In an appearance on the Ear Pollution podcast, Roc Nation's Emory Jones explained how he knew he had the loyalty of his close friend Jay-Z while behind bars.
"From day one, the main thing I did to set the tone was when I used to call home I would tell my brothers, ‘Y’all don’t owe me nothing,’" he told hosts DJ Clue and Esso. "It starts there. What we did for each other, we did from [the heart]. So once you clear that slate, coming from me, that’s that balance right there."
Jones said it wouldn't be fair of him to have acted like anybody owed him something when he was behind bars, not just Jay-Z.
"I can’t look at it like, you owe me something and the world owe me something. That’s where we go wrong when we go in the system," he continued. "We put that pressure on everybody around us like somebody owe us or something. It's already a struggle, so now you take and put your baby mama or your mom into an extra struggle because now they have to struggle even more to make sure you're good."
Jones was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2000 after he pleaded guilty to involvement in drug distribution in 1997. He was finally released from prison in 2016 and was warmly welcomed back to the outside world by Hov, who named him the Head of Lifestyle at Roc Nation and a co-founder of the apparel brand Paper Planes.
When Jones was in prison, Jay showed love to his friend on the Kingdom Come track "Do U Wanna Ride," which also featured John Legend and was produced by Kanye West. The song opens with a recording of Jones calling Jay from prison and serves as a dedication to Jones. "I can't wait till you get your date / I got some temp plates outside of the gate / We gon' ride," he raps on the 2006 song, on which he mentions Jones by name throughout the verses.
In an interview on The Breakfast Club in 2017, Jones said Hov reached out to him to get his approval for the track, which ultimately helped him "survive" life in prison. "When Jay did the John Legend song, he was like ‘Yo I wanna do this song,'” he told The Breakfast Club. "The first thing I told him was ‘We don’t need a song to solidify who we are. We know who we are for each other.’ ... He gave it to me and I was like ‘Fuck!’ I’m in jail and it was just like a tear-jerker because he wanted to show how much he appreciated me the same way I appreciate him."
At one point Jones befriended a prison guard who played the song for him. After he heard it, he said it got him through the last "three or two years" in prison. "That's the beautiful thing of music, Jay's music got me through," he noted at the time.
