Is there more trouble brewing in the State Property camp? According to Ochino, the State Property hold that has been put on the group until the release of Beanie Siegel isn’t going to work for them.”What do they mean, ‘We on hold?’ I’m supposed to tell my son or daughter, ‘We can’t eat because Beans is locked up?’ Sparks told MTV. “Can’t no one man put nobody on hold. ‘State Property’ was a movie, then they branded us. They got a clothing line and sneakers, but it wasn’t no contract where we was a group [named State Property]. We were all in individual groups. The Young Gunz was a group, me and O was a group, Peedi Crakk was a solo artist, Beans was a solo artist, Freeway was a solo artist. Jay-Z signed me and O. People saying Beans got everybody signed. That ain’t true.”
This is apparently the same feeling other members are having except for Freeway. “I’ve been hearing a bunch of different things, but when I talk to him about State Property, it’s all love,” Free said, downplaying the conflict. “Y’all gonna wait till he comes home and interview him. State Property, we see each other all the time. I see O, Sparks, Crakk, the Young Gunz. It ain’t been dismantled. That’s bullsh–. We here. The streets love us. We love the streets. We love our fans. We gonna make music. Forget all the rumors you’ve been hearing.” But according to Peedi Crakk there is no love lost between him and Dame Dash. “I don’t f— with Dame Dash at all,” Peedi Crakk said. “I f— with Beans and Biggs. I can’t be around [Dash]. I can’t be on that side of the fence. I hollered at Jay; Jay said he got my contract, and I can go with him. I left it at that. I was happy being with Jay. Crakk continues on his feeling for Dash saying, “He don’t listen. He’s so smart, he’s dumb. He’s got so much money, he thinks he’s the sh–. A cloud just hovers over his head so much, it f—s with his common sense. That’s why he’s losing. He don’t know how to pick music, what song to do a video for, how to shoot a video. If you tell him this, he feels disrespected because he’s got so many people kissing his ass. When you talk to him on a man-to-man level, on a regular level, he feels disrespected. He’s got three, four, five assistants holding his two-way, holding his money, holding his phone. All this super Hollywood sh—“.
Dash doesn’t agree that there was ever really a reason for the guys to choose sides or even a reason to beef. Regretfully, it looks like you have to choose a side, and that’s never the way I wanted it to be,” Dash said. “I think that’s corny. I would look at other situations and be like, ‘That could never happen over here.’ It appears that it did. That’s embarrassing to me. It wasn’t anything that me, Beanie or anybody under this umbrella bought into. The Roc is about friendship — or at least it was. It wasn’t about the money. We do whatever we do to help each other. … When we signed people, they were signing into a certain kind of unity where this could never have happened. We were snobby, like ‘We’re the thorough dudes. We would never do no clown stuff like that.’
“I guess the choice that had to be made was, ‘Do we want to go through a system and be corporate, or do we have an independent spirit?’ ” Dash continued. “Beans was like, ‘I’m gonna roll with the independent thing.’ Even though we still get distributed through Universal and I deal with L.A. Reid, we’re still independent.” For now, Oschino and Sparks, Peedi Crakk, Freeway and the Young Gunz are all signed to the new Roc-A Fella label, while Siegel plans to stay with Dame Dash’s new imprint.
