First of all, Combat Jack, literally the blackest person I've ever seen (think Wesley Snipes), has got another post at dallaspenn.com going at Sickamore.

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Speaking of which, if it's cool for Sick (only six days left!) to repurpose garbage from AllHipHop's message boards, I'm assuming it's alright for me to do a post about the Source. It was, after all, once considered the bible of hip-hop. Now it appears as if it might actually be out of business.

You'll recall that maybe a month or so ago I copped issues of both the Source and XXL, just to see what they're like. I got the XXL with Jay-Z circa Reasonable Doubt on the cover and the special 200th issue of the Source, with Ice Cube - presumably the most prominent non-southern rapper who would agree to be featured on their cover at this stage.

I flipped through both of them, did a post on them, and read about as much of them as I could bring myself to read. While taking a shit, naturally. Another month or so went by, and last week, I figured what the fuck - I'll go and cop this month's issues of the two magazines as well. Maybe I could borrow a few ideas for posts from them.

I ended up copping the Lloyd Banks and Fiddy special weed carriers edition of XXL, despite the fact that I've now spent almost as much on this crap as it would cost for an actual subscription. But come to find out, there hasn't been a new issue of the Source since the one with Ice Cube on the cover. In fact, I'm almost certain that the two or three copies of that shit still sitting there at my local Barnes and Noble were the same ones from more than a month prior.

Um, what the fuck?

Did the Source just go out of business and not tell anyone? The "special collector's edition" of the Source, with Ice Cube on the cover, dates clear back to June of this year (it features album reviews of Mobb Deep's Blood Money and LL Cool J's Todd Smith), while the special weed carriers edition of XXL is their September issue. This would suggest to me that there should have been three issues of the Source released since then, i.e. a full fourth of a year's worth.

I went to the Source's website to see if there was a Dear John letter or anything posted, but there was nothing there other than a buncha advertisements for Foot Locker. In fact, the whole website has essentially become an advertisement for Foot Locker. (While you're waiting for all the ads to load, you're treated to a message that says, "Please wait. The hip-hop bible is on it's (sic) way!"

There's a link to something called the Source Blog, which claims it's coming soon. I wonder if/when that will begin and how bad it will suck. With so many mainstream media organizations trying and failing to create successful blogs, I'm sure it'd be worth a lot of money to them to find someone who actually knew what they're doing. In theory, at least.

On the outside chance that anyone here subscribes to the Source: What the fuck is going on? Did they send you a letter? Since obviously there aren't any new issues of the Source to send, do they send you something else in its place? I'm tempted to send them $12 just to see what happens.

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