Delve into the groundbreaking evolution of hip-hop culture and media empires alongside the visionary Dave Mays, founder of The Source magazine and CEO of Breakbeat Media, as Zack Ellison and Shawne Merriman guide a compelling conversation. In this episode, Dave shares his extraordinary journey from Harvard student to architect of hip-hop’s most influential publication, and his current mission to unite a global community through Breakbeat Media’s innovative podcast network. Listen to firsthand accounts of the golden era of hip-hop, the challenges of navigating the early internet age, and the powerful lessons learned from both soaring successes and humbling setbacks. Dave offers a unique perspective on the evolution of hip-hop, the importance of authentic connection, and his unwavering belief in the culture’s ability to transcend boundaries and bring people together, making this a must-listen for anyone passionate about music, media, and the entrepreneurial spirit.

Success Unleash’d Principles From This Episode

1. Own Your Vision—Even When Others Don’t See It

Dave shares how his bold, unique vision for hip-hop culture wasn’t understood by many at first, but his unwavering belief helped him build The Source into a game-changer. Stay firm in your vision.

2. Respect the Culture, Not Just the Commerce

The Source’s success was rooted in understanding the community, not just making money. True success comes from respecting the culture you’re building on.

3. Leverage Technology to Scale

In the digital age, Dave emphasizes how technology is a powerful force for scaling impact. Today’s opportunities, like podcasting, allow you to reach and unite millions in ways that were impossible before.

4. Bet Big, But Bet Smart

Dave admits that betting the farm on dot-com ventures didn’t work out. Sometimes, the right approach isn’t about taking the biggest risks, but making the most calculated decisions.

5. Surround Yourself with a Trustworthy Team

No matter how visionary you are, building something massive requires a team you trust. Listen to their advice and let their expertise balance your own.

6. Resilience Over Everything

Failure didn’t stop Dave—it fueled his next chapter. His persistence is a key to turning setbacks into comebacks. Keep moving, even when things go wrong.

7. Balance Work with Life

While his entrepreneurial hustle was relentless, Dave now acknowledges the importance of prioritizing personal life. Success is holistic—your business should support a fulfilling life, not take away from it.

8. Bridge Generations, Don’t Divide Them

Hip-hop’s cultural relevance spans generations, and Dave sees the opportunity to unite them through shared values, not just music preferences. Focus on what connects people, not what divides them.

9. Authenticity Will Win in New Media

The digital age is all about authenticity, and podcasting is the perfect platform to let real voices thrive. Stay true to your roots, and the audience will follow.

10. Your Past Doesn’t Define Your Future

Dave turned his past experiences into lessons for his next venture. Don’t let old mistakes define you—use them to propel yourself forward and build something even bigger.

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Watch the Episode Here

Listen to the Podcast Here

The Source and Beyond: Building Hip-Hop Media Empires with Dave Mays

We have with us Dave Mays. Dave is a legend of sorts. He’s the Founder and Creator of The Source Magazine, and he is the CEO of Breakbeat Media.

Dave, thanks for joining.

I am very happy to be here with you.

Shawne and I are about the same age. I don’t even like to tell people how old I am. They think I’m a lot younger. I’m 44. When I was in high school in the late ‘90s, The Source was where it was at. It was an iconic magazine and an iconic platform that you built. Shawne, I know you are coming up with the same thing.

It was The Source, especially being from Prince George’s County, Maryland, the Washington, DC area. A lot of the music started coming out of that area. Years later, it moved to Atlanta, but a lot of stuff came out of that DMV area, and The Source was it. That was our source. That’s what I grew up on.

Dave, it feels like we’re interviewing royalty. Going back to your roots, I know some of your story. It’s fascinating. I know a number of people have wanted to write screenplays about your life because it’s so fascinating. Talk to us about how you went from a student at Harvard to everything you’ve done since then.

Launching The Source: The Genesis of Hip-Hop’s Bible

I got to bring it back to Washington, DC, because that’s where I grew up. That’s the city that made me who I am, at least at a very early age. I fell in love with the music and the culture of the city, going through the public school system in Washington, DC. Specifically Black music and culture, I fell in love with that at a young age. I was playing basketball on the playgrounds and being into GoGo music, but that’s a whole other story.

I did go to Harvard. I had always been an entrepreneur from a young age. I had a lawn mowing business in junior high with 70 clients and business cards. I had other hustles as a younger person growing up in DC. When I got to Harvard, it was a culture shock. I wanted to go to school in a big city. Boston, I knew, was a big city. I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to get into a place such as Harvard and what that name could mean, but I wasn’t looking at the social environment or anything. It was a very different type of people there from what I was used to.

