This is a 4-page newsletter written by Daddy Lion Chandler. I met him, and got this issue, when I was interviewing The UMC's for The Source in, you guessed it, 1998. You can see he wrote their website down for me on the front page, but sadly nothing seems to even exist in the Wayback Machine today. You can also see how densely packed the text is, because they're squeezing all the information they can into their four limited pages. Basically, Underground XPosure was more of a traditional magazine (though good luck even finding much about that in 2026) and Deep In the Nooz ("wake up, ya don't snooz!") was a newsletter, that wound up merging. They actually explain the business behind it at the bottom of page 1.
This newsletter is some deep in the weeds industry stuff, a refreshing alternative when all the major magazines were writing all the same puff pieces about all the same major artists who had a new album that month. Like, here we get quotes from Chris Atlas about how/ why he wound up bringing Defari over from ABB Records to Tommy Boy's Black Label, or how The Label (the Veteranz Day guys Big Daddy Kane was ragging on in my interview with him) got a distribution deal with Joan Jett's Blackheart Records.
But the centerpiece is an interview with The Wizard and Sylva Shadow, talking about how Wizard actually created the "Poison" track, which Dr. Freeze took and gave to Bell Biv Devoe; and their subsequent falling out. It's fascinating, and only made me wish this issue could've run a few extra pages - I wanted to hear about Red Bandit, too!
Does anybody else remember this, or even still have copies? I think you pretty much had to be in New York to come across the newsletter itself, but like I said, there was beatsezine.com. And DLC is still doing his thing. Anyway, just another cool little bit of history. 'Till next time!
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