This week’s guest on People’s Party With Talib Kweli is Jadakiss, the iconic ’90s-era mixtape rapper who went from signing with Bad Boy Records alongside his group The Lox to becoming a New York rap elder statesman whose album Ignatius recently dropped on Def Jam. Over the course of the interview, Kweli and Jada discuss Jada’s legacy, his role in penning some of hip-hop’s most iconic verses, and his various industry beef with rap superstars like Beanie Sigel and 50 Cent.
After Kweli jokes that 50 Cent’s beef with Jadakiss turned out to be one of his shortest-lived feuds, Jada offers a possible explanation: “I think Fif was really a fan… We was rocking with him, rooting for him — always rooting for the underdog. His story is one of the greatest stories.” Kiss shows appreciation for 50’s line “all of the other hard n****s, they come from Yonkers,” which was a tacit shout-out to The Lox, one of the only prominent rap groups to hail from the blue-collar New York neighborhood. “We knew that he really meant that… He didn’t have to say that… Just saying that one bar, we knew what that was.”
The reason the beef was squashed so quickly, according to Jadakiss, is that 50 approached the group with humility. “He came through one day. He called to say, ‘Yo, I’m coming through.’ He came through by himself. Sat down, kicked it for a few hours… He actually had a song for me and a song for [Styles] P to get on, on whatever album he was working on and it’s been good ever since. It wasn’t even that serious. The people kind of blew it up more than it was. I think he was using it for a marketing tool for that album.” While Jada attributes the hype to fans “putting the gasoline on it,” he doubts that 50 ever really had it out for The Lox or Jadakiss himself, the way he did for some of his other targets.
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People’s Party is a weekly interview show hosted by Talib Kweli with big-name guests exploring hip-hop, culture, and politics. Subscribe via Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.