Hip Hop Weekly Plays Good Cop- Bad Cop With Angry Freelancers
Yesterday we brought you the epic, outraged email chain that ensued when Hip Hop Weekly mistakenly sent an invite for a fancy party it was throwing to a list of freelancers who hadn't been paid for their work. It only took one day for them to propose a class-action lawsuit and a protest march. Energetic! And while half of HHW's leadership is apparently trying to calm everyone down, the other half is dealing with the situation by screaming threats over the phone: From an unpaid photographer on the email list:
Dave Mays, by the way, is a guy who founded The Source while he was a student at Harvard, and built it into one of the most respected hip hop magazines ever—until he let it all go to hell. Benzino is a Boston thug rapper-turned-magazine exec who came in and helped run The Source into the ground, doing things like inserting features about his own rap group into the magazine just before publication. He has inspired much fear in writer types during his media career. The highlight of Benzino's hip hop career is probably being dissed by Eminem in this song:
[More on the fallout from Thaddaeus McAdams at Exclusive Access]