One thing Lil Kim will always have over Nicki Minaj is that Lil Kim is one of the few artists in general and perhaps the only female artist to receive the once-coveted five mic rating in the Source.

That is, unless Nicki Minaj's forthcoming debut album, Remy Ma Ate the Box, or whatever it's gonna be called, also receives five mics. I'm not sure who's in charge over there, but she might seriously consider stopping by their offices and handing out a few blowskis, and possibly a Dukakis '88-style ride in her huge tank ass - if not because anyone gives a shit what the Source has to say these days, then because it could be instrumental in her beef with Lil Kim.

I read somewhere the other day that the general manager and executive editor (read only employee) of the Source, Amy Andrieux (me neither), left to pursue other opportunities, but it wasn't clear to me if that meant she was replaced by someone else, or if the guy who purchased the Source a few years ago, presumably for vanity purposes, finally decided to cut his losses. You can't just have a magazine without an executive editor and a general manager (assuming that's two separate, fairly important jobs), can you? No one on Twitter seemed to be aware or give a shit.

I guess who's in charge wouldn't matter as much to Nicki Minaj, who's bisexual. It's just a matter of what exactly she needs to do with her tongue. You'd think a guy would be more likely to pull some shit like that, but lest we forget, the Source also has a lengthy and storied history of female employees getting it on with artists. If only I could remember 50 Cent's exact words for what happened to his balls. Nullus.

When you've been around for as long as I have, it's hard to keep track of every single detail. For example, I can vaguely recall writing about that Lil Kim album receiving five mics, but I can't remember if that was the last album to achieve that lofty status. In a post yesterday on how some as yet to be revealed album will receive five mics in the new issue of the Source, supposedly hitting newsstands this week, it just says it's been over five years.

I guess that's not the kind of thing the Source would want to bring up, at this point. The idea here is to try to breathe some life back into the Source brand. That five mic rating was once reserved only for the likes of Illmatic. Even albums like The Chronic and Ready to Die didn't quite qualify. Remember that period, back in the mid to late '90s, when you'd pick up a copy of the Source, and the first thing you did was flip to the album reviews section to see if anything had gotten five mics? It seemed like forever until something finally did. As I recall, it was Aquemini by OutKast. But I could be mistaken. That was a long time ago, and at that point the Source had already begun its long, sad fade into irrelevance. Obviously. lol (via pandering to the South)

In case you didn't see where Questlove keeps linking to it on Twitter, as if it was actually a contest to decide which album will receive five mics (he seems genuinely confused), the seven lucky finalists are Drake's Thank Me Later; Big Boi's Sir Luscious Left Nut: The Son of Chico Dusty; The Roots' How I Got Over; Eminem's Recovery; Bun B's Trill OG; Rawse's Teflon Don; and Fat Joe's The Darkside, Vol. 1. One of those albums will soon join Illmatic, The Low End Theory, One for All by Brand Nubian, plus all of those albums they went back and awarded in that anniversary issue (which makes me wonder why they can't just take a few mics away from that Lil Kim album, years after the fact). The Roots album had been leading early on, due to Questlove being popular than a motherfucker on Twitter (if he could get half his followers to buy his album, he'd be in business), but I checked just now and I see it's since been surpassed by Recovery, the most popular album on the list by far, at least in terms of album sales.

If I had to guess, I'd say it's between the Eminem album, which has been an unqualified success commercially, and seems to be fairly well liked despite itself, the Roots album, which is the artsy fartsy pick of the bunch, and less embarrassing than anything they've done in upwards of a decade (albeit due in part to lowered expectations), and that Big Boi album, which probably has the highest score on Metacritic, if the ridonkulous raves from the cracka-ass crackas I usually read are any indication. Those three and the Drake album are the only ones I've actually heard. None of them struck me as anything near an instant classic.

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