In an interview with The Art of Dialogue on YouTube, Beanie Sigel claimed that Jay-Z used to wear The Notorious B.I.G.'s iconic Jesus Christ chain while recording in the studio.
At the start of the latest clip from the interview, as seen above, Sigel was asked what Jay's recording process was like and he suggested there was "no process" to his studio sessions. "I don't know if you understand how big a statement that is, like, he just did it," he explained. "I only seen Jay do one thing, like, that wasn't a process I think it was, for lack of better terms, a little ritual. When he was working on his albums, he would wear Biggie chain. His Cuban with the Jesus Piece, Jay rocked that. He [wouldn't] get no cut neither until he finished the album."
Biggie was known for his iconic Jesus Piece, and at some point after his death, Jay-Z was able to acquire one of his "Brooklyn's Finest" collaborator's pieces. He famously wore the piece on the cover of XXL Magazine in December 1999. In his 2010 autobiography Decoded, Jay confirmed that the chain used to belong to Biggie. "It's part of my ritual when I record an album: I wear the Jesus Piece and let my hair grow till I'm done," he wrote.
"Other than that, that little ritual right there... Jay ain't have no process," Sigel continued. "That was Biggie chain."
Elsewhere in the interview, Sigel said that he's "never" seen Jay-Z pick up a pen and paper when he's in the studio working on music. "That's a different kind of skill set," he added. "When you doing it right, and you're not writing, that's just another zone we tapped into. It's a difference between not writing and just going in and, like, freestyling piece and stuff together. Nah, we talking about writing whole songs in your head and not only writing it, just going in the booth and micing it."
Sigel said that he doesn't write when he records, either, and Hov is to thank for that. "I picked that up from Jay, he made me not write," he said. "One day he came and I was spitting the rhyme off the paper, and he took the paper and he balled it up, he was like, 'Say what you just said.' I said a couple bars. He like, 'You got that, all right what else?' Then he'd be like, 'Say it together.' Then it was that exercise and just, 'All right you got that, come up with the next four bars.'"
He said that Jay made him repeat the process a few more times, and after that, he "never wrote again."
Watch the interview up top.
