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Odds are, if you've been coming here for a minute, you know we do our best to provide you with exclusive material. Usually in the form of not yet released tracks. I encode the tracks, upload them to two locations and make them available to you...in real audio. Well, record labels, management and such like didn't tend to see the difference between real audio and MP3 this year. We had troubles with many labels, most notably Virgin Records and D'Angelo's people for having his first single from 'Voodoo' up 3 months before its release and having it up even before his official site. Let me just say, his people weren't happy. The troubles with the Okayplayer fam continued when we debuted Common's 'The Light' (Remix). I believe now they know that we're just trying to serve people who wouldn't be able to hear material early and enable them to make a decision on whether they'd want to purchase it or not. We had troubles with countless other labels, but we've overcome that and moved on.
Also, we experienced a hell of a lot of biting. From people copying in their entirety and reproducing reviews of ours, to decoding and encoding audio of ours. Some sites even decoded and re-encoded audio which contained an MC saying "tha-real.com" and tried to pretend like it hadn't been taken. Honestly, it seems like some of these webmasters are five year olds.
tha-real has had contributors come and go all year long. Some are still here, providing the odd article (which is much appreciated) some don't say anything anymore. Either way, those who were involved get props from me.
There was the comedic Wodie hacking incident which a lot of people thought was a publicity stunt. It wasn't, Justice and I simply wanted to have a little fun. So many of you took it seriously, to the degree that I would get extremely angry e-mails reprimanding me for what I'd done (I even got my fair share of praise one's too, haha).
Though not many people are fully aware of this. tha-real is one of the main reasons Eminem's 'The Real Slim Shady' was leaked early. You see, we had 'Hellbound' up exclusively and some Napster heads thought we'd titled it wrongly, they decoded it, renamed it 'The Real Slim Shady' and threw it on Napster causing the exec's at Em's label to dispense the track to radio a week in advance. Though we didn't have much of an influence on Em's success, we did get the track out a little quicker.
HHC finally noticed us and gave us a good review "This site went straight in our bookmarks - you could spend a whole day there" not a bad ol' comment. We were also mentioned on countless radio shows, the biggest being Power 106. So all in all it has been a good year for the site, although we've had some financial problems.
Now, I'm sure you've read Phil's 'Our Say' by now. It was saddening to read and find out from Phil (though I'd known for a while), the site really became what it became in the last two years with me at the helm and Phil helping me bigtime.
I won't end this with giving out props to people. By now if I think you've deserved them, you'll have gotten them from me in one form or another. A lot of people have helped me this year, with all types of things. I truly appreciate it. You know who you are. As you can see, we'll be here in 2001, well January for definite at least. Why? Well, people showed support like I asked.
Peace.
Buddah Mac - DJ Ghost - DJ Heat - MC Hitman - Hugz - Phil - Anthony Pukalo - Evil Pun - Q - Justice
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