Kim Osorio had a front-row seat for the biggest beefs, battles, and blow-ups in hip-hop. As the first female editor-in-chief of "The Source," she had come up.

From her corner office, Kim got the goods on hip-hop's hottest names: Jay-Z, Nas, 50 Cent, Lil' Kim. She developed close -- sometimes intimate -- relationships with the artists she exposed to the public. But "The Source" couldn't hide its own dirty laundry for long.

Behind the scenes, the magazine's volatile owners puppeteered every issue -- even coveted honors like the 5-mic album rating and the Power 30 list of industry...