Benzino asserted that Elliott Wilson is merely his “son” and stated that he copied The Source when he left for XXL. During an interview with Big Loon’s It’s Up There Podcast, Zino spoke about the history of “The Bible of Hip-Hop.” At one point, the two men began talking about the former Boston emcee’s beefs with Eminem and 50 Cent and how it spilled over to XXL. Enter Elliott Wilson. After working at The Source, Wilson departed the mag for XXL in 1999 and then later established the online version of the publication in 2005.
The businessman, né Raymond Leon Scott, claimed that Wilson took the sauce from his magazine to XXL. When asked whether or not they felt like it was a rivalry between the two pubs, Benzino proclaimed that there “was no versus” and that “those are my sons.”
“How can you verse something that copied everything from you? If somebody came in here right now put a table over there,” Zino questioned the host. “Doing the same thing you was but then called it something else, what you gonna say? That’s what they did.”
Zino then agreed with the host, stating that XXL was a “knockoff of The Source” and asserted that the guys that ran it were “white guys who wasn’t even in the culture.” Loon then brought up Wilson allegedly saying that he “defeated” The Source, to which The Antidote entertainer responded by insisting that XXL was simply a magazine while “The Source was a conglomerate.”
“I know clicks and comments but The Source Awards, did Elliott Wilson ever get big with the XXL Awards? Did Elliott Wilson ever do that?… We wasn’t just a magazine. We had TV shows, award shows, multimillion-dollar things, they had a magazine that copied us. And then they got on Eminem’s d*ck, and that was it. That’s the facts.”
When asked about his feelings towards Wilson, the 59-year-old doubled down on his combative energy and said that the critically acclaimed journalist “started his career under me at The Source magazine; he’s my son.”
Wilson would work for XXL until he was reportedly fired from the publication in 2008.
VIBE reached out to Elliott Wilson for a comment regarding the manner but has yet to get a response.
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