Editor’s note: In part two of his Guest Blog, Meka discusses the inception of 2dopeboyz.com. Read part one over here. Part three is here.

Alongside a variety of writers from all walks of life, the DX columns had become one of the site’s more prominent sections, with “Slap-Boxing” being the most popular. I treated the column like it were a canvas and my words as paint, spending hours writing, editing and re-editing every entry until I had felt that it was complete for the world to see. With most of my posts having quotes like:

“If he had the space in his coffin to do so, Pun would be turning in his grave.”

And:

“I’m even starting to think that I can catch the next red eye out to JFK and slap the ever-loving shit out of Cam’Ron for his chain. Lord knows I could use the rent money and he probably wouldn’t snitch on me anyways.”

And finally:

“In a sense, I’m almost glad that Biggie isn’t alive to see his legacy burn worse than Travis Barker and DJ AM in that Cessna. Then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if Puff at this point dug his body up out of his grave, tied rope to his arms and legs, hung him from the rafters and had him perform “Big Poppa” marionette style at Madison Square Garden on September 11th.”

I was the person readers loved to hate but couldn’t take their focus away from. Not even my cohorts were safe from my wrath, as I openly called out one William E Ketchum III just for calling Kanye West the new DJ Premier. A “beef” of sorts soon followed, and we exchanged barbs back and forth for a number of months until one day he sparked a conversation with me via iChat. We’ve become relatively good friends over the past two years also, even though we’ve not met face-to-face to this day.

Funny thing though, Ketchum hit me a few weeks ago, mentioning how the he can’t look at a song he thought I lifted the title of my “ether” post on him the same way anymore – I believe it was a T.I. cut – as it makes him remember our battle. Oddly enough, I took the post’s title from a Jadakiss lyric, but I digress.

“Slap-Boxing” also allowed me to fully re-enter the world of music journalism, where I was able to interview everyone from Hell Rell to The Pharcyde. I’d become so enthralled by its success that I was pretty much writing almost every day at my job at this point, subsequently forgetting to do some of my duties there. In August of that year, some of the higher-ups at DX had invited me to help them move product at their booth during the Southern California stop of Rock The Bells, and it was here when I met one of my fellow members of the DX section, a stocky white boy who went by the name “Shake,” the Design and Media Content Editor of DX.

Hanging out with Shake that weekend turned out to be one of the more intriguing experiences. I had thought Shake was someone who knew more about Green Day than Pacewon, and Shake thought I was just some belligerent, angry black guy who’d flip out if he had the gall to look at me wrong. When we realized that not only were we wrong about one another but also we both had a relatively extensive knowledge of music, we pretty much connected off the bat. The Middle Eastern overlords at DX saw how well we got along and suggested that we should start a website that they would set up and sell ad space on, to which Shake and I agreed.

About two months later, DX still had not done anything in regards to this new site. At the same time, my fuck-ups at the job had gotten noticeable amongst my bosses there, and in late September 2007 I was cut from my job in an effort to save money due to the impending writer’s strike that subsequently ethered Hollywood, with its aftershocks still being felt to this day. However it wasn’t for the reason I originally thought: my boss had stumbled across my stuff at DX and thought I would be better off pursuing that as a career choice rather than sitting at a front desk making coffee and refilling the copy machines for a living. Of course I didn’t see it that way at the time, but getting fired would turn out to be the best thing that would happen to me.

Imagine if he saw my “Slap-Boxing” shit, though…

Now without a job again, I panicked. I didn’t know how I was gonna survive without a bi-weekly paycheck, and I had turned my back on full-time freelancing for my former job years prior. So I hit up Shake one day…

“Is DX ever gonna start that site for us?” I asked him.

“Man, we can just start it ourselves,” he replied.

On October 17, 2007, the site was launched. However, my mind was far from it, as I had to find a legitimate means of making money since I refused to move back in with my mother. I began working on various commercials and music videos, all the while collecting unemployment checks and still scribing for various magazines. Spending upwards of 16 hours on random-ass sets left me no time to really do anything else, and my production over at “Slap-Boxing” began to slow from it where instead of doing one daily post I’d do three posts a week. Needless to say, my attention over at the new side hustle was menial at best, and for the first few months I only posted one per day: Meka’s Soul Mix Show. I got the inspiration for the Soul Mix Show posts when I would scour across the Internets, discovering the original samples rappers used in their songs, and I flipped an old Kanye West mixtape for the name. My very first post on the site would be Tom Scott’s “Today,” also known as the sample Pete Rock and CL Smooth lifted for “T.R.O.Y. (They Reminisce Over You).”

Funny how everything seems to finds its way back to Pete Rock and CL Smooth. But I digress.

In January I landed a temp job at another production company, but by then I’d become jaded again. Not by the music industry, however; my distaste was at the idea of having to work a 9-to-9 job that pays little to less than nothing, with no foreseeable upward momentum. So I began contributing more to the side hustle, with Shake giving me pointers on how to post, how to scale pictures and whatever else I didn’t know, which was a lot as Shake had an extensive graphic design portfolio and I just had a bunch of Meka Soul posts and interviews with rappers. In May 2008 I was let go from that job, but by then I wasn’t even bothered by it; I’d decided that it would be my last gig as a receptionist. With a seemingly endless amount of free time, I finally focused fully on the site with Shake.

Read part three of his guest blog here.