

Dash declined, and after Jay, Dash, and Biggs sold their 50 percent stake in Roc-A-Fella to Def Jam, giving the label complete ownership, Jay reclaimed his masters, kicked his two pals to the curb, and assumed the position of CEO. Dash begged him to not take the name Roc-A-Fella, while Jay offered to give up everything-the new post at Def Jam and Roc-A-Fella Records-if he could have the masters back of Reasonable Doubt. According to New York, Jay invited Dash out to dinner at Da Silvano to break the news.
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I figured Jay gave me time to prepare.”īy 2004, Def Jam had offered to purchase Roc-A-Fella Records and install Jay as its CEO. “I started putting together an army-Kanye, Cam’ron, Beanie, the Diplomats. “At a certain point, I got ready to depend on my other artists,” Dash later told New York magazine. Furthermore, since Jay was planning his retirement after The Black Album, Dash was plotting his own future, rounding up a stable of artists he’d discovered. Dash had signed his childhood pal Cam’ron to Roc-A-Fella-much to Jay’s chagrin-and attempted to install him in an executive post at the label, a move that was blocked by Jay. One year after Aaliyah’s passing, in 2002, rumors began circulating of a growing rift between Dash and Jay. Dash later said that while they weren’t formally engaged, they’d discussed plans to marry. The two dated until Aaliyah’s tragic death in a plane crash on Aug. “So I had to, but then it was just like, ‘Fuck it.’” “We developed a real friendship before, but there was always apprehension because other people would try to get at her first,” he said. Somebody may have had a different experience at a different time in her life.”ĭash won Aaliyah’s affections over Jay Z, and the pair began dating in late 1999, but he says there was a bit of apprehension over the fact that Jay Z had initially pursued her. She didn’t care what people thought or whatever. “It was just a situation where Aaliyah was the type of girl that would give you a shot.

He knew her before I did,” Dash told Hip-Hop Motivation. “I was going at her, and Jay was going at her. Things were relatively peachy on the Roc-A-Fella front until 1999, when both Jay Z and Dash began pursuing the 20-year-old R&B artist Aaliyah. Soon after, they started the successful clothing line Rocawear. In 1996, after the major labels passed on Jay Z’s debut album, Reasonable Doubt, the two friends-along with Kareem “Biggs” Burke-started the label Roc-A-Fella Records in order to release it. Dash was the entrepreneur, while Jay, a former drug dealer turned rapper, was the talent. Harlem native Damon “Dame” Dash” and Brooklyn’s Shawn “Jay Z” Carter met in 1994, when they were introduced by DJ Clark Kent. You heard that right: A semi-successful, stunning fashionista was the predator, not the powerful music mogul who not only has a history of questionable behavior, but is also benefitting financially from this entire soap opera, with Lemonade available exclusively via his streaming service, Tidal.Īnd the disproportionate Roy-bashing seems even more absurd when you consider she is the ex-wife of Damon Dash, Jay Z’s former best friend/business partner turned enemy, and that this is not the first time the two have been involved in a bizarre love triangle. Roy has since been painted as the thirsty side chick scamming on Beyoncé’s man-she was Ali Larter in Obsessed-while Jay Z was the tempted, happily married husband, reduced to a meme-ified punchline. “Beyoncé also confronted Rachel and said, ‘Don’t talk to my sister like that,’ after confronted Solange.” “Solange was defending Beyoncé in the elevator because Solange finds Jay’s friendship with Rachel to be WAY too close for comfort and it makes Solange very uncomfortable,” a source told Hollywood Life. The incident occurred following a Met Gala after-party wherein the Sisters Knowles reportedly confronted Roy over her chummy relationship with Jay Z. While Roy did bring some of this backlash on herself by posting the image/caption in question, the punishment did not fit the alleged crime.Īll this rabid speculation, of course, began in earnest when security footage emerged in May 2014 of Beyoncé’s sister, Solange, going Street Fighter on Jay in an elevator as a nonplussed Bey looked on.
