(AllHipHop News) Earlier today, Dame Dash responded to Funkmaster Flex’s rant during his appearance on The Combat Jack Show last night(June 5th). In his interview he explains why he wants to have “CEO beef”, Funkmaster Flex, Steve Stoute helping Jay Z get sued and more. Dame Dash was one of the most powerful record executives during one of Hip Hop most volatiles times in the early 2000s. During that time his Roc-A-Fella artists had engaged in beefs with D-Block, Nas and others. However, Dash now feels that CEOs should no longer benefit from rapper beef:
These CEOs have made so much money off of rap beef for so long. It’s not like when two rappers have a problem with each other they sit them down to squash it. They actually put a battery in their back. Sort of like a battery might have been in Flex’s back and have them beef with each other and make money off the winner.
Six months after Dash’s DD172 Record label released Curren$y’s Pilot Talk II, Curren$y signed to Warner Bros Records. At the time, Lyor Cohen was the chairman and chief executive at Warner, a fact Dash says Cohen used against him by using Curren$y:
I also noticed that these corporate people were trying to bomb on me and making it look like I had a beef with a rapper to keep the beef off of them. But I couldn’t really answer right then and there, because guys like Lyor Cohen were using people like Warner Bros [Records] money to fund his personal issues. So, I can’t fight a man when he’s using somebody else’s money, especially when I’m funding other businesses. So I was like, Imma let him get that off. Imma see what they do for the next five years.
Lyor Cohen left Warner Bros Records a year after signing Curren$y, which Dash viewed as making him vulnerable. Cohen is now running an independent label, 300 and Dash remarks that he doesn’t have “other people’s money to use to do all of those corporate tricks he used to do.” Dash wants to “make money off of CEO beef instead of making money off of rap beef.” One monetization method Dame has come up with is holding a public debate with Lyor Cohen. One of Flex’s claims was that Dash accused Cohen of being a culture vulture, however used his financial backing for Roc-A-Fella when Def Jam purchased a stake in the company in 1997. According to Dame, not only did he not “use any of Lyor’s money”, he sold a stake in the company to improve Roc-A-Fella’s independence.
When Flex was like ‘you used their money.’ No I didn’t use any of Lyor’s money. I used Universal’s money. I sold it. We sold it. We made equity and we sold half. The reason why we sold them half is so they can fund it. We were partners 50/50. We built equity and earned it based on a multiple. But of a businessperson, or rather, a person who has a job wouldn’t understand that.
According to Dame, when Jay Z was arrested in 1999 for stabbing record executive Lance “Un” Rivera, Steve Stoute “got Un the lawyer to sue Jay.” Around 1999 Rivera had his label Untertainment Records under Epic Records which was a subsidiary of Columbia Records, where Stoute was a record executive at.
Check out the full 2 hour+ interview on The Combat Jack Show below:
