How did the Source Awards get started?

Dave Mays: The Source Awards as a thing began in 1991. I made an arrangement with the producers of Yo! MTV Raps, and we had an afternoon where we gave out Source awards. Several different artists got awards, these little trophies we made up. We just called them out, they came up and got the award. At the time, what The Source was about was championing hip-hop culture during a time when it was expanding rapidly, commercializing rapidly, globalizing even. But it was also very much shunned by the mainstream. It was the brunt of a lot of negativity, attacks by the media and politicians. The awards was just kind of a natural idea I came up with out of my passion for hip-hop and my desire to kind of showcase the talent, bring some of these incredible artists, producers, lyricists, musicians, and dancers—everybody that was a part of hip-hop—a platform. I think it was as early as ’88 when the Grammys added a rap category, and it was widely criticized in the hip-hop world, because it was Tone Loc, Will Smith, and Jazzy Jeff. That set a tone of mainstream award shows snubbing real hip-hop, not televising awards, and the process of nominations was very suspect. After the Yo! MTV Raps thing, I tried to put a plan together to make it into a full-scale award show, and that was when we had the first one, in 1994, at the Paramount Theater. It was untelevised. 2Pac was there. Many others.

People get excited about the concept of being awarded things, and rap is very competitive, so even at the Yo! MTV Raps stage, what was the mood like—were people arguing over these things?

DM: First and foremost it was excitement about something that was authentic. As it became a bigger thing, like the first major one in ’94, then, of course, came the debates over nominations and who should get what. By that time, it became a more formalized process. The first few years we had The Source staff involved, these meetings to develop the nominations, some balloting we used with different people in the industry. It became a real bona fide thing. Nothing like it had ever been done.

Who got ballots?

DM: At that time, DJs, some of them at radio and others who were just influential. Retailers. The mom-and-pop retailers were influential in those days, because they were in the trenches in the community. So, retailers and DJs. That might have been it.

Even at that early stage, were labels jockeying for nominations like the movie studios do with the Oscars?

DM: It was definitely taken seriously, and people definitely wanted to be a part of it. Labels supported it. The Source had become influential enough. That made it valuable to the record labels, artists, managers, and everyone else. The Death Row set that opened the 1995 Source Awards, Suge Knight spent over $100,000 to pay for that set. That just shows you the kind of commitment people had to the show and what we were doing.

Were there security concerns in ’94?

DM: I know we had to get insurance, but I don’t remember it being a big issue. We were able to secure that kind of venue. Money talks! I don’t know off the top of my head, but if you’re going to go in and put a deposit down on a theater like that, for a big event, $25,000-$50,000? You’re signing a pretty big contract that is worth a substantial amount of money.