From pages 172 -173 (the back story to this)

If you ask me, though, we were doing pretty good for a magazine that was blacklisted from the label that controlled most of the genre’s artists. The drama between the Source and Interscope was dying down a little, and we were tapping into the South to help beef up our content. 

I got another call to Dave’s office one night to revisit the conversation that we had left off about the exposes that Ray had instructed us to do. Ray was addicted to them now, and it was probably because they had injected me with so much evil that I was doing a good job of executing Ray’s stories the way he liked. But this time, given the latest victim he wanted to attack, I knew it would be a problem. 

“We’re putting 50 Cent on the cover,” he said as soon as I walked through the door.

“We are?” I was confused because we had been planning a Ludacris cover that month. I knew 50 wasn’t going to grant us an interview, so I automatically figured this was going to be one of Ray’s specialties. But because I was the one who really knew 50, I felt as though anything that was printed in the magazine would be assumed by him as coming from me. Knowing the information that 50 had on me, I didn’t want to keep the war between us going because he had a bigger platform than I did, and I couldn’t risk losing. 

…

“We need to explain just how fucked-up what he is doing to rap music is.” Ray was huffing and puffing as he talked. He was clearly aggravated with 50′s success, criticizing 50′s influence on hip-hop….He had appeared on the cover of our competitor XXL, and that issue was the first ever to outsell the Source. He had taken a stance against the Source because of his loyalty to Eminem. He was on the other side of the fence, and I was forced to pick sides.

here comes the bad guy…

From that moment on, I likened Ray and Dave to Gargamel and Azriel of the Smurfs cartoon. When Gargamel was around the Smurfs would run for cover and try to avoid him at all costs to save themselves from being swallowed whole. Azriel was Gargamel’s pet cat, who performed some of Gargamel’s evil duties. When Azriel disobeyed Gargamel though, he was punished. Ray was a real-life version of Gargamel and we were the Smurfs. Dave was now viewed as the lowest man on the totem pole. He was Azriel. At least the Smurfs could be happy when they were at home with no sight of Gargamel, but Azriel was always with Gargamel. That was his home.

From Straight From The Source… p. 153