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Earlier in this millennium I wrote quite a bit for The Source. It was a dream come true because well, it was the friggin Source and for a Brooklyn hip-hop kid it was a sign of being on the right path. As a green reporter I met Kim Osorio at a cover shoot for Lil Flip, Cassidy and the Young Gunz (which I wrote their feature). She seemed extremely busy but still managed a quick hello. Today, after all the Source drama (read here) she's got a new grind and also a new book (Straight from the Source). Check out her answers below from the cutting room floor.

Why did you decide to write the book now?
Kim Osorio: I wanted to tell my own story as opposed to have people tell it for me. When I decided to file the case a lot of people were making assumptions of what had happened at The Source and I felt like I wanted people to know my own story. Doing a book is something I always wanted to do but after the case I knew I had to do it. No book is an easy sell. It's all about timing. I had been working on something while I was at The Source. It wasn't until after the case came out that the book was sold.

How has it been being a woman in hip-hop?
KO: Initially, I didn't think much of it until things started happening to me. As a woman I came in the game as I have enough notches in my belt as any of these men doing it. I've written for a certain amount of magazines and held a certain amount of positions so I didn't have that mentality.

Seeing Riggs Morales, Carlito Rodriguez and yourself in The Source's masthead was a big inspiration for me as a Latino writer starting out.
KO: Riggs and Carlito are two people, who early in my career, were there to help me. I hate to say this because I don't want to sound like we're the only culture that sticks together but people are always like, "Y'all Latins always stick together." But the irony is that coming in it was Carlito and Riggs that were always, "You gotta read this stuff by this girl." They were at the magazine and I was a freelancer. They were always pushing my work and always there to help me.

In your new position at Global Grind what do you hope to accomplish?
KO: I'm hoping to help establish Global Grind as a very important online destination for the hip-hop community. A lot of hip-hop sites out there, you know, do hip-hop. Hip-hop on hip-hop and that's not what we're trying to do. We want to have partnerships with sites like that because GG is a content aggregator but more importantly we want to be hip-hop around the world. As we all grow older we're interested in other things. And although I'll always identify with hip-hop, hip-hop is politics, hip-hop is news. It's almost like when you log on to your computer in the morning I know one of the first things I do is find stuff on the Web and send it to my friends. For the most part that stuff is not hip-hop; I'm not finding a Lil Wayne track. I know there's a community of people who do that but I'm not looking at the latest Wayne track and being like, "Yo, check this out." I'm either finding funny videos or news that is interesting. That's really what Global Grind is; it's a place where you can come and see all of this stuff that's on the Web.