How many times have we talked about betrayals involving Jay? This isn’t the first, but it’s the only one we’re addressing because it directly affected us. To me, it’s not a big deal. Anyone trusting Jermaine over Jay is foolish. We all know Jay, and after what he did with Rockefeller, why expect anything different? Jay doesn’t care about principles; he cares about the money. That’s just how he is. If you trust him, that’s on you. I’m not going to dwell on it, feeling hurt and betrayed. We all knew what Jay was doing, but no one was willing to say it. Jay’s actions destroyed Rockefeller. Is Rockefeller still around? No. Who benefited from that? Jay did. He made everyone work for him, while I chose to make my loved ones my partners. What really frustrates me is not seeing any royalties from Reasonable Doubt for the past decade. I want to know where my money is.
At first, it’s all about you and your circle—the people who grind with you, share your dreams, and endure hardships together. When you finally make it, you start thinking about what’s next and how you can give back. You achieve what once seemed impossible, and then you look around and ask how you can replicate this success. That’s why we created Roc Nation—to share the knowledge we gathered. We wanted to say, “Here, Rihanna. Here, Kanye. Here’s the information. If we achieved these goals at 36, you can do it at 26.”
So, when I see Jay-Z, I question what he represents. You’re not a gang member; you have checkerboard floors and skulls and bones. What does this signify? Dame Dash is back with more revelations about Jay-Z’s shady business practices and his strange association with culture vulture Lyor Cohen. But brace yourselves because it looks like Jay has had enough of Dame’s accusations and is ready to share his side of the story.
Dame isn’t staying quiet either. He’s firing back with even more shocking claims about how Jay-Z didn’t just throw him under the bus but, together with his mentor Lyor Cohen, trampled over many Black artists to claw their way to the top of the music industry. There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s dive in and spill the tea. Many people who might have been mistreated by Jay are scared to speak up. But I’m not one of them. If someone wrongs me, I don’t care if it’s 20 years later; I won’t have anything nice to say about that situation.
You know how Dame Dash and Jay-Z have been on the outs for ages? According to Dame, it all comes down to Jay-Z aligning himself with people like Lyor Cohen, who profit off Black culture while also harming Black artists. But now, Jay is claiming that Dame tried to undermine him and was doing bad business, so he had to step in and clean up the mess.
Let’s rewind to the beginning. The story starts in 1995 when Jay was hustling, selling CDs out of his car, trying to catch a break. After being rejected by several major labels, Jay, along with Damon “Dame” Dash and Kareem “Biggs” Burke, decided to take matters into their own hands and launched their own indie label, Roc-A-Fella Records. They quickly secured a distribution deal with Priority Records, and in 1996, Jay dropped his debut album, Reasonable Doubt. Over the next few years, Roc-A-Fella, with Jay as its main act, worked with some of the hottest producers of the time, including Swizz Beatz, Timbaland, the 45 King, and Jermaine Dupri.
In 2000, Jay decided to switch up his sound and brought in a new line of producers like Kanye West, The Neptunes, and Just Blaze. While Jay remained the face of Roc-A-Fella, he and Dame started signing new talents like Cam’ron, Freeway, and a group of young Philly rappers who later formed State Property. But by 2002, whispers of tension between Jay and Dame began circulating, especially after Dame reportedly tried to appoint Cam’ron as vice president of Roc-A-Fella while Jay was on vacation. Although both sides initially denied any beef, insiders claimed Jay was annoyed by Dame’s constant media presence, while Dame felt Jay was becoming too distant.
One of the original Roc-A-Fella artists, Beanie Sigel, broke it down like this: “From conversations that me and Jay had, Dame was starting to become famous. You know, the camera, the camera. He fell victim to the camera, you know. You’re liable to say anything.”
You can be anybody. If Dame had played a role similar to Kareem Burke, staying in the background and handling the business side of things properly, Roc-A-Fella might still be the powerhouse it once was. But on the other hand, I think Jay was growing as a person. At a certain point, he probably felt it was time to branch out and do his own thing. “We made enough money together,” he might have thought.
By 2004, rumors about Roc-A-Fella shutting down were everywhere, but Dame kept denying them. He told MTV, “All that is paperwork. We’ll never break up. It’s Roc-A-Fella for life. I would never pass the torch or leave any of my artists. I look at them like my family, almost like my children. I would never leave them with anybody else.”
