Benzino and Mays bounce back with Hip Hop Weekly

NEW YORK - Nineteen years ago Harvard student David Mays caught Ray "Benzino" Scott performing with his rap group the Almighty RSO in Boston.

The bond created during that first meeting was immediate and lasting.

"We've been partners, brothers ever since," says the man commonly referred to as Benzino, 41, who was born in Jamaica Plain and raised in Roxbury and Dorchester.

Mays, a Washington, D.C., native who graduated in 1990 from Harvard with a degree in government, later became the manager of Almighty RSO.

Before that, in 1988, with a little help from Benzino, Mays started The Source magazine in his Harvard dorm room.

The Source started as a one-page newsletter that covered hip-hop news at a time when the mainstream media were predicting the music's demise.

Instead, hip-hop culture became a worldwide phenomenon, and The Source turned into one of the industry's premiere magazines. Over the years, Mays and Benzino withstood various controversies - claims from freelancers that the magazine didn't pay them, accusations that Mays used the magazine to promote Benzino's hip-hop career, and highly publicized beefs with hip-hop stars such as Eminem. The pair used the magazine's February 2003 issue to distribute a CD that featured a recording of Eminem frequently using a racial slur and uttering derogatory words about black women. Eminem apologized, but his record label Def Jam/Interscope retaliated by pulling its music ads from The Source. Benzino and Mays prevailed at the magazine until January, when they were forced off The Source's masthead by the magazine's board of directors.

Now they're back with a new national magazine, Hip Hop Weekly, which debuted last month.

The publication may look like Star magazine, but neither Benzino nor Mays wants anyone to mistake it for a tabloid. It follows the US Weekly/People magazine format, showing hip-hop celebrities - Kanye West, Justin Timberlake, Fat Joe - in public and private moments. Sections cover sports, cars, music, and fashion. There's even a gossip column by Wendy Williams, a best-selling author and popular afternoon DJ on the New York R&B station WBLS-FM (107.5).

Mays and Benzino came up with the idea for Hip Hop Weekly during their forced retirement. Far away from the grind of monthly magazine publishing, they noticed the changes taking place in the industry. Fans can go to websites such as SOHH.com or Allhiphop.com to get the latest information.

The news contained in monthly hip-hop magazines such as The Source, XXL, or Vibe, says Benzino, no longer feels fresh because publishing deadlines cause them to be filled with information gathered three months before magazines reach newsstands.

Hip-hop is also bigger than ever. A national consumer study done in the spring by Experian Simmons, a market research company, showed that almost 24 million people over the age of 12 prefer the pop hip-hop music of rappers such as Nelly or Diddy. "It's not just inner city," Mays, 37, says. "It's not just African-American. It's a big swatch of mainstream America, Wal-Mart-type people who are the consumers and followers of hip-hop culture. ... This vehicle is timed perfectly to coincide with the emergence and recognition of that market. What's more mass market than a supermarket tabloid?"

Some wonder if the hip-hop community will respond to the tabloid style.

"We have a magazine almost for every celebrity," says Samir Husni, a journalism professor at the University of Mississippi, who follows the magazine industry, "and why not that culture? The biggest question we need to ask is ... 'Is that audience really that hungry for that information that they'll want it on a weekly basis?' And can the feel of a tabloid, which Hip Hop Weekly looks like, satisfy the audience? They're a sophisticated audience, but they're sophisticated in a very specific way."

Mays and Benzino say they've heard nothing but praise for their first issue. They printed 250,000 copies of Hip Hop Weekly. During its first week in circulation, the magazine debuted at No. 21 out of 60 magazines carried in the 7-Eleven chain, according to magazine distributor Curtis Circulation Co.

"It's an incredible idea," says Steve Rifkind, founder of Loud Records and chairman of SRC Records, who calls Mays in the middle of an interview to tell him. "You nailed it. You got a perfect ... 10. It's gonna be twice as big as The Source." Days later during a telephone interview, Rifkind says he thinks Hip Hop Weekly will work because it's so different from what's out there. "If you look at US [Weekly], In Touch, the Star, the Enquirer," says Rifkind, "there really isn't nothing for the hip-hop community [in those magazines]."

