JAY-Z and Steve Stoute have been very close friends for quite some time — and, as the executive just revealed, it turns out they have more than just a close friendship.
During an apperance on Club Shay Shay, which went live on Wednesday (March 6), Stoute revealed that he and Hov are actually cousins, and that they developed their friendship over a period of time.
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“I don’t talk about it, because there’s no reason to talk about it,” he said. “But I went to my grandfather’s funeral, and his grandparent is buried two lots down. It’s just like one of those things.”
Sharpe asked him if they’d developed a friendship from their familial bond, and Stoute made clear that this wasn’t the case. “Nah, he and I just became very close friends over time.”
JAY-Z is cousins with Steve Stoute: "We became very close friends over time"
(via @ClubShayShay) pic.twitter.com/GhqoLPFAJ9
— HipHopDX (@HipHopDX) March 7, 2024
Elsewhere in the same interview, Stoute said Dame Dash “blew it” when it came to handling JAY-Z and the once-successful label the two founded alongside Kareem “Biggs” Burke.
Stoute, who once managed Nas, said he couldn’t believe that Dash and Roc-A-Fella imploded when they had “the most important artist of his generation,” meaning JAY-Z.
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“The people around him wanted to meet with other people. People were becoming less beholden to him but he was unaware of it,” Stoute said. “And then while he was building businesses, he would go off all around the world with cameras and girls and all kinds of crazy shit, and then come back flipping on everybody as if [they were wrong].
“Jay grew up, Jay wanted more. I think Jay saw Dame’s ceiling and I think that’s really what it was. He wanted more. Everybody wanted more. Dame just had a very particular way of approaching things.
He added:“ He’s far from stupid — very, very smart, very talented. Ego through the roof. So there was no working with him. No one wanted to work with him. Jimmy Iovine had this line: when the shit gets bigger than the cat, you gotta get rid of the cat.”
Dame Dash promptly hit back at Stoute’s comments on Instagram, writing: “This is the reason I had to smack the shit out of @stevestoute a couple years ago…because he’s always speaking on other men’s business good thing I’ve evolved.”
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Dame Dash previously claimed to have attacked Steve Stoute over a debt, telling The Combat Jack Show in 2014: “I had been playing basketball in the Hamptons and had broke my foot … I was like, ‘By the way, you owe me $18,000.’
“He was like, ‘I’m not paying you.’ So I limped over and said, ‘Yo, I think you need to get out of my office’ — and I’m not condoning this, I’m not proud of it — but I smacked the shit out of him.”
