NYC- They call it the Bible of hip hop, but The Source was a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah behind the scenes, with executives watching porn movies and workspaces festooned with raunchy photos of topless women, a lawsuit claims.
The magazine’s former vice president of marketing, Michelle Joyce, told jurors weighing fired editor in chief Kimberly Osorio’s sex discrimination claims that she walked into a mail room in the summer of 2004 and saw co-owner Raymond (Benzino) Scott and two other execs watching porn.
Osorio, the magazine’s first female editor, was fired last year, she says, after she complained about a workplace that was unfriendly to female employees. Her lawsuit names as defendants co-owner David Mays [pictured] and Scott.
“Kimberly Osorio, when she was fired, she was devastated financially,” attorney Kenneth Thompson told jurors during opening statements in Manhattan Federal Court. “Miss Osorio’s career in hip hop has been destroyed.”
Joyce also was fired and joined Osorio’s lawsuit, but a judge dismissed her claims earlier this year. She is pursuing an appeal for what she says was wrongful termination.
The Source’s attorney Mercedes Colwin said Osorio knew better than most that the hip-hop world was rife with raunchy language, profane lyrics and scantily clad women.
“That is the world that the plaintiff chose,” Colwin told jurors. “She had many choices and she chose to work in hip hop. … The Source is not Martha Stewart Living.”
Colwin questioned why Osorio would have brought her young daughter to work with her if she considered the office an inappropriate place for women. She said Osorio was fired because she lacked leadership skills, failed to motivate employees and had trouble closing out an issue before it was sent to the printer.
In her complaint, Osorio claimed Scott asked her to spend the night with him in Atlantic City.
Osorio’s attorneys played a tape of an interview Scott gave to a hip-hop journalist in which he alleged that Osorio slept with some of the biggest names in rap.
He also called Eminem – the rapper with whom he was publicly feuding – a racist and crudely accused the interviewer of siding with him in the interview.