Damon Dash and Jay-Z have been at odds with each other for some time, with their latest bout having to do with Dame’s attempt at selling Hov’s Reasonable Doubt album as an NFT.
Dame commented on the matter in a new interview with Shannon Sharpe for Club Shay Shay. “He sued me for something he said that I did that I didn’t, and then I just had to sue him because he was redirecting funds for Reasonable Doubt,” Dame said around the 44:35 mark above. “I didn’t realize it. I would never sue somebody I used to hustle with—I’m not into suing anybody. I was disappointed. I think it’s embarrassing.”
He continued, “You know, again, the program is when two Black people used to work together and now they don’t, then they gotta be beefin’. I’m not beefin’ with that man—I don’t care what he’s doing. I don’t like the way he carried things but that’s on him. He went his way, I went mine.”
During the conversation, Dame also spoke on deadly feuds between rappers, blaming the algorithms behind social media and streaming platforms as contributing factors.
“It’s an algorithm that needs to be stopped,” he said around 51:30. “If you like to look at trolling and beef and it pops up on your phone. The algorithms are what’s controlling us right now. … It’s a program, it’s knowing how to trigger people and it’s profitable [from] our dysfunction.”
“YouTube should stop paying when people put up beef,” he argued. “Instead of people paying attention to a negative algorithm, they should pay attention to a positive one. It’s just the program that we keep falling into. … What needs to be profitable is our love and our unity, and that’s what has to be showcased. But no one shows that.”
He added, “Family killing family instead of your real enemy is your real enemy tricking you to do that. And we’re aware of it, but we keep doing it. My rule of thumb is: I’m not hurting anybody with the same color skin as me, period.”
Elsewhere, Dame discussed how he first met Kanye West and whether he thought the Chicago native would become as successful as he is. “No, not at all. I never expected that in a billion years,” Dame said around 40:15. “I’m not surprised, nothing surprises me. I didn’t expect it. I expected other people that were in my crew to be Kanye. I expected someone to do those things but I didn’t know it would be him. But the reason why it was him is because he had the most respect for me. He’s the only one that listened completely, and still does on a certain level.”
Dame also talked around 34:10 minute mark about coming up with Hov and how the pair blew up. “In the street we was doing really well. I promise you. Think about this back in those days: the rappers were emulating the drug dealers. We were really good drug dealers, so we were famous in the street already—so it was normal.”
He continued, “That’s why when Lyor [Cohen] offered us a million dollars, we laughed at him. It was like, we’re not here for a million dollars—we’re here because we like having fun. But we knew once we got there, yeah, we’re hustlers. Of course we’re gonna fucking destroy this shit, which we did. We did exactly what we said we were gonna do—what I knew we were gonna do.”
Dame said he took notice of Jay-Z because he was wearing Nike Airs. “He’s from Brooklyn, I’m from Harlem. Back in those days, Brooklyn dudes didn’t wear Nike Airs so that was a flag for me,” he said of recognizing Hov’s potential.
Dash also discussed Paid in Full 2, which he has been teasing for some time, confirming it’s filming in Newark, New Jersey. It seems the original cast won’t be returning for the sequel. “They’re too old,” Dame said. “They’re all 50 now. We’re going to make Cocoon: Paid In Full? It’ll be what? Paid in Full: Nursing Home? They’re too old to play young characters.”
Watch the entire interview up top.
