(AllHipHop News) It has been well reported that Jay Z was interested in signing fellow Brooklyn rhymer Joey Bada$$ to his Roc Nation company at one time. Joey even rapped about it on A$AP Rocky’s “1 Train” and his own track “Ready.” The RN deal never happened, and the Pro Era front man decided instead to just build with the independent label Cinematic Music Group.

[ALSO READ: Joey Bada$$ Lets It All Go In “Ready”]

DJ Whoo Kid caught up with Joey to get more details on why the “Unorthodox” spitter chose not to sign with Jay. According to Bada$$, it was Hov’s own words that convinced him to stay indie.

“I even read Jay Z’s Decoded book. There’s this one chapter where when he went to go meet with Russell Simmons to sign to Def Jam he said his only thought while sitting across the table from Russell Simmons was, ‘Damn, I don’t want to be signed to this n-gga. I want to be this n-gga,'” explained Joey. “I kind of had that same perspective. Shout out to Jay, because he was on it before a lot of people.”

Joey went on to release the Summer Knights mixtape and his debut studio album B4.Da.$$ via Cinematic. The LP opened at #5 on the Billboard 200 album chart and #1 on the Rap Albums chart with first week sales of nearly 54,000 copies. The 21-year-old New Yorker recently announced plans to drop two projects in 2016.