I was drawn to start this radio show on the Harvard radio station, which broadcast throughout the city but played classical music almost all the time. I was able to start a late-night weekend show playing hip-hop and initially GoGo music, but quickly, that quickly got shut down. They didn’t want to hear it. I fell in love with hip-hop and this era. This is 1986 when I got to Harvard. That’s what I would consider the emergence of the golden era of hip-hop. This is when hip-hop started to change from being a fun party music to something that became much more of a social, cultural, and political movement amongst young people of all backgrounds, all races, and all socioeconomic levels.

People were falling in love with hip-hop in the mid to late ‘80s and becoming caught up in the message and knowledge that was being conveyed through the music. That became an inspiration for me and opened my eyes to see the world in a whole different way. I was trying to sell sponsors for my radio show. People were laughing at me because I’d go around to local businesses in Boston and they’d say, “Nobody’s listening to hip-hop on the Harvard Station. Get the hell out of here.” I was determined to prove that I had this audience because the phones would ring all night long at 1:00 AM. People were calling from all over the city. Back then, there was hardly any place to hear rap music, and also hardly any place to find out any information about hip-hop and rap music.

I decided to build a mailing list of my listeners. I would have people call in all night long. I would stay up writing down names and addresses all night and type them into one of the first big computers and database programs. I built up this mailing list of over 1,000 fans of the radio show around the Boston area and decided to start a newsletter called The Source, which was one sheet of paper. I used a couple of hundred dollars to write, create, design, and Xerox off 1,000 copies of this newsletter. I sold three ads on the back for $150, and I was off to the races.

From there, somebody told me that I should read this book about Rolling Stone Magazine, which I didn’t know anything about. I learned from reading the book about Jann Wenner how he created Rolling Stone as an underground newspaper for rock and roll fans, and was able to elevate it into the voice of his generation, the premier arbiter of popular culture that Rolling Stone was for many years. I said, “I can do that for hip-hop, and hip-hop is going to be bigger.”

Everybody loves hip-hop, not just White, what have you. Even though rock and roll, like hip-hop, was created by Black folks, rock and roll followed a different path to becoming mainstream with the likes of Elvis, The Beatles, and people like that that brought it more into the mainstream. Black folks got cut out of rock and roll, but with hip-hop, the artists and the people that created it were the superstars from Run DMC to Public Enemy, Eric B. & Rakim, etc.

I knew that hip-hop had the potential, and The Source could be bigger than Rolling Stone. I built it up from 1 page to 6 pages to 16 pages. I started selling it. I built a distribution network in mom-and-pop record stores all over the country. I was packing up boxes of magazines and shipping them on consignment around the country. I began to build advertising through the record companies that were putting out rap music and building relationships with those labels in New York, LA, etc. That was it.

I spent my last two years at Harvard not going to class. I did manage to graduate barely while building The Source. I moved it right down to New York City in the summer of 1990 and opened a small office in SoHo. By the mid-’90s, The Source was known as the Bible of hip-hop. It became the number one selling music magazine on newsstands in the world. We outsold Rolling Stone and began to become a multimedia company. Thinking about the brand as something much bigger than the magazine at that time was ahead of the curve. Most magazines didn’t think like that.

Hip-hop is the most powerful thing on this planet; it brings us together and cuts through the things that separate us. Share on X

In fact, I had an offer from Jann Wenner. He approached me in the early ‘90s about buying The Source or investing in The Source. Rolling Stone never did anything with its brand. He didn’t think that made sense. They never did a Rolling Stone Awards. They never did Rolling Stone merchandise or any of those things. I was telling him when we were negotiating over the value of my business, “The Source brand has huge value and potential. I can’t sell you a piece based on what you think the magazine business is worth.” That’s where we diverged over valuation. I never did that deal.

I created The Source Awards. It became very successful on television on multiple networks. It was one of the highest-rated shows on the UPN network and the BET network. I did innovative partnerships and how I built those things. That’s how it all got going and got to where it was. It continues to be my inspiration. I still love hip-hop. I still think hip-hop is the most powerful thing on this planet that brings us and can bring us together in ways, and cuts through a lot of the things that separate us as people for a lot of reasons.

