Back in September, Memphis Bleek appeared on Drink Champs and reflected on the beginning of the end of Roc-A-Fella Records.
According to the Brooklyn rapper, the demise of Roc-A-Fella began on the set of Jay-Z's "Change Clothes" music video in 2003, where Dame Dash threatened to kick Bleek off the roster after he'd sided with Hov amid rumors of The Blueprint rapper's imminent departure from the label.
"[Dame] was basically telling n****s, 'Yeah, we gonna fix this... and I'm looking at him like, 'Bro, this shit over,'" Bleek shared. "And he looked at me and said, 'You always going against everything I say, like you got a problem here. If you don't wanna be with Roc-A-Fella, I'll give you your walking papers.'"
Two months later, Dame shared his side of the story in a new episode of The CEO Show on his America Nu Network platform.
“The misconception about Roc-A-Fella is they kicked me out; I left. When ‘Change Clothes’ came out, I had already had an office at Rocawear," Dash explained. "I was already done, I didn’t wanna run Roc-A-Fella no more. I still don’t wanna run a music brand. I had retired from Roc-A-Fella long before this so-called split.”
Dame continued by claiming that he has nothing but love for Bleek, as he saved the Brooklyn rapper from getting robbed of his publishing royalties.
“People close to him were taking his publishing," Dame said. "When he was signing his record deal someone had his — he was signed to a production deal. And, I’m not going to say nobody’s name. I’ll let them deal with that. He talks about it. All his publishing was getting taken. They were getting a piece of his royalty. He was getting robbed. So, I went and got him a lawyer. I went and got him a real accountant, and it really caused a lot of friction internally.”
Dame added, “He was from Brooklyn, and Brooklyn n***as was robbing him and I saved him from that. Yeah, I saved him from that and he acknowledges it.”
