Some inside baseball: When XXL originally launched their blog section they didn't plan to pay anyone. Contrast that with SOHH.com, whose bloggers were paid $500 a month to start. I was paid about 30K a year to be the blog editor. Somehow Bol sparked a bidding war between XXL and SOHH for his services. Get this - XXL wasn't paying and SOHH originally wasn't interested. But, because the competition for writing talent was heating up, XXL decided to pay all of their bloggers, and SOHH made Bol a competitive offer. Eskay and some other bloggers who I hired at SOHH, eventually were hired away at XXL. In a weird, twisted way, Noz, Easkay, and other XXL bloggers have Bol to thank for the original bidding war that made XXL start paying people. And in a straightforward way, everyone has me to thank for inventing "professional" hip-hop blogging.

All jokes aside, Spitler as soon as I read what you wrote I looked up Ryan to see how we could connect. I love talking to any of the triple OG's out there

Thanks, WaterblockNYC. I changed the address to the correct one.

Spitler, I can hum along to every track of Smoothe the Hustler's first album. From memory. Including skits. Face it. I'm the Original, my dude.