When I heard BEANIE SIGEL say, during a recent interview, that he would not stop going in on JAY-Z until jay replies him, I knew he meant every word. The dude is not showing any sign of stopping; and the backing he has from 50 CENT just gives it that much velocity.
Beanie sigel recently commented on the remix of jay-z’s third single off of BLUEPRINT 3, “empire state of mind” which is rumoured to feature NAS. To his understanding, he believes that jay is just trying to stir up more controversy, or more like, trying to pull someone into the beef, without that person’s knowledge.
From Beanie’s analogy, he believes that jay would take shorts at him and 50 on the track, subliminally or directly, and then, because nas would be on the track, he believes that 50 and Beans would take that as offensive, and go against nas, which would start a whole new beef.
Well, those are sigel’s analysis; how true it is, we do not know. But if I were to analyse it, if jay was planning on dissing he and 50 on that track, which beans already confirms jay would do, then him having nas on it would definitely open up a new lane of beef, and then jay would just sit back and let someone else fight his war. That was what he did with his beef with JADAKISS; by pulling sigel into it, he didn’t have to drop any diss records. He did it with CAMRON too, when he pushed TRUE LIFE in front of cam.
We can’t say much for now, because the track is not even confirmed, but the rumours about is on about every hip hop site on the internet. I know that before long, probably in the next two weeks or so, we would get some answers, and know what is really on jigga’s mind.
I do need to add something, my point of view, to this whole analogy sigel has got going; that being that I do not think nas would respond to either him or 50. If that track ever drops, if it even exists, then I think that would be a big day for jay. I say this because it was rumoured that jay wanted nas on the original version, but he(nas) declined the offer. Nas was asked about this on various interviews, but he always seemed to skip the question. For this alone, you would know that nas is not really into doing this collaboration with jay; and if you do not know why I would like to educate you a little.
Without saying too much, I would like to tell you that nas has done this same “theme song for NEW YORK” concept 3 times during his career. 2 times on his first and third albums, “illmatic”, and “I AM”, and the tracks were titled “NEW YORK state of mind”, and “NEW YORK state of mind part 2”. Then, about 3-4 years ago, he did a third one, as a collaborative effort with RAKIM, and guess who was on the track? None other than yours truly, ALICIA KEYS.
Now, does the fact that jay’s “theme song about NEW YORK” is titled “empire state of mind” ring a bell? And then he went and featured Alicia keys, the same person nas used for his third version. I think this should tell you why nas didn’t want to be on the original (which is not a real original). I think at this point I can say jay stole nas’s idea; I can even go further to say that jay is a big nas fan.
I am sorry for going off the topic; back to what I was talking about. I said I do not think nas would reply beans and 50 if it ever happened that there is a remix of “empire state of mind”, and nas was on it, and jay dissed beans and 50; if all this were to happen, I still do not think nas would reply beans if he dissed him. I wouldn’t say nas is bigger than that, but I think nas is wiser than allowing himself to be caught-up in another man’s beef.
This whole beanie sigel 50 cent rampage has had a lot of people talking, and people are concluding that 50 is just using beans to get at jay. When he was asked, beans simply said, and I quote, “if he is using me, I am using him too”. I think that is a justifiable statement, because we all know 50 got the dough, and he can afford to push all sigel’s attacks towards jay in the best possible way, and also beans is getting all the publicity surrounding 50, whether negative or positive, at least he is being talked about. If the price he has to pay for all that is to backstab a former friend, who by the way does not regard him as a friend any more, then so be it. What do you have to loose from a so called friend who had you escorted out of his concert venue, by the police? A friend that would do the same, if it meant it would take him higher up the ladder of success; nothing.
