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Quoted: Damon Dash on how to get on the cover of XXL

For XXL's 12th anniversary issue, they went back and interviewed 12 people who have appeared on the cover of XXL. There must have been an emphasis on people who don't have anything better to do, if Damon Dash is one of them.

XXL: What about the June 2005 issue, with you and Cam’ron?

Damon Dash: I remember how that cover happened. A couple issues before that, [XXL] had put some bullshit in there, like a picture of a Roc-A-Fella chain, and it was just saying a whole bunch of fucked-up things about us. And, at the time, I was giving a couple of million dollars in advertising a year to XXL. Like, I’m not gonna be putting Rocawear ads in and Roc-A-Fella artists, all these movies I’m doing, for y’all to be shitting on me. Especially when it was, like, rumor shit, the whole article. So I was like, “I’m pulling all my ads.” [Laughs] I was like, “Y’all gotta give me a cover with one of my artists.”… Anytime I had a platform, I didn’t want to be on the cover. I just wanted my artist to get it. That was when the Roc-A-Fella split had first happened… I didn’t even really understand the split, so if you read the article, I was, like, confused, like, “Whatever, I don’t give a fuck.”

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Never mind the fact that XXL is running stories about how artists pay to get on the cover. I'm more concerned with the fact that one guy was spending a couple of million dollars a year on ads. Where did all of that money go? Certainly not to my house.