Straight from the Source

From infamous rivalries and industry parties to intimate encounters with the hottest names in music, the first female editor-in-chief of The Source finally tells all about her years at the helm of the notorious bible of hip-hop.

Kim Osorio had a front-row seat for the biggest beefs, battles, and blow-ups in hip-hop. As the first female editor-in-chief of The Source, she had come up. From her corner office, Kim got the goods on hip-hop''s hottest names: Jay-Z, Nas, 50 Cent, Lil'' Kim. She developed close—sometimes intimate—relationships with the artists she exposed to the public. But The Source couldn''t hide its own dirty laundry for long.

Behind the scenes, the magazine''s volatile owners puppeteered every issue—even coveted honors like the 5-mic album rating and the Power 30 list of industry heavy-hitters. Then The Source declared war on Eminem and began the notorious assault that would send the magazine into swift decline.

In a culture dominated by men, Kim rose to the top, and after years in the magazine''s pressure cooker, she hit "send" on a two-sentence e-mail that would thrust her from the sidelines of the scandalous world she reported on to the center of one of the most explosive scandals in hip-hop history. Straight From the Source is the Book of Kim, the tell-all memoir only she could write about her influential years at the bible of hip-hop.