Washington DC in the 80s & 90s: A Unique Cultural Melting Pot

Dave, I want to bring it back, because people need to understand what the Washington, DC area looked like in the ‘80s and ‘90s, because it’s not what it is now. I remember growing up and my mom taking us to Anacostia Park and Hains Point down Bennett Road and Berry Farms. Talk about that time because it was so unique for anybody from that area where we grew up to go to Harvard. How was that perceived back home at that time?

DC has become highly gentrified. It’s nothing like what it was before that. DC was a predominantly Black city. I grew up in the one pocket in the Upper Northwest part of the city where White folks lived, but the public schools I went through were majority Black schools, at least junior high and high school for me. I’ve mentioned Gogo. Gogo is a form of music. It was created in Washington, DC, and still lives and breathes in the Washington, DC area. Most people don’t know about it. It’s an incredible music form and an incredible expression of the people and communities in the Washington, DC area that’s unique to the city. It was much more popular than rap music for many years in the ‘80s and ‘90s with Chuck Brown, Rare Essence, and EU.

Junk Yard.

These were legendary bands that we grew up going to see their shows and going to the Gogos, as they were called. This was also the height of the crack era. This is when crack cocaine was introduced into most Black communities. As we learned later on, there was a role that the government played in that taking place. These are the types of things that hip-hop would expose and would open people’s minds to.

In the ‘80s, there were a lot of people making money and hustling, as it was called. There were the cars, the rims, and the booming systems. A lot of the culture from DC, DC doesn’t get the credit. Fashion-wise, DC is where many of the fashions that ultimately became popular in New York and through hip-hop came from, whether it’s Timberland boots or other things. The music was highly sampled by hip-hop producers in the ‘80s from Gogo music. You find a lot of examples of that.

It was a tough city. It was unusual for Harvard. That was one of the reasons I got into Harvard. Back then, coming from a public school in a major city was considered diverse for Harvard because most of the people there went to boarding schools, prep schools, and things like that. That helped me get in. People loved it. Nobody gave me shit about it. It was very different. I ended up making most of my friends in the Boston area. I had to leave campus. Through doing my radio show, I would go out to all the concerts that would come to town. That’s where I started meeting folks from Roxbury, Mattapan, and Dorchester, the hoods in Boston.

I have to interject a minute because I’m from Boston. All those areas you’re mentioning, that’s where I spent most of my childhood because I played basketball and was good at basketball. Most of the best basketball was played in Roxbury and Dorchester inner city. I have a lot of memories hooping it up outside in the summer leagues. Forget AAU. This was street basketball. It was great.

When you were at Harvard in the late ‘80s, my mom was a radio announcer in Boston. Most people don’t know this about me because they wouldn’t need to, and nobody would think to ask. My mom was a radio announcer for her whole adult life. She was the voice of WGBH in Boston in the late ‘80s. Some stuff happened there that I attribute to sexism, which wouldn’t be tolerated now. I don’t want to get sued by them, but to put it this way, if it were to happen now what happened then, they’d be writing us a check for eight figures.

Long story short, that was a great time for me, too. I was born in January ‘81, so in the late ‘80s, I was still a youngin. When hip-hop started to hit its peak for The Source, in my mind, the mid to late ‘90s to me is the true golden era. I remember when the song by Nas and Lauryn Hill, If I Rule the World, would come on. This was 1996. This was when I was into basketball and hip-hop culture.

Even with all the money in the world, you won't succeed if you don't understand the culture and lack vision. Share on X

I remember I’d stay up late to listen to that because it is not like now, where you can get everything at your fingertips. It would come on at like midnight, and they’d play it once, so you had to be up. There was no easy way to record it back then, at least for me. I used to read The Source all the time, and I was like, “This is the best there is out there.” I admire what you did with that.

You also have some crazy lessons you’ve learned because you went from the peak to the trough, in some respects. I’d like to talk a little bit about that because I know you’ve learned a lot from it and have rebounded in a way that a few others could. Talk a little bit about how The Source reached its peak and then what led to that downfall that you later came back from.

The Rise and Fall: Navigating the Dot-Com Bubble & Business Challenges

I was an entrepreneur at heart. I learned through trial and error. I was very successful with The Source from the beginning. Everything was working. I thought I knew what I was doing. I grew it without any outside financing. When I moved from Harvard to New York, I got 2 or 3 record labels that I was in business with to prepay me for a year’s worth of ads and exchange or a discounted rate of the back cover position or what have you. That was my working capital.

