I’ve been hearing about and reading about the Ozone / TJs DJs fiasco in Houston. I can’t take it, I have to call out the hypocrisy I’m finding all over the place.

A commenter on SOHH says “it seems like there’s a lot of “jumping on the bandwagon” rather than voicing an opinion from the jump. Why not “expose” or “express” the dissatisfaction before this situation? That’s all I’m curious about.”

Hip Hop Spy called out Ozone nearly a month before the event in their post “Ozone Awards are a Joke“.

The biggest smoking gun for the hypocrisy is the December 23, 2005 Julia Beverly: Ozone Vs. The Source article on Baller Status.

STOP and read the following carefully please : )

My post isn’t about the Julia and Benzino beef, I reference the article because it provides a concentrated source of “JB” comments.

JB: In 2005 Beverly named The Source co-owner Benzino the “Most Successful Extortionist” - she claims it was meant to be humorous but was also done in part because The Source owed her money. “I just write what I feel. If that sells more magazines, cool. If not, cool,” “You could criticize Ozone for publishing “controversial” stories if you want. But if we didn’t write controversial stories, you wouldn’t be interviewing me right now, so you and I are in the same business.” & “If you don’t have haters, you aren’t doing it right.”

The Hypocrisy: In SOHH.com’s story ATL BLOG: Is Julia Beverly The Devil? Or Are Y’all Just Hatin’?? SOHH Gyant writes “The publicist from this <ozone> event [who shall remain nameless] is instructing/demanding that all media take the high road and only focus on the positive

JB: Our street reps in each city send us pictures of local events, give out promo copies of the magazine to local tastemakers (DJs, artists, entrepreneurs, even drug dealers, anyone who has influence in the community), and keep us informed when unsigned artists catch a buzz.

The Hypocrisy: Issues at the Ozone Tastemaker event are being excused by “fans” because the “wrong” kind of people were at the event. The “reap what you sow” echo is deafening.

JB: It pisses me off to see someone with that much power who doesn’t know how to use it properly.

The Hypocrisy: The SOHH article says “Some feel the pressure of turning a blind eye so that they don’t get blacklisted by Ozone Magazine.” A commenter to the SOHH article says “Blacklisted by Ozone? Unless you are moving dime bags and eight balls you shouldn’t care. Besides, advertisers blacklist magazines, not the other way around.”

I think SOHH Gyant meant Artists and DJs are concerned they wouldn’t be featured in Ozone if they voiced their opinion. If so, Gynat is spot on, how many times are deserving Artists and DJs shunned because Beverly isn’t down with their people? I could start an entire blog and let the comments fly on that alone.

JB: Next May will be our four-year anniversary, and the growth has been incredible. Our website got 1.2 million hits yesterday. <because of the Benzino story>

The Hypocrisy: The growth must have dropped off incredibly or Ms. Beverly isn’t being truthful.

JB: (In this year’s promo for the event in question.)  TJ’s DJ’s and OZONE Magazine have pooled their combined reach of over 100,000 subscribers and 41 million hits per month on their respective websites.

Side note - WOW - why are Ozone and TJs DJs doing conferences? Myspace - a site that gets around 60 million visitors a month - earns something like $10 million/month in ad revenue.

The Hypocrisy: We see Ozonemag.com gets 20,000 hits a month so we better add TJs DJ’s metrics to the mix.

Maybe I can’t add but I thought 20,000 + 10,000 was 30,000.

They did say hits, so let’s look at how often those unique vistors would have to visit each month for the sites to reach 41 million hits. Let’s see, 41 million hits divided by 30 thousand visitors divided by 30 days in a month - WOW their vistors each visit an average of 45 times a day.  Damn - we all wish our readers where that loyal.  To be fair - the compete data might be a little off so if someone has a better source of data metrics I am happy to post it.

Here’s the MySpace data for reference - note the y axis metrics on this graph are in millions (M) not thousands, (K):

Okay, I think I’ve made my point. I am not hating on Julia Beverly for trying to build a business. But, I’ve heard story after story calling into question her character, commitment to actually making a positive difference in hip hop and her business practices.

I gave the same advice to everyone who has spoken to me about a bad experience with Julia “keep your head up, stay true to your character and commitment to the HH community and ignore the BS - we reap what we sow. If your opinion is right Karma will smack Julia in the face.”

Time will tell.