1999 Source Awards Review

In Thursday's EUR we gave you a brief summary of the winners at the historic Source Hip-Hop Music Awards that took place Wednesday at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. The following is a list of the rest of the winners, and what we thought about them. DMX won the award for solo artist of The Year over the likes of Jay-Z. (WHAT!) But Jay-Z did win Lyricist of The Year and Swizz Beats was named Producer of the year. R. Kelly walked off with the R&B artist of The Year trophy while "Belly" was named Movie Of The Year. (Over "He Got Game" ya'll! They had to be smokin', for real.) Now to give you an honest assessment of the goings on of the affair. We'll be honest....honestly. The affair started an hour and a half late but eventually kicked off with the presentation of the Solo Artist Of The Year trophy. Actress Rosario Dawson, Allen Iverson and Dr. Dre politely jumped on stage to present the award, but SOMEBODY SCREWED UP, BIG TIME. In the words of the great philosopher Homer...Simpson, "DOOEE!" They opened the damn thing up and there wasn't anything in the envelope. NOTHING! To top that off, it took the crew 15 minutes to find the right one. But we forgave them. Then we looked at the monitor and we saw that almost a third of the seats were empty. Why? Maybe the reported $200-400 dollar price tag for the cheap seats had something to do with it. And they talk about keeping it real? Negro, we mean, whiteboy please. Most pro athletes would look at that and grimace. We forgave them for that too.

Master P started the show off with an all out wack performance that's not even worth getting into. Lauryn Hill ripped it to shreds, as usual, The Hot Boys were hot, but the audience didn't seem to agree. Busta and the Flipmode squad did their thing, but we weren't impressed with DMX at all. Maybe those awards went to his head. Puffy's performance was, well it was better than Master P's, but that's not saying much. But the performance of the evening went to Snoop Dogg and Xzihibit they really ripped it. The track was bumpin' and some of the fellas actually stopped profiling for a nanosecond to bob their heads. Mike Tyson was on hand to present the Album Of The Year Award and to promote his new venture, Tyson Records. Grandmaster Flash almost came to tears when accepting his Pioneer award and gave a very touching speech that honored those that contributed to Hip-Hop and are not present to see the event. All and all the awards came off as well as can be expected for it's first year. Well, it could have gone better, but we're sure it'll get better over time."