I moved to New York, set up an office, started paying small salaries, and that kind of thing. That was my dream. It was like, “I’m going to build a $1 billion company. I’m going to still own 100% of it and never have to take in any investors or what have you.” I was doing it, but then the internet came along. By the late ‘90s, that was the peak. Hip-hop had exploded commercially in a massive way.

The Source was flying high. We had issues that were 200 to 300 pages full of advertising and thick magazines. We had the Source Awards, and these other businesses that I had licensed the name to do. I’m owning the company outright. We were doing low $30 million in revenue. The dot-com comes along. I get very excited about the potential to take everything I’m doing and bring it to the world directly.

Hip-hop was a global thing by that point. The Source helped make it even more global because from very early on, we were distributed all over the world. I run into people all the time from countries in Africa, Ireland, or Australia who are like, “The only reason I knew about hip-hop was The Source when I was a kid over there.”

Instead of taking a licensing deal to partner with somebody at TheSource.com. I learned that I could take out a loan. That was one of the most important areas that I was not educated in. I didn’t know how to finance. I didn’t go to Harvard Business School. I didn’t know about loans and all this kind of stuff. I made some mistakes. I took out a $12 million loan to invest in TheSource.com, opened up a new office, and hired all this staff. I invested in the whole eCommerce strategy and made up all this merchandise that I thought we were going to sell. I had all these incredible ideas, but it was too early.

In those days, one of the biggest things was that internet speeds hadn’t become fast enough. You couldn’t watch a video on the internet because it would be broken up unless you had a high-speed connection. This was before smartphones and all these kinds of things. Probably the biggest mistake I made was betting the farm on the internet and then getting the company into financial challenges for the first time. I had to bring in an investor to help me restructure things.

I hired Morgan Stanley and their magazine group to represent The Source. They took us out in the early 2000s. I got a bunch of offers to sell the company, but little to no offers to invest in the company. I turned down an offer from Bob Johnson, the Founder of BET, who was still at BET at the time, to buy The Source for $65 million or $75 million because I wanted to stay involved. He wanted to push me out and do whatever he thought he could do with the business.

I ended up finding a deal with a private equity fund that bought 18% of the company for $12 million. I was able to cash out a little bit of that personally for the first time. I took a little money out of the business. I had this loan from the internet that had ballooned to $15 million that I owed. I didn’t know about warrant fees and all these different things that were going to happen, and what would happen exactly if I defaulted.

I didn’t have a lot of choices, and I ended up taking this deal, which I thought was a good deal because the private equity firm was a relatively new firm. It was a $94 million fund. We were their largest single investment. They told me, “We think you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread. Go back out and take over the world. We love your vision.”

Hip hop, as a cultural perspective, imparts a unique sensibility and way of looking at the world. If we grow up listening to hip hop, it shapes our worldview differently than those who haven't. Share on X

In the couple of years where I was struggling financially because of the default on the loan and everything, I had to scale back certain things. The Source Awards did not continue. There was a year off that we missed. There were other things going on that were problematic for the company. In any event, the fund encouraged me, “Go out and spend the money. We’ve got more money put away. If you need a little more money, it’s no problem.” I was naive enough to believe that. Ultimately, that cost me the company because I had agreed to a provision.

I still owned 82% of the company. They had 18% and I had board control. They brought in another bank that gave me a $17 million loan. I paid the $15 million off. I had another $2 million for working capital. There was a clause in the agreement that said if I defaulted on a bank loan at any time, then the fund could expand the size of the board and take control of the board. That’s what happened. I needed a little bit more cash.

I had everything growing again. The Source Awards came back, going crazy. It was going to be worth tens of millions of dollars, the deal that I had for that, etc. When I went back to the fund and asked for another $1 million after they gave me $12 million for 18%, in my mind, I’m thinking, “Even if I have to give them 10% for $1 million, I’ll be good.” They took a position that they wanted 51%. They wanted to control the management of the company, so I would have to work for them. That was a non-starter for me. A fight broke out after that.

In the end, I lost the fight. I defaulted on a bank loan, even though I renegotiated the terms with the bank. The bank was agreeable to refinance. Apparently, the fund went behind my back and told the bank not to do the deal. The deal fell apart, and they expanded the board. They fired me. I was escorted out of my own office after eighteen years of blood, sweat, and tears. I filed for personal bankruptcy because I also signed a personal guarantee on the $17 million bank loan. I filed for personal bankruptcy two months later and have started over from square one. That was a tremendous amount of knowledge gained that is worth a lot and many other things.

