Benzino has said that he’s the reason that André 3000 made his now-infamous 1995 Source Awards speech — and he’s ready to own up to his mistakes.
The former Source co-founder continued his mea culpa tour when he stopped by Ray Daniels’ GAUDS — Goats and Underdogs — podcast. The full episode, which dropped today (April 10), featured Benzino giving all the tea on how he managed to piss off the former OutKast frontman.
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“The reason why André 3000 said what he did, I’ma have to tell y’all this story,” he said. “When they was giving OutKast 4.5 mics, I remember, I didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand the music. And I was the one who kinda raised some situations up at The Source, I’m gonna admit it. And I was wrong. I think it got to OutKast. And I think that’s why André said what he said. I think that was kinda directed toward me.
Benzino was referring to André 3000’s infamous speech at the 1995 Source Awards. After OutKast won the coveted Best New Rap Group Award, the Grammy winner — unfazed by the prevalent East Coast-West Coast rap beef that was casting a serious undertone to this and other awards ceremonies — strutted up to the mic and said, “But it’s like this though: I’m tired of folks, — them closed-minded folks. It’s like we got a demo tape and don’t nobody wanna hear it. But it’s like this, the South got somethin’ to say. That’s all I got to say.”
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“I think I made a mistake and I shouldn’t have,” he continued. “Usually, I bow out of the whole five-mic thing. The five mics was so strong that we let the journalists take care of that. The Source was business over here and the journalists over here. We would let the journalists take care of that; the writers, the photographers. It was a group of them and they would sit in a room and the labels would send the albums and they would rate them. It was one of the main things, the five mic system. One time, me and one of them got into a debate about OutKast because I didn’t understand at that time that music. And I was wrong.”
Check out the clip from the GAUDS podcast below.
But Benzino didn’t just limit his no-holds-barred approach to his past bad behavior on now-defunct awards shows.
Earlier in the episode, he spilled the beans on how he tried to prevent his daughter, Coi Leray, from smoking weed.
Benzino explained that when his daughter wanted to smoke some weed one time, he had to make a judgment call in teaching her a lesson.
“She’s about 15, 16, essentially,” he begins the clip. “And she’s smoking — I’m like, damn, I don’t want her to smoke. So it’s like, man, I don’t wanna be the bad guy.”
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Daniels’s co-host, Tamira Smith, jumped in with a question of her own. “What age did you start smokin’?” she asks.
“Thirteen,” Benzino replies, before Daniels interjects with: “But you want your kids to be better than you!”
“You’re right,” the former Source editor says. “It’s called necessary hypocrisy.”
