence at the highest level by one man in particular: notorious Boston Bad Boy Ray Benzino.

A founding member of Boston’s biggest hip-hop group, The Almighty RSO, Ray Dogg was in many ways intertwined with The Source from jump, given his position of royalty in Boston hip-hop circles. I remember distinctly when The Source was vilified for supporting RSO when their release of “One in the Chamba”, a song depicting the very apparent need to arm oneself against the looming threat of violence at the hands of crooked cops, drew national attention. The magazine was a reliable promotional vehicle for Antonio Ansaldi, a line of custom leatherwear put out by the eponymous RSO-affiliated designer and outfitter of RSO, then Made Men, and their various affiliated acts (WiseGuys, for instance, a loose-knit collective of Boston MCs who came together, Wu Tang style, for a semi-successful one-and-done album). It always made sure to give Roxbury resident Ed OG well-earned love. It had Boston roots, despite moving to the big time in NYC in 1990. And for a long time it was never an issue.

But as the cash grew bigger, so too did its rule on everything around it, and, proportionally, the stakes for album ratings. And this is where it started to fall apart. With Benzino having since elevated himself to co-owner, yet also still making albums, this conflict of interest was bound to show itself. And did so thusly when in 1999 an “anonymous” reviewer published a 4.5 mic rating for Made Men (an updated iteration of RSO, essentially)’s album Classic Limited Edition. On their best day, RSO/Made Men are nowhere near 4.5 mic material, with all due respect (although I still bang “Holla Boston” with regularity – they do have their moments). And the hip-hop community, myself included, by then growing increasingly disenfranchised with the music as a whole and the pop-slickness of its onetime print totem, saw through it instantly.

By the time 2005 rolled around and credible reports surfaced of internal forces pushing for an adjustment of Little Brother’s incredible, iconic album The Minstrel Show down from a 4.5 to a 4, and a subsequent elevation of Lil’ Kim’s The Naked Truth up to a 5, the die had long been been cast. The Source had played itself.

Really, without even knowing this backdrop of internal intrigue, one look at a list of the 5 mic albums and that one stands out as particularly odd. And flat wrong. Why even bother with a rating system, much less one that at one time was so indisputably iconic and integral, if you are giving a bad album from a middling-at-best MC who was 8 years, at least, past her prime, the most coveted rating in all of music?

Which brings me back to today. Because of that fiasco, and how it pretty much mirrored what has become of hip-hop as a whole since around 1999 – shallow, soulless, increasingly present but decreasingly meaningful, often yawn-inducing at best outright-offensive at worst in its casual, blatant materialism and lack of artistic integrity and depth – those old issues of The Source are like gold to people who lived and loved it through that era. Sifting through the pages of them is like taking a time machine back to an era when everything meant more, when information (and mis-information) didn’t spread as easily as now. When someone like 6ix9ine would have been laughed out of the building before he ever managed to record one lyric or sexually assault one underage girl. When there were gatekeepers for something that held meaning and substance. When if you weren’t dope you probably weren’t making it out of your own neighborhood.

That’s the demand. Real heads crave authenticity to begin with. And we recognize it and embrace it. And given someone like myself, as borderline hoarder as they come, didn’t even hang onto his own back-issues, the supply side is certainly small enough to drive prices sky high. Let alone how hungry my generation is for nostalgia like this. And how thirsty the ones that followed us are to co-opt anything that was dope when we were younger.

But to see these issues on eBay, not only priced at $500 (I understand how and why, kids), but for the item subtitle to include the words “If you don’t like the price, try and find another one!!!” really kills a bit of my soul. Honestly, these are historical documents chronicling in real time, with requisite passion and thoughtfulness, the growth of the last great cultural movement in the history of America. And shitty 20 somethings are, astutely I must say, buying them up, like they are many other relics of mid-90s hip-hop life, and gouging the prices without any iota of understanding of why they are important. But this isn’t Jordan IIIs or Supreme hoodies. It just feels more craven. Juxtaposing the integrity and meaning of the subject matter and the bygone vehicle for it with such wanton, blatant, empty greed seems something more than unfortunate.

Add it to the list, I suppose. But luckily for me I managed to cop a handful of key back issues over the years, before Jonah scooped up many of them for use in the movie (all the issues, the Stretch and Bob tapes, the CDs are apparently legit OG – props to him on that), and the subsequent sheep did the same for the purposes of re-selling. And thus I’m able to occasionally shuffle away into my wormhole and bring myself back to a formative time when you had to work to get knowledge. And that knowledge gave you wisdom. And that wisdom gave you style and strength and perspective. And flavor. It wasn’t there for the taking and gone in an instant. It lasted, just like the music and culture it covered used to.

The Source is dead. Long live The Source.

*3 months into my 6 year run directing the Marketing of Ralph Lauren’s Polo Factory Stores, I put together a memo identifying an opportunity revolving around vintage Polo. Knowing what I knew about that shit – as both an avid collector and having turned down several rather lucrative offers on the street for a couple of my rather rarer items since moving to New York City, I knew there was a bubbling market for it. My saved eBay searches further confirmed my position.

Couple that with RL’s already beefy, talented Vintage Merchant team, and I felt we could leverage existing resources to buy up all the vintage Lo we could find (this is before it really blew up to its current degree a few years back), clean and recondition and more importantly authenticate it, and re-sell it, via eCom. Best of all, we could either sell it auction style, to create competitive shopping in real time and ensure highest sale price & ROI, or release the items randomly via the regular site or within specific ‘event windows’ on dedicated micro sites, with restricted access to only our most Important VIP customers.

We’d generate demand, buzz, and most importantly be the first brand to own our coveted vintage inventory, and thus benefit from a finite aftermarket. My boss’s response when I asked to present the idea to Ralph’s son David: “That’s not your job.”

Sometimes you need to dare a little bigger. And fight a little harder if you know you’ve got something. Ten years later…