Old bitches die hard

"They built it by walking across our collective backs. When I was at the source, Women ran shit literally and figuratively. We led the editorial meetings, we held down the fort, we provided the research, development, fact-checking, writing, planning and scheduling it took to print the most popular rap magazine on the planet. But we also provided the ass."

—Miranda Jane, former and present Source staffer

A few weeks ago I did posts both here and on my own site on the insidious new trend known as minstrel show rap. Young jigs in ghettos across America, no longer content with making black people look stupid through normal means, have taken to reviving actual songs and dances from the minstrel show era.

A buncha other bloggers did posts on the trend as well and eventually the story was picked up by one of the columnists for the New York Daily News.

To wit:

As recently pointed out by Byron Crawford, a blogger for the hip-hop magazine XXL, industry-backed racial clowning is so popular that it now constitutes its own subgenre: minstrel rap.

Peep: All rhyme, no reason for rap world's modern minstrels

So of course I was interested when I saw the newest issue of the Source, with Jim Jones on the cover, has a story on whether or not rap is turning into a minstrel show, In particular, I wondered if this was yet another case of a writer having an early Thanksgiving feast on Bol's leftovers.

I went to the Source's website to see if I could read the article, or at least an excerpt from it, but I couldn't find anything. They've still got that same shitty flash-based design I mentioned here earlier this year, and the site, in its current state, is essentially useless.

According to this guy I know, the Source is planning on a complete relaunch of its site early next year. In the meantime though, I was surprised to see the Source now has its own blog. In fact, it appears to have been up now for over a month.

Is it any good? Um, no. The generic Wordpress template its running on doesn't even work right in Firefox. The grey and burgundy text on a black background is pretty damn difficult to read. So from a design and usability standpoint, the site's kind of nightmare.

They've brought in a team of columnists not unlike XXL's (a pure coincidence, I'm sure), which is made up of a who's who of aging, non-writing Bol haters. The lone story posted today is by Adisa Banjoko, who's leading a one-man boycott of XXL over that Lupe Jihadist bullshit.

Another post, by a 40-year-old sasquatch of a so-called hip-hop feminist named Miranda Jane (the quote above is from another blog of hers), is filled with bitter subliminal shots at yours truly. Then she goes on to rip off my minstrel show rap story right there in the same post. Shamelessness, thy name is woman!

And the magazine's editor-in-chief has posted two entries so far, both of which make reference to XXL's own Pravda Splinter. In one post, "Fahiym" is inspired to ask PS out on a date after watching Magic Johnson give a speech at some Hip-Hop Summit Action Network conference, but in the next one, he gets all mad because PS called the Source irrelevant on an episode of the Parker Report.

Aww...

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Speaking of Blogging, I see XXL's own kris ex has officially quit his blog here in order to spend more time smoking weed and looking at Internets pr0n while he's still young enough. It'll be interesting to see who they bring in to replace him.