According to BallerStatus.com, publishers of hip-hop magazine The Source, announced this week that they are going to stop printing so called “Booty Ads” in their magazine. Publisher Londell McMillian won’t run anymore ads for lewd products, pornographic websites, or escort services. A bold move in a economy that is in recession with no end in sight, especially considering almost half of the magazine’s current ads fall into these categories.

“It’s time the hip-hop industry stop advertising junk and be more responsible about what we sell to our readers,” said McMillan. “The Source has been much more selective about what we put in our magazine and created higher standards since we’ve changed ownership. We owe it to our readers and the parents who don’t want their children reading about the latest porn sites and seeing booty ads in the back of the magazine.”

“While we realize we are taking a major risk, we want to gain larger more corporate mainstream advertising, and believe we can. There’s a lot of major corporations that want hip-hop, but don’t want the filth that goes along with it,” McMillan continued.

Our hats off to the publishers of The Source for this one. With all the negativity surrounding hip-hop today it’s nice to see someone taking a stand for something a little more positive and taking a little more responsibility for what they are feeding to the public. Although a ‘whatever pays the bills’ attitude keeps things running, is that really what it should be all about?

Hopefully this strategy will pay off for them and more companies will follow their example. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking or reading a little too much into this particular decision, but it would be nice to see a little more balance come back to mainstream hip-hop.