Kim Osorio, ‘The Supply’ and hip-hop’s missed alternative for a Me Too second : NPR

From the surface, The Supply within the Nineteen Nineties was the gold normal in hip-hop. However from the within, Kim Osorio found it was one thing extra dirty: an entrenched boys’ membership that normalized sexism.

Amanda Howell Whitehurst for NPR

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Amanda Howell Whitehurst for NPR

From the surface, The Supply within the Nineteen Nineties was the gold normal in hip-hop. However from the within, Kim Osorio found it was one thing extra dirty: an entrenched boys’ membership that normalized sexism.

Amanda Howell Whitehurst for NPR

This story was tailored from Episode 5 of Louder Than A Riot, Season 2. To listen to extra about Kim Osorio and her sexual harassment trial in opposition to The Supply, stream the complete episode or subscribe to the Louder Than A Riot podcast.

The Supply was a hip-hop monument.

Whereas the present media panorama makes it exhausting to think about a single publication — printed or in any other case — holding sway over a whole tradition, for greater than a decade, no rapper, label, present or community, was larger than The Supply.

Beginning out in 1988 as a e-newsletter out of a school dorm room, hip-hop’s longest-running periodical constructed its following by writing about rap with respect, and an air of status. By the flip of the century, the title had weight of its personal to throw round. Between the late Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s, it helped launch the careers of The Infamous B.I.G, Jay-Z, Nas, Lil’ Kim, Cunning Brown and extra. It shipped regional sounds throughout the nation to a nationwide readership and the viewers of its very personal, sometimes-televised awards present. For rap nerds, there was a excessive that got here from the pages: the graceful artifice of the advertisements, the bluntness of the op-eds, the long-lasting cowl tales and the critiques part that made “5 mics in The Supply” one of the crucial coveted cosigns. The ability held by The Supply represented a type of uncommon events in rap when the pen is simply as mighty because the tongue.

That is how Kim Osorio felt in regards to the journal within the years earlier than she labored there.

A Bronx native with confidence, writing chops and a deep love of hip-hop music to supply, Osorio entered The Supply‘s places of work as an worker for the primary time in 2000, able to step into her dream job. Between 2000 and 2002, Osorio landed interviews and canopy tales with the likes of Jay-Z, Wu-Tang Clan, Snoop Dogg, Trick Daddy, Trina and extra. However as she labored her means up the masthead, changing into the journal’s first girl editor-in-chief by 2002, she noticed the gloss and status of the pages fade quick. What Osorio and lots of different girls handled behind the scenes was a typical removed from gold — and when she known as out these harmful double requirements with a lawsuit, she realized simply how dirty issues may get.

Within the spring of 2005, Osorio sued The Supply journal, together with its co-owners, Dave Mays and Raymond ‘Benzino’ Scott, for gender discrimination, sexual harassment and hostile work setting, retaliation, defamation. The lawsuit and trial that adopted was a second the place these in hip-hop who leverage their energy had been placed on discover. It was a second the place Kim Osorio was breaking certainly one of hip-hop’s unwritten guidelines. This was a bit of hip-hop historical past steeped in misogynoir that Louder Than A Riot discovered important to reexamine. However as we tried to inform the story, the actions of 1 individual in it paradoxically strengthened certainly one of hip-hop’s most inflexible guidelines, the identical rule Osorio tried to fight with that swimsuit virtually 20 years in the past: If you happen to see one thing, say nothing.

Enterprise As Standard

From the surface, The Supply within the Nineteen Nineties was a very powerful publication in hip-hop: daring, divisive and influential. However internally, it was one thing much less glamorous and leading edge: an entrenched boys’ membership tradition that normalized sexism. Males on workers would slap girls’s butts, purchase inappropriate “presents” for them and tack pornographic pictures to their cubicles.

Aliya King Neil, a former staffer who labored alongside Osorio, says that working round this tradition was an unavoidable a part of her routine, dictating how she moved. “Backpack, dishevelled shorts, dishevelled pants, Timbs. I am unable to appear like a man clearly, however I am making an attempt to be tomboyish,” Neil remembers. “It is as deep as rounded shoulders after I’m not a rounded shoulders individual. […] So I give off this aura of, non-threatening, nonetheless cute, and dressed down and quiet. Simply be quiet.”

