The history of Dame Dash’s time at Def Jam Records and his relationship with former label executive Lyor Cohen is long and storied.
Recently sitting down with Complex TV, Dash talked about why he believed Lyor Cohen is bad for Hip Hop culture and claims his decisions have hurt certain situations.
“I personally don’t like how he interfered with my personal relationship with Jay Z and the history that could have been made had he not did what he did and the way he did it,” he said. “I think he should be questioned for it. I’m not usually one to speak on other people’s business… like I’ve seen the way he’s treated friends of mine. Irv Gotti, I feel like he robbed Irv Gotti of DMX and Ja Rule and I didn’t see them support Irv when he was having his defining moments. No one sent me any kites in my defining moments and I just don’t think it’s fair to continuously make money off our culture, not make money off your own culture, not use any of your money to help our culture but use the money you make from us to help your own culture and then not to give the respect to the people that are the DNA of the culture and to instill a mentality that we need to ask another culture to put out our own music. I don’t like who he empowers and how he empowers them.”
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Dame Dash Says Lyor Cohen Hurt His Relationship With Curren$y
He would later describe his distaste for Lyor’s decision to hire Todd Moscowitz as head Asylum Records and claimed Moscowitz had no musical background making the move non-sensical. He also said Lyor was destructive in Curren$y’s career as well.
“I don’t like when he hired Todd Moscowitz to run Asylum,” he said. “I don’t think Todd as a lawyer knew anything about music. It just seemed like complete nepotism using other people’s money. And the 360 deal is dangerous and they invented it and the little that the artist has left, which is his show and his merch, now they’re justifying taking it from them. So I don’t like the way Joie [Manda] and Lyor and Todd played with my relationship with Curren$y, I think they did a lot to hurt that kid’s career… I don’t like all the lawyers who made money off him by putting him through the ringer.”
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I want the creative to be able to roam free and not having to worry about being manipulated by somebody that’s smiling, pretending that he’s with you but he’s robbing you because when they rob you, they don’t come as the enemy, they come as a friend.”
Finally, Dame claimed that it was Lyor that ruined his relationship with former business partner Jay Z and said Cohen always made it look like the two were fighting.
“I don’t like they way they made it look like I had a problem with Jay, I never had a problem with Jay, he’s an artist,” he said. “My beef was always with Lyor. It was never what they tried to make it look like and they always do that.”
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Dame Dash also recently sat down with Vlad TV and talked about Lyor Cohen at length. He claimed Cohen ruined Roc-A-Fella Records, calling him “a fake CEO” and a “culture vulture.”
RELATED:Dame Dash Criticizes Kanye West For Not Helping Kareem “Biggs” Burke
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