However, Dame didn’t realize that Jay had already decided to move on. Jay announced he would succeed Lyor Cohen as the president of Def Jam and that Def Jam would buy the other half of Roc-A-Fella. Back in 1997, Jay, Dame, and Biggs had sold half of Roc-A-Fella to Def Jam for about $1.5 million. Then, in 2004, Def Jam bought the remaining half for $10 million and made Jay the CEO, allowing him to continue running Roc-A-Fella.
You have to give it to Jay; it was a smart business move. In an interview with XXL, Jay mentioned that he had offered to turn down the Def Jam position and give up all his masters in exchange for just one, his first album, Reasonable Doubt. “So I was like, let me get Reasonable Doubt, and I’ll give up my masters,” Jay said. “I’ll give up Roc-A-Fella. I’ll give up president and CEO of Def Jam. Everything. Just give me my baby to hold on to. So 10 years down the line, I can look back and I got something. I’m not empty-handed. And I was the one being offered everything. I thought it was more than fair. And when that was turned down, I had to make a choice. I’ll leave that for the people to say what choice they would have made. That’s about it. I don’t really want to talk about Dame or Biggs. I don’t have anything negative to say about them. We all bosses, but there’s only one presidential suite,” Jay added. “If we’re in a hotel, somebody’s got to move to another hotel.”
When asked for their thoughts, Dame and Biggs told XXL they were disappointed that Jay kept the Roc-A-Fella name and claimed he used it as a bargaining chip to gain full ownership of the masters to Reasonable Doubt, the one album they released before partnering with Def Jam. After selling their remaining shares in Roc-A-Fella, Dame and Biggs started their own labels. But the drama didn’t stop there; every Roc-A-Fella artist had to choose which label to join, and some of them began publicly dissing Jay.
Take Cam’ron, for example. He quickly threw his support behind Dame’s label, Dash Music Group, and claimed that Jay-Z blocked him from becoming the vice president. In 2005, Cam’ron was shot during a failed carjacking, and he later alleged in his song “You Got To Love It” with Max B that he saw the shooter throw up Jay-Z’s signature diamond hand signal before firing. He rapped, “First, you stole Roc-A-Fella from Dame. Second, you stole Kanye from Dame. Third, you stole Rocawear from Dame. Fourth, I saw him throw that diamond up before those shots were fired.”
Dame Dash felt particularly betrayed by Jay-Z’s sneaky business moves because Jay always talked about Roc-A-Fella being a family, and Dame genuinely believed him. But there was another reason Dame felt let down: he believed Jay had conspired with Lyor Cohen, whom he called a culture vulture, to drive a wedge between them. Dame claimed that people like Lyor used a divide-and-conquer strategy to create beef between black moguls, turning them against each other to prevent unity and collaboration. “My beef was with Lyor because I think he’s a fake CEO who disrespects my culture. Their job is to create beef so they can profit from it.”
In another interview, Dame accused Lyor of trying to pit him against other black artists and of regularly disrespecting black people at Roc-A-Fella. “When I first met Lyor, he tried to make me beef with another black person on his behalf. He’d say, ‘You with me, right? Then you have to go to war with me.’ I refused. He’d say things that were unconsciously demeaning, like with Beanie Sigel, and I’d have to step in to prevent violence. He couldn’t understand how I could have white people working for me. He’d pull me aside and ask, ‘Are you okay? Let me know if they’re treating you wrong.’ He did that twice.”
And believe it or not, that’s not even the worst of it. In a 2018 interview on The Breakfast Club, Lyor admitted to deliberately signing artists who promoted drug culture, even though he knew about the devastating impact of the opioid crisis. When Charlamagne mentioned DMX, Lyor claimed he was saddened by DMX’s substance issues but justified it by saying he had a business to run.
In other words, profit comes before anything. Pay attention to how arrogant and condescending Lyor Cohen became when Charlamagne confronted him. Lyor said, “DMX had a real bad drug problem. I’m so sad. There are two people inside of him, and Earl is one of the nicest people. I put him up in Lake George. Earl loved being silent with the fishing pole. He would stay on that dock for hours and hours. Very, very sad. You know, I think the opiate problem, the syrup problem, is the biggest problem that I’ve ever seen and I’ve ever faced and been a part of. And I can’t be, I can’t with it. The crack thing was devastating, but at least the rappers were bringing a spotlight to you becoming a fiend, okay? And I thought that that spotlight helped. Even though it was harsh and really harmful, particularly to women, I think it helped change the course of the crack epidemic. I don’t know what this opioid thing is, man. Being a crackhead wasn’t cool back then, being a crackhead wasn’t cool now. It seems like they’re making it cool to be drinking lean and syrup, and it’s the most dangerous thing that’s facing our society.”
Charlamagne then asked, “So why sign an artist that would promote that?”