The boys’ membership additionally required girls within the workplace to share info on the low.

“They had been telling me, ‘OK, do that, try this. Attempt to catch him within the corridor,'” Neil says of 1 male staffer in one other division whom she discovered too handsy. “My first step was to ensure that I left the door open after I got here in. My second step was to take a buddy. My third factor was, ‘Hey, I gotta go to dude’s in two minutes. If you happen to do not see me coming again to my workplace, come get me.’ “

Kim Osorio with The Supply‘s Boo Rosario, King‘s Datwon Thomas and Kanye West in 2003.

Johnny Nunez/WireImage

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Johnny Nunez/WireImage

Kim Osorio with The Supply‘s Boo Rosario, King‘s Datwon Thomas and Kanye West in 2003.

Johnny Nunez/WireImage

Osorio grew to become the journal’s editor-in-chief in 2002, however even then, she wasn’t immune. In line with many ladies who labored at The Supply, the toxicity flowed prime down from the journal’s co-owners, Raymond “Benzino” Scott and Dave Mays. Scott was an lively aggressor, Mays passively let all of it occur. He stated nothing.

“Dave was additionally virtually at Benzino’s mercy,” stated Khary Turner, a former freelancer for The Supply, when describing Scott. “It appeared like Dave was virtually in an unenviable place. He was the man who needed to perform Benzino’s will, because it associated to The Supply, at the very least.”

The ability Benzino wielded over Dave editorially mirrored his workplace habits.

“He could possibly be erratic. He could possibly be combative,” remembers Turner of Benzino. “Status sensible, he was a road cat, you recognize, he was exhausting and he had a big crew. And Benzino was not, he wasn’t a code switcher. In hip-hop, as an artist, it was acceptable. However in The Supply, it wasn’t all the time acceptable.”

Because the lawsuit would later spell out intimately, Osorio alleges that Scott would frequently abuse his energy — snapping womens underwear, touching staffers inappropriately, making lewd feedback — whereas Mays let it rock.

After Osorio was promoted, Scott’s habits towards her modified. Osorio testified that Scott repeatedly requested her about her intercourse life and that he volunteered details about his. Osorio additionally wrote about Scott’s badgering in her ebook, Straight from the Supply: An Expose from the Former Editor in Chief of the Hip-Hop Bible: “It is not that I used to be ashamed to inform Ray whom I had been with. It was that I knew precisely what he wished to know and extra importantly, I knew that he would use it in opposition to me.”

In line with court docket transcripts and Osorio’s ebook, one night time as she and Scott had been leaving The Supply places of work, he made a transfer on her. She testified that he propositioned her within the elevator and requested her to make a journey to Atlantic Metropolis with him. “We might be the king and queen of The Supply,” he advised her. That very same night time, Scott known as her at residence repeatedly, despite the fact that she’d by no means given him her quantity.

After Osorio dodged him that night time, Scott and Mays unfold gossip that Osorio was sleeping with rappers, calling her credibility into query due to it. “I wasn’t shocked that each Ray and Dave had been speaking about me behind my again,” Osorio wrote. “I’ve spoken to former male editors of the journal who had been by no means requested the identical questions. So why was my scenario so totally different? Why the f*** are they so obsessive about my intercourse life?”

Feeling uncomfortable, Osorio went to an lawyer, who suggested her to file a grievance with the HR division. Osorio constructed up the braveness to e-mail an official grievance in February 2005. “When you hit ship, it is no coming again. She knew it,” stated Osorio’s good friend, Tia Bowman, who helped her fastidiously phrase her grievance and was on the telephone along with her when Osorio hit ship. After two weeks of radio silence, Osorio bought an indignant telephone name from the 2 males, ordering her to retract her grievance. When she refused, they unceremoniously fired her.

All Falls Down

In April 2005, Osorio filed a grievance with the Equal Employment Alternative Fee, then sued The Supply and its management. As information of the lawsuit unfold via the trade, Osorio’s friends had blended reactions. Some fellow writers began a petition to point out public help for Osorio; others lined the trial with snickering vulturism. Even those that had been near her questioned why she would take the chance.