"With 50, actually, that was actually good for us. Like with Beanie, Beanie's my man, too. That's my homeboy. We became cool. That was more personal. Somebody could've died. We didn't know 50. We didn't know Lloyd Banks. We didn't know Yayo. We didn't have no nothin' for them. We got bars. We could do this shit all day. This is what we do. This is what we're built for. If anything else happens out of it, fuck it, whatever. It was still good for us. 50 had millions at that time. You a multimillionaire. You don't come down to the underdog's level. So for us, it was like, 'Alright, we're gonna use this to show we got bars.' I don't think, unless they would've did something, we would've even cared because we would've seen them. We wasn't gonna risk ourselves, risk our freedom, risk our lives, unless they felt like that and they wanted to do that. But at the time with Sigel and them, that was a different story. That could've really escalated into something nasty because it was more like, 'I know you. I met you. I spoke to you. We've done things before. It's more disrespect taken personally."
Back in the early 00s, the hottest rappers in New York started going at each other for supremacy. Or, i can say Jay-Z wanted to claim the throne and not have any competition, so he fired shots, whether subliminal or directly at all his peers...Nas, Prodigy, Jadakiss. Whether you like to admit it or not, jadakiss was just as hot as Jay-Z in 1999/2000. I am not talking about record sales or popularity, i am talking about respect in terms of lyrical ability. So, the battles that jay didn't want to go directly into, he pushed his signee, Beanie Sigel to do the dirty work.
I'm a team player. I ride with my team, so when my team got broke up I didn't rush to jump on no other team. That's how I felt at the time. I had offers other places, but I wouldn't do it without State Property. It was Roc-A-Fella Records but it was a State Property [movement]. We brought the street cred back to the building.
Beanie Sigel has said he wants to end the Beef with his former boss, Jay-Z and that he regrets putting his feelings out there. If you didn't know, Beanie Sigel was signed to jay's "Rocafella Records" (also part owned by Kareem "Biggs" Burke and Damon Dash) in the late 90s/early 00s, and when the label dismantled sometime in the mid 00s, most of the artists signed under the label went their separate ways, including Sigel. Then out of the blue in 2009, Sigel started going at jay, including 2 diss tracks aimed at jay, but jay-z never responded.
I think the high point of the beef was when 50 cent, the king of controversial, stood behind sigel in the beef, and more or less poured more fuel to the fire. But jay still didn't respond, and thank God he didn't. 50 CENT just wanted to use that avenue to propel the sales of his BEFORE I SELF DESTRUCT ALBUM, which was about to drop then. The album dropped, and flopped (at least compared to his other 3 albums).
"What [comedian] Mike Epps say? 'Gangstas f*ck up too,'" Sigel said in an interview. "Whatever I felt this dude Jay did wrong to me, it can't outweigh the one thing he did do for me - he gave me an opportunity. Dude gave me an opportunity. A lot of people don't get opportunities. He gave me that. That outweighs everything. I need that in black and white. I got caught in the moment and put my feelings out there. I should have never done that...[On the disses], I was explaining the whole Roc-A-Fella sh*t and a lot of feelings were going to get hurt. I was airing sh*t out. Just the homies could listen to that when they come into the studio. I couldn't put that out. It wouldn't sit right with me." (XXL Mag)
Beanie Sigel, former Rocafella member recently commented on the probable cause of his feud with jay-z, his former boss. I guess Jay-Z had to sacrifice his relationship with his crew members to climb higher up the success ladder. I guess in life if you want to move on up and your friends are not ready to move with you the best thing is to cut them off, and get new ones. It is cool that jay still has Memphis Bleek by his side, but i feel he did Damon Dash bad.
"The sh*t stem[med] from a situation from me that happened when Jay-Z's bodyguard put his hands on me not in a manner that was harmful to me, but in a manner where he shouldn't have touched me period," Sigel explained in an interview. "On a push in the back tip and I addressed Jay about it in front of his A-List company [...] and I guess he ain't like that too much. I think that was the opening of the 40/40 Club, after that I never saw Jay again. I never talked to him again. That couple months went by or whatever, I even tried to reach out to him. It got to the point where you had to get to four different people to talk to Jay." (Forbez DVD)