Competition & Copycats: Defending Hip-Hop’s Authentic

There are a couple of things I want to ask about that. I feel like I knew the process and knew what happened. I don’t even know how much you were able to talk about, but a lot of people bit off what you guys were doing, whether it’s BET or whatever. You were The Source. You were the creators of that market who made it what it was. Can you talk about getting to a certain level where you’re copied by some of the big boys?

Yeah. That started early with the magazine. Some people may not remember that in 1991, Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler, started Rap Pages. After that, I had a whole ordeal with Time Warner and Quincy Jones. I’ll tell the story briefly. Russell Simmons called me up and said,” I want to introduce you to my friend Quincy Jones. He wants to start a hip-hop magazine. I’m telling him he needs to invest in The Source. You guys are the shit.”

One thing led to another, and I negotiated with Quincy’s company and Time Warner for a year. They fly us out to Quincy’s house in Beverly Hills. We’re waiting around. He finally walks into the room and says, “Listen. I got some news. I want to buy you out, shut The Source down, and have you come work for me at my new magazine, Volume.” I was like, “What?” I was very upset. Volume ended up being Vibe Magazine because they didn’t realize somebody owned the name Volume in the UK. They renamed it to Vibe.

Vibe became a direct competitor with Quincy Jones and Time Warner, trying to do the same thing. Honestly, at the time, it didn’t faze me. You can have all the money in the world, but if you don’t understand the culture and you don’t have the vision for these things, you’re not going to be able to succeed. That’s how I looked at Vibe. It was a good magazine. There were a lot of great journalists they employed that made a living and did some great work, but the vision for that company was not the same as The Source and not as focused around hip-hop as The Source was.

There would come other magazines. Eventually, XXL was launched in the late ‘90s. We had competitors, but they never fazed me because I was very confident in my position and the market share we had. The secret sauce of The Source was that I knew how to stay in touch with the people, the streets, the community, and the culture, and balance that with the corporate business side. Anybody who was trying to make money off of hip-hop was coming at it from a corporate moneymaking standpoint and a lot of times didn’t respect the people, the community, and the culture that they were trying to make money off of. I knew that that would always give me an advantage.

This is a part of the dot-com story I left out. The reason that I was so anxious to get on the internet and be aggressive in what I was doing on the internet was that this was the first time where multiple companies were popping up with major backing. They had tens if not hundreds of millions behind dot-com companies that were targeting the hip-hop audience and were pitching themselves in a similar strategy that I had, which was the Time Warner of hip-hop. It was this multimedia thing with the internet and the dot-com being the foundation, but we’re going to be all these things. That was the vision I had been pursuing for years.

Some of these companies had major people from hip-hop involved. Russell Simmons had raised $80 million for 360HIPHOP.com. Diddy was a part of something that HBO had backed. There were a handful of companies. Urban Box Office had raised $250 million and was trying to say they were going to do the same thing as The Source. That was what motivated me. I said, “I can kill it in the dot-com the same way I’m killing it in magazines, award shows, music, and all these different things I’m doing. Let me take this loan out. I can own everything 100%. I don’t have to give up any control. Let me go wipe these guys off the map on the dot-com side.” It turned out to be the wrong approach or a bad decision.

Podcasting is an explosive medium, where new voices and alternative perspectives have flourished. Share on X

Breakbeat Media: Reimagining Hip-Hop’s Global Community

Dave, I want to interrupt for a sec because I want to make sure we talk about what you’re doing, which is also game-changing potentially to an even greater degree than The Source was, if that’s even possible. We’ve only got about five minutes, but talk about what Breakbeat Media is and your vision for it.

Breakbeat is a continuation of the vision that I had with The Source Magazine. Where I was going with The Source, we would’ve been probably something like Vice, but on steroids. We would’ve been the first television network that dealt with hip-hop comprehensively, not as a music, but as a way of thinking. That’s something I may not have articulated earlier.

I think of hip-hop as a cultural perspective. Whether we’re White, Black, Chinese, rich, or poor, if you grow up listening to hip-hop from a young age, it imparts a sensibility and way of looking at the world that’s different from people who have not grown up with it. You could be white, Black, or Chinese, but not have grown up on hip-hop, and you’re probably going to think about so many things in this world very differently than I am or people like me.

