While Beanie Sigel and Jay-Z are on friendly terms these days, the two former Roc-A-Fella artists have had their fair share of issues in the past.
Before Beanie released a diss track directed at Jay in 2009, the two had a falling out around the time of the infamous Roc-A-Fella split and Sigel’s then-ongoing legal issues. In a new episode of Drink Champs, Sigel opened up about how he felt when Jay vouched for him in court when he faced attempted murder and federal weapons charges in 2003, but said he wouldn’t be responsible for keeping Sigel out of trouble.
“I never been crushed like that ever in my life,” Sigel explained. “That fucked me up. That took away a lot of shit that I thought we had. Like, that’s big bro.” Thankfully the two have been able patch up their issues since, and in hindsight he doesn’t blame Jay for doing what he did. “I believe at that time, Jay was thinking that I was unpredictable,” he added. “I was bugging. I know I was out of pocket. I was uncontrollable.”
Despite being on better terms these days, notably reuniting onstage at a Tidal-hosted concert in 2015, Sigel remarked that he regrets not having a conversation about that particular moment in their friendship. “We ain’t never had that conversation,” he said. “I wanted to hear it from him. Like, ‘Where was you at?’ There was a lot that weighed on me. That was fucked up to me. You got to have some kind of communication.”
Elsewhere during the chat, the Philadelphia-raised rapper told the story of how he almost missed an important early meeting with Jay because of a dog fight.
In the late ‘90s, Sigel was good friends with Boo-Bonic of Philly’s Most Wanted, and after a casual rap battle he said that Boo invited him to tag along to a Roc-A-Fella meeting. "Still at this time I’m not taking rap like serious,” he said. “It was just something that I knew I could do, like I wasn’t trying to be a rapper. He’s showing me contracts, I mean they had all contracts, yeah, they can’t they have offers from like four different labels. So he was like, ‘Yo, we supposed to go up here go to Roc-A-Fella Records for a meeting with Jay-Z.’ He was like, ‘You should take this ride with us,’ so I’m like, ‘Alright, yeah I’ll take the ride.’”
The day of the meeting, however, he found himself betting on a dog fight. "I ain’t trying to go there,” he said. “I’m trying to go to this dog fight. I’m tryna bet— this a sure shot. So long story short, I tried to duck him. I’m trying to get out the crib. They sitting downstairs waiting. I’m like, ‘Oh they outside the crib,’ so I gotta take the ride.”
Not long after that, Sigel was given a record deal after meeting with Jay-Z and Too Short, who were in the middle of recording at the time.
Watch the full episode of Drink Champs above.
