Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been chronicling the resurrection of one of Hip Hop’s true pioneers, Dave Mays. The Founder and former CEO of “The Source” magazine has spent the better part of the last five years learning some hard business lessons. But the one lesson he’s teaching others is “to never give up.” EURweb.com’s Lee Bailey interviewed Mays giving him a forum as part of a two part feature to discuss what went wrong over at The Source and how he’s getting up off the canvas.

“I decided to take out a huge bank loan to invest in a dot com back when the dot com thing was going crazy. “The magazine was doing incredibly well. We had just launched the “Source Awards” on UPN so the business was taking off, and we were doing a few other things with the brand. I saw the internet (could possibly have) a lot of synergy to unite everything that I was doing. I borrowed in excess of 12 million dollars…I lost a lot of money and put the company into financial instability. That led to a decision that I had to make around 2002 which was to sell the business. I was made an offer by a few people including Bob Johnson when he was still at BET.

Mays was offered a lot of loot to buy the company but decided against it instead choosing to maintain creative control. Mays later was forced to sell the magazine to a private equity company, which saved the struggling property but also numbered his days with the magazine.

Mays has since returned to the Hip Hop publishing arena with Hip-Hop Weekly a celebrity/ gossip rag. “It’s not going to take political stances, on cultural and social issues. Monsta will be more the vehicle for that. Monsta of course is Mays’ new baby that he launched recently. I have a lot of respect for Mays. He’s proving a lot of his doubters wrong by rebuilding after everything was taken from him. As for Benzino…