What I’ve noticed is that hip-hop has grown by leaps and bounds. It’s the most popular music on planet Earth. It’s widely known. It’s very mainstream, but it’s still driven by the music. The music has divided us across the generations. You have a lot of people your age in their 40s who grew up like you, loving hip-hop. We don’t have to talk about you, but as an example, there are a lot of people who are in their 40s who are like, “I don’t listen to hip-hop. That new mumble rap isn’t real hip-hop. It’s not the same.” There’s a divide that’s been created and pushed a narrative over the years that separated us.

The huge market opportunity that I’ve been sitting there looking at, and this has been waiting for me to bring it to life in this digital technology world, is from 15 years old to 55 years old around this whole planet earth, there are hundreds of millions of people that have grown up loving hip-hop. There’s nothing that’s bringing them together as this community that has these shared values and shared ways of thinking about things, because we’ve been pushed apart. We feel very divided. Somebody who’s 45 and somebody who’s 21 who has grown up loving hip-hop feels divided in ways. They might not like the same music. If they sit down and talk about music, they’d be like, “I don’t like that music,” but the way that they think about the world in so many other ways is going to be much similar.

There’s this common thread that Breakbeat is working to bring out through the culture of hip-hop. The idea from a big picture is to build a content and technology company that serves the global hip-hop community and becomes the platform that anyone who is part of hip-hop and has gained this sensibility will be naturally attracted to coming together in an environment with like-minded people, like-minded perspectives, etc.

Podcasting became what I determined was the smartest way to become the foundation and the building block for the company. Podcasting is an explosive medium. It’s growing like crazy. It’s coming out of the underground phase and becoming respected as a mainstream media form that’s going to be bigger than all the other forms of media that we commonly think of. It’s a medium where new voices and alternative perspectives have flourished. That made it perfect for what I’m building. The first phase of Breakbeat is a podcast network that I call a hip-hop podcast network, but it’s voices and perspectives talking about a wide range of subject matters in ways that are authentic to the hip-hop community and hip-hop culture.

You have a big following on YouTube already with 750,000 subscribers and growing pretty quickly, correct?

Yes. We have over 750,000 subscribers. We’ve done over 100 million views on our YouTube channel. We’ve created multiple successful individual podcasts. We’ve identified some incredible creators, people who were doing their thing on social media, but didn’t have a platform to bring their voice and perspective out in a different way. The company has had early success building a foundation of content and building this community. We haven’t entered into the technology phase yet. That’s going to come next and expand and diversify the types of content that we’re creating and curating.

Zack, I want to jump in. This is important for people to know who might have had some failures or have gone through the trenches already, and doing it the second time with a different set of knowledge or a different set of skills. That happens a lot. When you’re building something like you built back then, it was so new and no one else had done it.

It’s almost impossible for someone to say, “Let me do this the right way,” because there was no way at all. There was no one who did what you did. This time around, do you feel like you’re more equipped to expand and do it the right way? Some of those failures and some of those setbacks you might have had early on, this time around, you’re thinking you’re on the right path.

The opportunities to build a media platform that can be bigger than anything else in the world are possible because of technology. Share on X

Yes, I think I’m much better equipped and much more experienced. The experiences I went through have made me smarter. I won’t make those mistakes again. By the same token, it’s a different day and age. The world of traditional media or print media is long gone. I never had success in the world of digital media, so I faced a lot of question marks. People were like, “Can he do it in the digital world? Is he still in touch with the culture of hip-hop, which is still a youth culture driven by the youth?” I’ve proven yes, fortunately, to both of those answers so far.

This is going to be maybe 100 times bigger and more impactful than The Source ever was because of the world we’re in and because of technology. The playing field has been leveled. The opportunities to build a media platform that can be bigger than anything else in the world are possible because of technology. There’s a huge void in the market. There’s nobody addressing this hip-hop community and providing a platform that they can trust, respect, and that’s authentic.

I’m very excited about what I’m doing. It’s like it was all meant to be to go through that. It was a terrible loss and failure, but I continue to believe in myself and continue to believe in hip-hop. This is going to be great. I’m grateful that I’ve been able to find a way to start to build this new platform and bring in some great people to help me achieve what I’m seeing is possible.

Lessons Learned: Dave Mays’ Advice for Entrepreneurs & Life Balance

Dave, it’s been awesome having you on. We’re going to need to do a part two at some point because we got to the tip of the iceberg. Before we go, quickly, because we’re over time, but this is so fascinating, what are the three lessons that you would give to your younger self, knowing what you know now that other people could also learn from?

