The year was 1993. The sound was Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, Gang Starr and Diamond D, Scarface and Ice Cube, A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul. The address was 594 Broadway in Lower Manhattan, a few steps south of Houston Street. I walked into the narrow lobby, punched the button for the fifth floor, and entered the office of The Source magazine.
I felt like a minor leaguer walking into Yankee Stadium.
Forget about my full-time job at The Associated Press, a.k.a. AP, where I was bossing up at just 24 years old. Who cares that I had interned at The New York Times and was about to have columns published by Emerge and Essence. I wanted to be down with The Source crew, who wrote in a language that called to me like Yoruba to our enslaved ancestors.
James Bernard ushered me into his office. We had never met. He wore glasses and a warm smile. As we sat down, I spotted a piece of paper tacked to his bulletin board with a handwritten note in black Sharpie:
AP Niggas
That moment changed my life. For the first time as a journalist, I felt seen and that my truth could be heard. When news about James’ death emerged last month, I planned to write a few words in memory of. But as I talked to people who worked with James to build The Source, I was reminded of the powerful forces unleashed by hip-hop in the ’90s — powerful, we now realize, for better and for worse — and the toll those energies took.
I thought about how so much of today’s media, including what we do here at Andscape, is a direct descendant of what James and his colleagues accomplished. The impact of The Source is undeniable — you would swear Redman was inside the trunk. So I was compelled to go deeper into the story of the man, the magazine, and the era.
James passed not long after the premature deaths of Shani Saxon of Vibe magazine and Sacha Jenkins, who in my view has the best hip-hop media set list of all time. I worked with all three of them, but James influenced me the most, and the way he passed hit closest to home.
According to statements from James’ family and the authorities, he suffered from severe mental illness, disappeared almost two years ago, and committed suicide long before his body was found. I have had close family members with mental illnesses. I mention how James died to combat the stigma of mental illness, which is often caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. It is often hereditary. It can cause suicidal ideations. There’s no reason to view James’ passing any differently than if he was killed by kidney disease.