Lyor replied, “Because I already answered that question. You weren’t paying attention. She asked me, ‘Talent or issues?’ and I said talent. But I have to, I can’t give up on people.”
Charlamagne countered, “Don’t you think that’s hypocritical though? You’re saying it’s opportunistic.”
Lyor shot back, “Yeah, I got people to feed. I got a business to run.”
Charlamagne warned, “You’re going to make Dame Dash take this clip and call you a culture vulture.” He then brought up Dame calling Lyor a culture vulture, but Lyor acted like he didn’t even know who Dame was.
“Who’s Dame Dash? You brought him up. I don’t even know him. I don’t even know him. So you bring his name up, I don’t even know him.”
Charlamagne pressed, “Y’all made a lot of money together.”
Lyor simply said, “Made a lot of money.”
Charlamagne urged, “Come on, Lyor, don’t do that to him.”
Lyor insisted, “I don’t know him. I really don’t.”
When Lyor’s remarks went viral, Dame fired back on Instagram, saying that Lyor basically proved his entire point. Dame wrote, “Thanks for this Lyor Cohen, for proving my point in true culture vulture form. They make money off us and then try to erase our true history and act like the real ones never existed. He pays his bills at the expense of us.”
Now, as for Jay-Z, he’s still close friends with Lyor to this day, often referring to him as his mentor. But there’s another side to this story that I want to briefly get into, and that’s Jay-Z’s friendship with R. Kelly and the whole situation with Aaliyah, because this was also one of the things that made Dame realize that Jay wasn’t the person he portrayed himself to be in public.
Both Dame and Jay-Z were interested in Aaliyah, but Aaliyah picked Dame, something that Jay’s ego just couldn’t handle. Before Aaliyah started dating Dame, she went through something horrific at the hands of R. Kelly. Kelly even illegally married Aaliyah in 1994 when he was 27 and she was 15 by using a fake ID. As for Aaliyah and Dame, they were friends first and dated for about a year until her tragic death in 2001. Dame later said that Aaliyah was so traumatized by her situation with R. Kelly that even when they were alone, she couldn’t speak about what she went through, and all she could say was that R. Kelly was a bad man.
Now, as for Jay-Z, he knew what R. Kelly did to Aaliyah, and yet just months after Aaliyah died, he partnered with R. Kelly on a joint album, “The Best of Both Worlds.” This is when Dame realized Jay had no moral compass whatsoever.
“I wasn’t a part of any of that, but karma happens. But the thing I didn’t understand is I was like, I know I’m not that, and because of the moral challenge and him choosing one way, I knew morally we weren’t the same. So to me, Roc-A-Fella was the foundation. It was over. I couldn’t deal with it. It was something that to me was just like, not to say unforgivable, but I couldn’t understand it, you know what I’m saying? And then I didn’t understand how people didn’t—I thought, well then, the people aren’t going to have that.”
Dame never stopped coming for Jay-Z, and he recently again opened up about their beef in a new interview on the Ugly Money Podcast. Dame said that the reason he’s still publicly speaking on his issues with Jay is because everyone else is too scared to say anything negative about Jay, and according to Dame, there’s a long list of people who were mistreated by Jay and yet feel they can’t share their story.
“A lot of people that have been, you know, maybe mistreated by him are scared to speak up on what he did. Facts. I’m just not. So if I hit a pack, I hit him with some work and he runs off on me until I get my money back. I don’t care if it’s 20 years later, I’m never going to have too many complimentary things to say about that situation.”
Sources close to Jay are now saying that Jay is unbothered by Dame running his mouth, and apparently, Jay feels like Dame is just bitter because Jay outsmarted him in business. A lot of Jay’s fans feel the same way, and they’re now clowning Dame for still going on about this and saying Jay lives rent-free in Dame’s head.
But now that Jay-Z is getting pulled into this Diddy drama, with rumors swirling that he might even be worse than Diddy, a lot of black folks are taking Dame’s side and giving him props for consistently calling Jay-Z out while the rest of the industry stays silent.
One fan said, “As time passes by, Dame really doesn’t seem like the hater he was painted out to be. Man was just telling us how it really is.” Another person added, “He turned on Beans as well. He’s too busy tapping champagne glasses with Diddy at his multi-millionaire club. The roaches will scatter out when or if Diddy gets locked up.”
But let me know how you feel about this situation. Are you Team Dame or Team Jay? Do you feel Jay betrayed Roc-A-Fella by aligning with the culture vulture, or is Dame just bitter that Jay outsmarted him in the business game? Drop your comments below