 The roots of the publication began with a hip hop newspaper called "Beat-Down Newspaper", founded by Haji Akhigbade and Sacha Jenkins in 1992.Sacha and Haji met and brought aboard both Elliott Wilson and later Jefferson "Chairman" Mao.All three (Jenkins, Wilson, and Mao) also had extensive freelance backgrounds writing for other publications such as "Rap Pages", "Vibe" and "URB".