The foes of Mays and Benzino are equally sure that Hip Hop Weekly will fail. "I don't expect to see any issues past December 2006," writes the blogger behind bittervibes (bittervibes.blogspot.com), a site that gossips about the urban magazine world.

The negative perceptions may be caused by the unrelenting drama that continues to hang over the duo. The pair closed the 72-page first issue of Hip Hop Weekly hours before commencing a sexual harassment trial on charges brought against them by former Source editor in chief Kim Osorio.

Just before Hip Hop Weekly became available to the public, word spread that the new magazine's editor, Mimi Vald?s, had left. In the days preceding the start of work on Hip Hop Weekly's 84-page second issue, a jury found that The Source, Benzino, and Mays fired Osorio in retaliation for complaining about her bosses' inappropriate sexual behavior and that Benzino defamed Osorio during a radio interview when he claimed she slept with various hip-hop stars.

In Mays's and Benzino's eyes, the $8 million awarded by the jury to Osorio on the lesser charges of retaliation and defamation was a vindication. They plan to appeal, but if the case ends up favoring Osorio, Mays says, "everything related to that case is covered under the insurance that The Source has, so ... it won't affect us or this company [financially] in any way."

Neither Mays nor Benzino seems fazed by the short tenure of Vald?s, who had been editor in chief of Vibe since 2003 until being fired in July. An item in WWD (Women's Wear Daily) claimed that Vald?s "fled the title ...

due to a beef with Mays and Scott." But Mays says, "[Vald?s] just realized after she got a couple of steps into it that she wasn't really ready to jump back into the swing of magazine[s] right now. ...

There was nothing bad about it in any way. I still talk to her; she was up here the other day. We're on good terms."

Two weeks before the Nov. 13 issue was set to be published, four new members of the streamlined staff of 12 met with Mays in their rented offices in Midtown South to talk about its contents. They presented a picture of a magazine that's still feeling its way. Cavario H., a former co-owner and lead writer at Don Diva, a popular magazine about gangster culture, mentions to Mays that he's not sure which CDs to run in the review section. Mays tells him to create contacts with record company publicists so Cavario will know the CD release schedules. Sunny Anderson, a former midday radio DJ on the New York hip-hop radio station Hot 97, earns her title as artist relations manager (she also writes for the food and other sections) by constantly offering to call publicists to arrange interviews with various celebrities. The meeting also included Dana Smith, the art director, and Joicelyn Dingle, the photo editor.

Although Benzino is not in the room - he arrives for the closing of the magazine days later from Miami where he moved to about a year ago - his name is constantly mentioned by all four staff members.

"A lot of the ideas you heard us talk about," says Mays, "I would say 80 percent of those ideas came from [Benzino] maybe a week ago. I got on the phone, he said, 'OK let's do this, this, this and the other.' I took the notes down and carry it across to these folks. He stays in touch with all the key people here."

If the sexual harassment trial portrayed The Source offices as a highly sexualized haven where porn videos were played in the mailroom, the makeshift Hip Hop Weekly space portrays a calmer image of laptops and bare walls.

"As you can kind of see," says Mays, "it's still a little bit of a work in progress. But we planned for that by spreading out the launch dates."

The magazine will start biweekly issues in December and January with a goal of going weekly sometime next year. Unfortunately, the publication failed to share that information with its readers.

"[In] the first issue," says Husni, "there's no indication whatsoever of the date of that issue or when it is coming back."

The administrative bumps haven't stopped Benzino and Mays from talking about expanding their fledgling project. They want to generate mobile content, establish an online presence and create television programming - an Entertainment Tonight for the hip-hop set. Meanwhile, in between recording a new CD, Benzino oversees personal projects they're developing in Miami, including a recording studio and a lounge or lounge/restaurant.

Nothing, it seems, can shake the confidence of this longtime duo.

"As long as me and Dave are in the picture," says Benzino, "everything is all right."

c.2006 The Boston Globe