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Lowkey posted on BET’s Soundoff blog yet another clip from Bonsu’s XXL Jay-Z coverstory…and honestly, this is the most interesting clip yet (previously Jay on competition/beef, and Jay on Jay) ….mainly because I love learning more from the many sides involved about the whatwhowherewhywhen of those Rocafella glory days.

Jay-Z on not receiving credit for Kanye West, Ne-Yo, Rihanna & Young Jeezy..

“Let’s first clear this thing about Dame and Kanye and all of us. We all had a conversation about Kanye and whether to sign him. No one knew what would become of Kanye. Not Dame, not me not Biggs. So we all sat down and said, “Let’s at least sign so we can keep the tracks in-house. It’s only good business.” And Dame said, “We can put Beans and Cam, surround him and make this type of album.” I wasn’t saying don’t sign Kanye, I was saying, at least keep the beats in-house, if anything. I don know. Maybe, maybe not. Let’s keep him here. Dame came up with the idea of surrounding him with Roc-A-Fella artists on his album, which never came out, ’cause when the album came in, everyone was like, “Oh this is good.” He stood on his own. If anything, I should be credited for wanting to sign him for his tracks. So even if Dame did sign him, he was gone at that time. I engineered those album. In my years there, even if Tina Davis signed Ne-Yo, she was gone. They were gonna drop Ne-Yo until Ty-Ty [Tyran Smith; former Def Jam VP of A&R] put his hand up and said, “I’ll do that project”.” So there’s no Ne-Yo if I’m not there. I scrapped on of his videos that no one knows about, pulled Hype Williams, pulled June Ambrose, my stylist, made the “So Sick” video, and he’s outta here. Rihanna, there’s just no getting around that…”

More after the jump…

Jay-Z on the business mindset of Dame Dash…

“I don’t want people to take this wrong, but if that’s my opinion. that’s my opinion. Dame is good at starting something. I don’t know if he gets in his own way at a certain point. You know, the fights you had coming up aren’t the same fights when you’re on a different level. What would happen is, a lot of times, I would have to go fix. You know, it was time-consuming, going back and just doing three meetings, when we could have had one. Nothing got accomplished, because everyone was screaming at each other. It got to a point…..John Meneilly (Jay’s manager) is not even the same type of thing.”

note: the best thing about hindsight, is not that you see clearer….its that you no longer care as much about sugercoating things.

last week, there was a clip of my old friend Bobby Dash talking about Rocafella as well….

fyi: bobby has always been a very nice to me, down to earth….he’s been around for years and has seen many things, lol….I wonder what happened to the Dash’s cousin, Darren, who was a tech mogul in the 90s.