Monday, July 26, 2010

This Story Never Gets Old


or should I say Dame never tires of telling it.

Another retelling of how Jay Z stabbed Damon Dash in the back.

From The Village Voice
There's no shortage of people who've made and squandered fortunes in the entertainment world. But [Damon] Dash's crash was magnified by the success—totally unprecedented, really—that Jay-Z has enjoyed. It would have been acceptable if the rapper had reached an artistic peak after the Roc-a-Fella break-up, but his most notable accomplishments came in Dash's supposed realm of expertise: marketing, branding, endorsements, and a spiderweb of business deals, including a small stake of ownership in the New Jersey Nets. In 2006, "Lost One," an early Jay single after his "retirement" hiatus, included what appeared to be a line directed at Dash: "I heard motherfuckers sayin' they made Hov/Made Hov say, 'OK, so make another Hov'/Niggas wasn't playin' they day role/So we parted ways like Ben and J-Lo." Both the winner and the loser were clear.

Tension [between the two] had been mounting for more than a year, starting when Dash appointed Cam'ron, a crony from Harlem, one of the label's vice presidents, while Jay-Z was vacationing in the Mediterranean. Eventually, Jay decided to sever business ties with his fellow [Roc-a-Fella] founders; their stake in the company was sold back to Island Def Jam for a reported $10 million, while controlling interests in the remaining clothing, film, and alcohol ventures were sliced up. Jay signed a three-year contract to become president and CEO of Def Jam—a position he would leave in 2008 for Live Nation. He offered the rights to the name "Roc-a-Fella" to Dash and Biggs in exchange for the recording masters to Reasonable Doubt, but the pair wouldn't make the deal. "We all earned those masters," Dash says. The people that I was helping, once they realized their dreams, they did what a criminal would do. They stabbed you in the back. Think about the frustration of building a brand for years that should be taking care of your family, and then the person that was the closest to you saying, 'Nah, you can't have no parts of it,' and flushing it.”