On sourcing: Philips often uses anonymous sources, referencing nothing about a source's physical description and rarely citing just how close the source is to the story. His reliance on FBI-informant information in his most recent story leads many to question how he could trust someone who is "snitching." He said he has to protect his sources from death and that even a slight clue could ID them.

"When you talk to people who are involved with the crime, which is what I do, they're either directly involved or peripherally involved," Philips explained. "Probably the farthest I've ever gotten is the best friend of the guy that was involved, and was told everything. ... In this one, and in many other stories, I've had direct contact with people who I believe are the criminals. And the deal I work out with them, I don't go with 'the guy with green eyes and he's from Brooklyn.' I don't think that matters at all. It doesn't help identify the individual. But these qualifiers to me, the issue is, do you have the right source? I don't think it leads to more trust. Because it doesn't matter where he lived or what position he had. I think the problem with that is that the people who would like to kill them, it matters very much. But when you're writing about a murder, some of the people who talked to me would be killed if they were identified in any way. Frankly, no one has any idea but their family members that they're talking to me. Now I'm at the point where I can give my old stories to the people I approach and say, 'This is how I write, and this is how it will happen. I've never burned anybody, and I'm not gonna burn you.' And most people still won't talk to you. But in this case, I was a lot luckier than that."

Rokkan's New York-based CEO John Noe commented on the execution, "This project stretches our boundaries as a branding and digital firm in that we created a site that not only showcases core content, but encompasses a way of life. Bad Boy's image is already well established, and we were careful to maintain it. That being said, we pushed to create a site that was brushed with nuances of Bad Boy's company messaging while respecting the end users experience."

"It has never been proven that Christopher Wallace was not in Las Vegas on the night Tupac was shot," Philips wrote in response to a reader's question. "Bad Boy produced some computer-generated documents purporting to place him in a recording studio in New York, but they were not time-stamped. Bad Boy said it was going to produce video of Biggie there. They never did that. I have since learned that federal officials conducted interviews in Las Vegas to determine whether Wallace was present. My sources were there and say he and other East Coast figures were in Las Vegas on the night the Southside Crips killed Tupac." ...

Philips ... also revealed he would publish two more related stories by the end of the year, although he didn't specify the topics. One is believed to be a report on who is responsible for the death of the Notorious B.I.G.