Dame Dash Claims JAY-Z Didn't Want To Sign Kanye West: 'I Had To Fight [Him]'

Dame Dash has claimed that he had to fight with JAY-Z in order to sign Kanye West to Roc-A-Fella Records.

Talking on Instagram Live, the veteran music executive, who co-founded the label with Jay and Kareem “Biggs” Burke in 1994, explained the signing of West in the early ’00s.

“I almost couldn’t sign Kanye. I had to get a vote. I had to fight to put Kanye out. I had to fight Lyor [Cohen] and JAY-Z,” Dame said. “They didn’t want that man to come out.”

Referencing his departure from Roc-A-Fella, he added: “So the point was, I was like, ‘Yo, I’m not gonna be in a place where I gotta fight to put that man out.”

“The same way I had to fight to put Jay out, fight to put Rachel Roy out, fight to put Cam out. Everything that I’ve ever had to put out has been against nerds telling me not to put it out.”

Check out the clip below:

At the time, Kanye West was one of the most widely sought-after producers in Hip Hop but had aspirations of being a rapper, something Roc-A-Fella did not initially see him as.

It is widely believed that Roc-A-Fella and Def Jam only signed the Chicago native to a recording contract to stop him from joining another label and keep his beats in-house.

In a 2009 interview with XXL, JAY-Z denied not wanting to sign Kanye, saying: “Let’s first clear this thing about Dame and Kanye and all of us. We all had a conversation about Kanye and whether to sign him. No one knew what would become of Kanye. Not Dame, not me not Biggs.

“So we all sat down and said, ‘Let’s at least sign so we can keep the tracks in-house. It’s only good business.’ And Dame said, ‘We can put Beans and Cam, surround him and make this type of album.’ I wasn’t saying don’t sign Kanye; I was saying, at least keep the beats in-house, if anything.”

Dame and Jay have had a complicated relationship since the breakup of their record label in the mid ’00s, but Dash recently indicated his desire to mend fences.

Speaking to veteran Hip Hop journalist Datwon Thomas on The CEO Show, the Harlem mogul said he’d sit down with his former business partner on the condition that Jay “talk[s] about the people that didn’t make the money and try to help.”

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However, despite saying he wanted to squash their feud, Dame went on to hit out at Hov’s moral compass: “There’s things — and I don’t want to get into it — that morally I can’t be a part of. But if [Jay] could just shed all the things that I don’t like morally, and all the people who have done things and are doing things that morally I can’t fuck with, [then] we could fuck with just family.”

Kanye West himself has commented on the beef and his decision to side with JAY-Z over Dame Dash, telling The Breakfast Club in 2013: “The problem was with Dame, his truth was more accurate and more closer to what mine was, but his technique was harsh for me as a young kid and stuff.

“I felt like a little bit more pressure. And JAY-Z was a nice guy. And also I felt like I had that truth that Dame has in him. We the same. Me and Cam, me and Dame, we the same. But I wanted to learn this technique that Jay got of actually being likable.

“So, JAY-Z know how to move in a room full of vultures. You know what I’m saying? As his little brother, I needed to learn that technique because I got something that God want me to give the world.”

After Def Jam bought out Roc-A-Fella in 2004, Dash was ousted from the label as JAY-Z became president of all of Def Jam.