The first thing that comes to mind is that I’ve always been a workaholic. As an entrepreneur, I get focused and I’m putting everything into it. That was The Source. From when I came up with the idea, the whole way, that was me, head down, focused. On the one hand, you’ve got to be able to make sacrifices. You’ve got to be willing to put in that work for those hours and miss this and miss that.

The real lesson I would tell myself is that I was unable to achieve a balance between my business and my personal life. A lot of things that people my age have been able to accomplish in their personal lives, specifically marriages and children, these are things that I don’t have. I look back and say, “If I had put more of a priority on my personal life and doing things like that, pursuing a meaningful relationship and pursuing building a family at an earlier age, maybe I would be a better and happier person in some ways.”

I’m a vegan. I’m doing everything to live another 50 incredible years, build a family, have children, and all of those things. That’s one thing. I would say that balance, sometimes, I feel like I missed out. In terms of other lessons, listen to yourself as an entrepreneur. You probably hear this. Most people aren’t going to see your vision. You’ve got to believe in your vision. If you see something, don’t be discouraged because 99% of people are not going to see the vision you have. They’re not going to understand it, and that can be very discouraging to people.

That’s how you know you’re onto something, too. That’s what I think. If others don’t see it, that means there’s an opportunity because if everybody was doing it, there wouldn’t be an opportunity, right?

True. The flip side is you’ve got to have a team. I had some great partners and great people who worked with me at The Source. I thought I knew everything in a sense. When I told the story about the dot-com and I bet the farm on that, there were people in my ear saying, “Don’t do it.” I had a lawyer saying, “You shouldn’t do it. You should do that.” I’ve been so accustomed to trusting my own instincts, so I went with that. There is a point when you can’t do everything yourself. You’ve got to find great people to work with you, partner with you if necessary, and help you make certain decisions better than you could make on your own.

That’s awesome. I appreciate it. That was great. Being from the area, knowing your start, watching the process, and watching you doing what you’re doing, everybody from the crib is super proud. I say the DMV area is like its own country. It’s a different place. You won’t find anything in the whole country like the DMV area. I appreciate it.

We don’t need to necessarily include this part. I don’t know if I mentioned to you, Shawne, you know that I got introduced to and ended up getting very close with Rayful Edmond before he passed. He was going to do a podcast that I thought was going to be awesome. I thought his voice was going to be impactful, having met him and heard from him more than what you read about in the media or hear about on the street, necessarily. I’m still looking to do things with his story and things like that.

When I was a kid, he was around the neighborhood. We called him Uncle Rayful. We would pull up in ten Jaguars. We’d go to Iverson Mall, and I would watch him spend $30,000-plus a day. I didn’t know why or what it was then. I did when I got older. It was something, especially because of what 50 was doing. Everybody talks about Rick Ross. I say, “You don’t understand how big Rayful was.”

Believe in your vision. Don't be discouraged if others don't see it—they won't always understand. Share on X

Even if I missed sports, it was something I wanted to personally get involved in. I was waiting for him to get out because of all these other things out there and people talking about Big Meech. I said, “You have no idea about Rayful.” When I was a kid, we knew him as Uncle Rayful. I didn’t know who he was and what he did until I got older. That’s pretty crazy saying that.

Offline, you and I should talk. I admire what you’re doing and what you’re building with your company. You have some incredible things going on. I’m hoping we’ll have a chance to collaborate. That could be one thing potentially to talk about.

Dave, thanks for coming on. This has been great. We’ll have to do part two at some point before too long.

Let me know.

Bye.

I appreciate it.

Take care, Dave.

Important Links

• Zack Ellison on LinkedIn
• Zack Ellison on Instagram
• The 7 in 7 Show with Zack Ellison (podcast)
• Applied Real Intelligence (A.R.I.) website
• Shawne Merriman on LinkedIn
• Shawne Merriman on Instagram
• Lights Out Sports TV website
• Lights Out Xtreme Fighting website
• Dave Mays on LinkedIn
• Dave Mays on Instagram
• Breakbeat Media on YouTube
• The Source Magazine

About Dave Mays

David Mays is a visionary entrepreneur who was among the first to see the potential of Hip-Hop music and culture to endure beyond a fad. In 1988, as a 19-year-old Harvard sophomore, Mays founded The Source magazine as a single-page newsletter out of his college dorm room. Using just $200 of startup capital, Mays built The Source into the #1 selling music magazine on newsstands in the world, outselling Rolling Stone and reaching a total audience of 9 million readers each month. In the early 1990’s, the magazine would famously be dubbed the “Bible of Hip-Hop” by Public Enemy’s Chuck D. Its “5 Mics” album rating system became the standard by which all Hip-Hop albums were measured, and its legendary “Unsigned Hype” column was responsible for discovering and launching the careers of Notorious BIG, Eminem, DMX, Common, Mobb Deep, Capone-n-Noreaga, Jay Electronica and others.

