Ways Ozone Impacted The Game Rappers are more careful about the groupies they mess with
If you’re wondering why you don’t see Groupie Confessions in Ozone anymore, it’s because rappers stopped messing with a lot of them in fear of getting put on blast. Who would’ve ever thought that our funny little column would have rappers scared of free pussy?
Made Mr. 9-to-5 think “hey, I can do it too!”
DJ Green Lantern once joked that OZONE is full of people he’s never heard of. That’s kind of the point. We break artists before the rest of the media hops on the bandwagon, and that’s why we’re your “favorite rapper’s favorite magazine.” But with that, we get flooded with interview requests from artists that we’ve never heard of either. Message to up and coming rappers: just because you see a rapper in the magazine that YOU don’t know, doesn’t mean that they don’t deserve it. We don’t just pick random cats off the street or interview everyone that asks. We do have a vetting process.
Made pictures worth more than a thousand words
Over the years, we’ve found that to some, having a picture in the OZONE photo galleries is a greater accomplishment than earning a PhD. Our galleries were around before most of your favorite club photos websites too. So, guess you can say we’ve been making stars out of the non-talented for some time now.
We Made It Cool To Hate
Lil Duval’s “10 Things I’m Hating On” column actually made it funny and cool to hate. Most haters are afraid to show their face in fear of a public ass-whupping, but Duval not only put his face on his work, he called out people and places he was liable to run into the next day. When he stopped doing the column, we feared not being able to keep it going. But to our surprise, people volunteered to fill his hating throne.
Let everyone know “the South had something to say”
We’re not going to even begin to try to list the number of rappers that appeared in OZONE months, or even years, before they began popping up other magazines after they signed deals or landed on the Billboard charts. We won’t brag about putting Pimp C on the cover (below left) while he was prison or being there the day he got out . Probably won’t speak on spawning at least a dozen OZONE Jr. magazines claiming to cover Southern Hip Hop either.
Made everyone want to be free
Before OZONE, it was hard to find a good rap magazine outside of the newsstands free of charge. When we hit in 2002 giving our mags away at clubs and industry events, all of a sudden everyone wanted to give theirs away too.
Took the blame for everything that ruined Hip Hop
Every Southern artist that gets blamed for “ruining Hip Hop” was either featured in OZONE first or only interviewed for OZONE. Every fight at every award show gets compared to the OZONE awards even though we’ve only had three of them. Any rapper that gets locked up? It’s because of something he said in our magazine. Beef? Always our fault too.
34 // OZONE MAG