Over the course of his promotion for the Murder Inc. documentary The Murder Inc Story, Irv Gotti received a backlash for repeatedly talking about his illicit, 20-year-old affair with former Murder Inc. artist Ashanti. In defense of himself, he argued, “You keep asking me… got paid to do a documentary on my life and on Murder Inc. If I didn’t talk about Ashanti, you’d be like, ‘What type of bullsh*t is this?’ She’s too important to Murder Inc.”
It appears that now it’s Ashanti’s turn to address these recollections in her own interview with Angie Martinez on the latter’s podcast. While she already touched on Gotti’s comments on a remix of Diddy’s “Gotta Move On,” singing, “It’s giving obsessed, it’s giving me stressed, it’s giving me pressed / It’s giving this missing the best / But it’s been 20 years / Please say less,” in speaking with Angie Martinez, she goes more in-depth, accusing Gotti of emotional manipulation.
“He would say stuff like, ‘Nobody wants to record with you,'” she recalls. “On one hand, he would make it feel like ‘family, family, family,’ and on the other hand, we would tell me, ‘Nobody likes you. You not gonna get beats from nobody. Nobody’s gonna give you sh*t.’ It was hard.” She recounts being young and gullible and falling for this shtick, but realizing that it was actually a ruse when she got older, more mature, and began working with other artists who would tell her that they “always reached out” — presumably, only to be blocked by Gotti in his jealousy.
You can watch the full interview above.