In 1992, Mays created the first awards show dedicated to Hip-Hop, The Source Awards. The show became nationally televised through syndication in 1995, and then went on to set ratings records for the UPN network in 1999, 2000 and 2001, and at BET in 2003 and 2004. In 2004, The Source Awards Weekend in Miami attracted over 50,000 attendees, while generating over $50 million in tourism revenue for the city. The Source Awards was also the site of some of the most important and memorable moments in Hip-Hop history involving Tupac, Dr. Dre, Suge Knight, Diddy, Outkast, Wu-Tang Clan, Nas, Lauryn Hill and others.

Mays built a stable of other businesses around The Source name, including The Source presents Hip-Hop Hits, which became the most successful series of Hip-Hop compilation albums in the history of the music business; two weekly TV series, The Source All Access and The Source Soundlab; The Source Clothing Company; The Source France, The Source Japan and The Source Latino foreign language editions of the magazine; and The Source Mobile division, which sold over 3 million ringtone downloads in two years.

Mays was the first entrepreneur to introduce Hip-Hop music and culture to Madison Avenue, opening the doors for Nike, Mountain Dew and other corporate brands to begin marketing to the Hip-Hop consumer. He grew The Source’s advertising revenue to over $20 million annually, all while refusing to accept tobacco and liquor ads, because he objected to these industries’ targeting of minority consumers.

Mays was also among the first to see the power of Hip-Hop to positively impact at-risk youth, creating The Source Youth Foundation, which raised over $1 million to fund programs and organizations across the country using Hip-Hop to effectively reach inner-city youth. Mays also created the first national Hip-Hop political summit (“A Special Summit On Social Responsibility In The Hip-Hop Industry”) in 2000 with Reverend Al Sharpton and the National Action Network, as well as the first independent social/political action organization for the Hip-Hop industry, The Hip-Hop Action Network.

From its inception, Mays fostered The Source’s role as the champion of and critical voice for Hip-Hop culture, at a time when mainstream society looked down upon Hip-Hop. During his 18 years of growing and running the company, The Source became an institution in the field of Hip-Hop, helping to empower and influence a culture that today pervades everything from sports to fashion, film, television, technology, education, language and more. Mays’s efforts in the media, entertainment and corporate business worlds were instrumental in bringing Hip Hop into the mainstream, while creating jobs, and supporting the launch and growth of entire industries in the fields of magazine publishing, fashion, music and journalism. In 2007, GQ magazine called The Source one of the “27 Things that Changed Men’s Lives” over the last 50 years. Overall, The Source became one of the best-known brands in the media/entertainment business throughout the 1990’s and early 2000’s, while providing international visibility to an emerging art form. Under Mays’s guidance, The Source magazine and its related companies generated over $300 million in revenues.

After leaving The Source, in 2007, Mays launched Hip Hop Weekly, which became the top-selling urban entertainment magazine on newsstands in America, and received top publishing honors several years in a row, including MIN’s top emerging magazines in 2007, “Best Magazine” at the Urban Music Awards in July 2009, and more. Mays left Hip Hop Weekly in 2016. In 2019, Mays created Dave Mays Media as a hub for a variety of new business ventures. Mays co-produced the first-ever city-sponsored “Hip-Hop Week” in 2019 with the city of Milwaukee, and in 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd killing, he founded the Hip-Hop Political Education Summit.

In September 2021, Mays and partner Kendrick Ashton co-founded Breakbeat Media, a content, technology and lifestyle platform designed to authentically serve the interests and perspectives of the global Hip-Hop audience. Breakbeat debuted the first Hip-Hop focused podcast network, which has already delivered several breakout hit shows (“Don’t Call Me White Girl,” “Cornbread TV Starring Funny Marco,” “Top Billin’ With Bill Bellamy”), generating millions of views and downloads, and helping to establish the brand’s presence in the market. Breakbeat’s mission is to empower and uplift the human community by tapping into the extraordinary influence, authenticity and unifying spirit of Hip-Hop.