“As unhappy as it’s, my first thought was, ‘No matter occurred, was it that deep that you simply now wanna undergo a complete factor?” Neil remembers. “I wish to make it clear that I am speaking about my 25-year-old self, and I am 50. … There may be not a single girl on this trade who can say, ‘I by no means needed to take care of any of these items, and if I did, I all the time did X, Y and Z.’ No, you did not. You needed to take care of it, and also you did not all the time do one thing about it. So my thought was, ‘Is that this what it needed to be?’ “

The implications of going public weren’t delicate. Scott gave interviews disparaging Osorio’s title within the months that adopted, calling her a ‘slut’ and ‘incompetent.’ In a press release to AllHipHop.com denying the claims, Mays tried to discredit her as promiscuous: “It’s a indisputable fact that Ms. Osorio had sexual relations with quite a lot of excessive profile rap artists throughout her employment as editor-in-chief.”

The trial started in New York’s Southern District Courthouse in Manhattan in October 2006. Due to the excessive profile name-dropping within the swimsuit, The New York Submit ran headlines that learn “‘Supply’ Of Intercourse Harass” and paparazzi greeted Osorio on the steps of the courthouse the primary morning.

Louder reviewed a whole bunch of pages of court docket transcripts, which reveal witnesses corroborating Osorio’s story. The top of human sources at The Supply, Julie Als, ignored a number of complaints, and even referred to her personal dynamic with Scott as being like ‘Ike and Tina Turner.’ At one level, Als herself testified that she by no means investigated a sexual harassment declare throughout her time at The Supply; she had little coaching and acquired none whereas she labored on the journal.

A earlier sexual harassment allegation, filed to the EEOC by photographer Janene Outlaw in 1997, earlier than Als’ tenure, pointed to a longtime sample of habits on Scott’s half. Outlaw, who labored on the journal slightly below a 12 months, testified that Scott gave her lingerie on Valentine’s Day, hit on her in her resort room throughout a piece journey to Boston and implied it will profit her to hook up with him. Although investigators stopped wanting saying Scott harassed Outlaw, they wrote a memo insisting he chorus from sexual relationships with any staff, even when consensual.

Osorio’s lawyer, Kenneth Thompson, pointed to the elevator incident as the ultimate straw following ongoing misconduct. Of their protection, The Supply‘s attorneys weaponized the notion of hip-hop in an effort to shift complicity onto Osorio. In a very pointed second, they drew a comparability between the tune “P**** (Actual Good),” which Osorio had written about, and a remark Scott had made in entrance of Osorio and one other girl on the journal, saying that the singer Ashanti had a “fats p****.” One lawyer stated of Osorio, “She selected to work in hip-hop. The Supply isn’t Martha Stewart Dwelling.”

Flipping the script on the complainant on this means is a authorized tactic, frequent in sexual harassment instances, generally known as DARVO: Deny the accusations, Assault the sufferer, Reverse the Sufferer and Offender. Throughout his testimony, Mays rationalized the setting of The Supply, suggesting the office tradition mirrored the viewers: “We needed to perceive that we had been serving a 65 to 80 % male readership.” The attorneys for Scott and Mays used a few of their closing arguments to assert that Osorio wasn’t fired for the grievance however for different causes: “Her incapacity to handle the job. Her insubordinate response to constructive criticism. Her poor management. Her failure to satisfy deadlines on a constant foundation, and her repeated failure to observe the instructions that she acquired from Dave and Ray on the editorial content material of the journal.”

In his closing remarks, Thompson argued that nobody deserves to be harassed at work, irrespective of the office. “As a result of she labored at The Supply journal, they suppose that she gave up her rights as an individual, as a lady? And for those who consider that, then it’s a must to agree that the feminine editor-in-chief of Victoria’s Secret should not be capable of object to any vulgar remark, to any sexual propositions within the office, as a result of she places out a catalog yearly with girls who’re scantily clad carrying underwear.” He closed his summation with an attraction to posterity: “The eyes of a hip-hop music trade are upon you. You could have a terrific alternative right here … to impose requirements on that trade, and requirements on different elements of the music trade. You could have an opportunity to show them one thing about dignity. You could have an opportunity to show them one thing about respect.”

