DAVID MAYS

In August 1988, Mays and Shecter created The Source as a single-sheet newsletter to promote their own radio show — printed on Mays’s personal Macintosh computer, with $200 in personal funds. Within a few months it had grown into a full-color magazine; with a $10,000 loan, they were publishing 10,000 copies every two months out of an office in Somerville, Massachusetts. By 1991, circulation had reached 40,000 copies, with close to a million dollars in revenue.

After graduating in June 1990, they moved the magazine to New York City, financing the move with $70,000 raised through advance advertising payments from record labels. The editorial team — known as the “Mind Squad” — grew to include James Bernard (co-editor-in-chief), Chris Wilder, Reginald Dennis and others. The magazine’s five-mic album rating system became an influential standard in Hip-Hop culture.

In April 1994, the first Source Awards were held. Months later, in September 1994, Mays secretly inserted a flattering, undisclosed article about The Almighty RSO — a Boston group with which he already had a prior personal connection — without announcing it to the rest of the editorial staff. When it came to light, Bernard, Shecter, Dennis and six other editors resigned together, through a manifesto faxed to 750 industry executives.

In the wake of that editorial exodus, Benzino (Raymond Scott) became increasingly involved with the magazine. In 1995 he officially became a business partner in The Source — Mays did not publicly acknowledge that stake until 2002. Benzino is never described here as a co-founder of the magazine; that distinction belongs solely to Mays and Shecter.

In 1995, a televised Source Awards ceremony aired for the first time, an event that intensified the tensions between the East and West Coasts of the era’s Hip-Hop. By 1997, The Source was the best-selling music magazine on U.S. newsstands, at 317,369 copies. In 1998, Mays financed the development of the magazine’s website with a $12 million loan, using the publication itself as collateral. In 2002 — the same year he publicly acknowledged Benzino’s stake — he sold 18% of the company to Black Enterprise/Greenwich Street for $12 million and secured an additional $18 million loan from Textron Financial.

In January 2006, after a payment default triggered a clause in the 2002 agreement, Black Enterprise/Greenwich Street took control of the magazine and fired both Mays and Benzino, installing Jeremy Miller as editor. The Source declared bankruptcy in 2007, with $35 million in debt against $1.3 million in assets; L. Londell McMillan acquired the publication in August 2008.

In August 2025, as reported by TMZ, Mays publicly responded to statements by Benzino claiming credit for creating the Source Awards — a documented dispute over the event’s historical credit, presented here as a fact reported by that outlet, without taking sides between the two accounts.

That same year, Mays and Benzino co-founded Hip Hop Weekly, inspired by the success of weekly magazines such as Entertainment Weekly and US Weekly, aiming to fill an editorial gap for weekly Hip-Hop news. The publication went on to become the best-selling urban entertainment magazine on U.S. newsstands and received recognition from the publishing industry for several consecutive years.