Something that I have noticed is happening a lot more in the Hip Hop scene presently than in the past is the amount of influence certain people and organisations have in forming opinions on Hip Hop. This is especially evident in respect to the quality of artists albums and what an album is worth as a 'rating'.

The Source magazine is a prime example of this, many a time I've said to somebody (and how many times have you said) that a certain album is phat, but their reply is 'it only got 3 Mic's in The Source'.

The problem with The Source (and other Hip Hop publications) is that although they might be the best and most respected Hip Hop magazine around, their views on a albums quality are still only the views on a few people, a minority, and sometimes they can get it extremely wrong and damage a artists career. The policy of The Source (for those who don't know) is to let every one that works for them listen to the album and give it a rating out of the five Mic's, this is then compiled and a final rating is agreed upon with the albums reviewer. However most times a album is only listened to once by the people giving the ratings, listening to a album once surely doesn't give a individual the ability to properly rate its worth.

So what's my point on all this?

Basically I don't like the way that a artists records sales are heavily influenced by the rating one magazine (and in many cases only a few people) give it. There are many cases this year in which I believe that The Source has wrongly reviewed and rated albums, the prime example is 'La The Darkman's Heist Of The Century'. La's album is without a doubt the best Wu tang release of 1998, but it was also the one that got the worst rating in The Source and as a result will surely be the worst selling of all the Wu albums of '98. In my opinion La's album was just as good as Noreaga's NORE, but NORE got 4 Mic's and Heist only 3, the consistency of the reviewing and ratings at The Source in my opinion really needs to be improved to ensure that a fair outcome is achieved for all artists, I mean you are basically dealing with there life if you fuck up a review like they did with La, they are messing with his money!.

The Source and its ability to rate albums consistently is also questionable for instance in 1995 to get 4 Mic's in The Source you only had to pull out a album which was very average, today such albums would struggle to get 3 Mic's, a prime example of this is Kool G Rap's 4,5,6 which received 4 Mic's. Over the last 3 years it has become extremely difficult for albums to receive a really good rating. This year you could count on one hand the number of 4.5's and 5's that where handed out. While in the past 2-3 albums have received 4.5 in the one month along with 6-7 4's (Dec 96). Many people would say that's because the quality of the music release last year wasn't as good as it has been in the past, that's bullshit, the only album I was disappointed with was Tical 2000. A lot of really good music came out in 98 and got no props.

Finally and this isn't just a criticism of The Source but most hip hop publications, large crews which have a lot of members releasing a lot of albums, ie Wu Tang and this year Mobb Deep, are severely disadvantage because people will tend to compare every act that comes out of the crew to the Original Act. In both the case of Mobb Deep and Wu Tang this is a extremely hard task to perform. This is basically what happened to La, they compared him to Raekwon and said he failed. I can't accept that each artist needs to be compared to any one else but themselves, because without a doubt it would almost be impossible for any Wu Fam act to be as good as the Clan or any of The Infamous Mobb or Noyd, to hold it down like Hav and Pee.

Anyway that's my thoughts on the issue, I would like to hear yours. Until next week
... I'm out.

PS if anyone can get their hands on a copy of Tragedy Khadafi's albums released in 1990 and 1993
The Intelligent Hoodlum &
Tragedy: Saga of a Hoodlum
on either CD or Vinyl hit me up on my mail. franknitto@yahoo.com

Next week imma hit you up with the true story surrounding the beef between Tragedy and Noreaga.