After a trial that took about two and a half weeks, the jury reached a verdict on Oct 23, 2006. Six males and two girls discovered that Osorio’s firing was certainly retaliation for the HR e-mail, and that Scott had defamed her in interviews after she’d been fired. Nonetheless, the claims of working in a hostile setting and being the sufferer of sexual harassment and gender discrimination had been dismissed. Throughout reporting for this story, authorized consultants advised Louder that the official normal for proving harassment — the extreme or pervasive normal — was so excessive, it meant a sure stage of office sexual harassment was successfully authorized in New York State on the time (and continues to be on a federal stage).

Despite the multi-million greenback judgment in her favor, amounting to one of many largest judgements within the historical past of the state of New York, the dismissal of these latter claims meant what Osorio had endured was prone to proceed within the tradition with out repercussion. As Neil places it, “I do not suppose something modified. All of the issues that occurred to her in that swimsuit occurred the subsequent day, and the day after that. Possibly now it is somewhat bit higher, however that swimsuit — I feel [it] put individuals on discover, however I do not know if it modified habits.”

My Time Now

Practically twenty years after Osorio’s case, the apply of calling consideration to sexually inappropriate habits in skilled circles has a reputation. However the Me Too motion, which infiltrated virtually each main trade in 2017, truly dates again to 2006 — the identical 12 months as The Supply trial — when activist Tarana Burke coined the phrase. And from Burke’s perspective, even after a worldwide reckoning, hip-hop’s strongest have remained largely unchallenged.

“I’ve heard tales for years,” Burke says. “I’ve pals who dated rappers or individuals within the trade and had been horribly mistreated. None of that got here ahead. And I feel it is as a result of they did not see area for Black girls or girls of colour. They did not see a gap in our neighborhood, fairly frankly.”

Burke envisioned “Me Too” as a instrument of solidarity, a means for the younger Black girls she’d seen survive sexual abuse to take again some company. Although the phrase would come to be extra extensively related to a handful of white celebrities, Burke says she’s much less disturbed by how her phrases had been co-opted, and extra by the missed alternative Osorio’s lawsuit represents — a second when hip-hop may have been forward of the curve on a significant shift in society.

“I feel individuals want to acknowledge that successful the court docket case isn’t the factor, stepping ahead is the factor.” Burke says. “You had this sister, who was seeped in probably the most deeply masculine, sexist, macho, male-driven factor that there’s in leisure and tradition, have the wherewithal to step ahead and say, ‘Nah, I am not standing for this.’ [This] is a predecessor to, and a catalyst for, the cultural second that we noticed occur in 2017.”

In hip-hop media’s present ecosystem, The Supply does not maintain almost as a lot energy because it did twenty years in the past. In its wake, different publications have come into prominence, a few of which have engendered the identical harmful habits. Staffers previous and current of Complicated Media, The Fader and OkayAfrica have publicly aired out males in positions of energy for sexual harassment, coercion, racism and gender-based discrimination. However when requested to go on report for this story in regards to the present state of harassment in music media as we speak, in the end, not one of the former staff of these corporations would converse — resulting from ongoing settlement negotiations and, in some instances, restrictive non-disclosure agreements. Organizations resembling New York’s Sexual Harassment Working Group are actively difficult the the authorized legitimacy of silencing survivors with a marketing campaign to overturn NDAs as a part of settlement agreements, however progress is sluggish.

Kim Osorio initially agreed to be interviewed for this story. Louder Than A Riot reached out to each Raymond Scott and Dave Mays for remark; each declined. Extra exactly, Scott requested, “Is there a verify concerned?” and refused to speak in any other case. Mays then again, responded by way of his lawyer, informing Louder that he had despatched Osorio a stop and desist letter, threatening to sue her if her statements on this podcast breached her settlement settlement with him.

Whether or not a declare is legit or not, simply the specter of submitting a lawsuit can intimidate somebody. In the end, after receiving the stop and desist letter, Osorio requested to have all of her interviews for this episode pulled, a request Louder revered. Even with Osorio’s braveness to talk out in regards to the toxicity in hip-hop in 2005 and a continued combat within the area since, the price of talking out this time proved to be too excessive, which implies the rule of “see one thing, say nothing” has by no means been extra true. Misogynoir is all the time there to point out that it is safer to maintain quiet.

“If we actually liked hip-hop, like accountability is part of love,” Burke stated. “If we actually liked hip-hop, then we might maintain ourselves accountable. We might maintain it accountable. These two issues can occur on the similar time. We do not have to tear hip-hop down and maintain it accountable. That is the way you truly construct it up.”