Considering that we've all hopefully been quite busy blasting 2 Chainz's new album Rap or Go to the League over and over, one would be forgiven for missing some of the supplemental material that's been dropping since its release on Friday. One such item is the artist formerly known as Tity Boi's new YouTube series Crate Talk.
For the inaugural episode, Chainz welcomed UnitedMasters founder and Tanning of America author Steve Stoute to talk origin stories while playing basketball. About six minutes into their discussion, Chainz detailed a Watch the Throne-era offer from JAY-Z that he ultimately turned down due to loyalty.
"Hov told me that he wanted to do business with you and you turned him down," Stoute said at the 5:45 mark. "What about that?" Chainz then explained the whole story, which all begins with a persistent Kanye West.
"I was already speaking with Kanye on and off," Chainz said. "While they was in Paris working on Watch the Throne, Ye would hit me the whole time talking about my mixtapes and just was speaking to me where we just built a great relationship on the phone because we share some of the same similarities, right?"
During this same period, Chainz eventually received a call from JAY-Z inviting him to hop on a plane to New York. Chainz requested that he be able to bring along DJ Teknikz (a.k.a. Tek), whom he credits for helping guide his earlier career to a point where someone like JAY or Ye would even be interested.
"I'm trying to tell them that bruh helped me get to the point where I'm on your radar...I couldn't go by myself," Chainz said. "I just chose loyalty. They were sending a jet and [were] like, 'Nah, we need you by yourself' and I just chose to, like, chill out."
Of course, there's clearly no bad blood. During an interview with The Breakfast Club last week, Chainz revealed that he tried to get JAY on Rap or Go to the League to check him off the bucket list. 'The timing apparently wasn't right," he said. "This would've been, like, a bucket list. There's a few things on my bucket list. This is one of the things on my bucket list. I'mma check it off one day. He knows I'm passionate about this music stuff."
