Kanye West‘s work on JAY-Z‘s The Blueprint catapulted his career as a producer, but it also landed him in hot water with Dipset.
In a clip from his appearance on Justin Laboy’s The Download podcast, Ye revealed that Cam’ron, Jim Jones and co. tried to “kill” him for giving Jigga the beat that became “Izzo (H.O.V.A.).”
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“I remember the story. They was gonna kill me for that ‘H to the Izzo’ beat!” he recalled while hanging out with the “We Fly High” hitmaker and others in a studio in Japan.
Kanye added: “I stayed in Jersey for about three months. I was like, ‘Gee [Roberson, Kanye’s then-manager], you know them, right? ‘Cause Jimmy was screaming pretty loud on the phone, man.'”
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Any tension over the track has since evaporated, though, as Capo laughed at his former Roc-A-Fella labelmate’s story.
Check out the segment at 26:21 mark below.
Cam’ron previously shared his side of the story in 2022, explaining that he was the original buyer of the “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)” beat and was “pissed” when he discovered that Kanye had given the instrumental to JAY-Z.
“I was mad at Kanye for a long time until I got to Roc-A-Fella. I had a real attitude with him,” he said on Gillie Da Kid and Wallo’s Million Dollaz Worth of Game podcast.
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“Before I got to Roc-A-Fella, he would play beats for me when I had my deal with Sony and Epic. He played this beat for me [and I was like], ‘Oh, nah. I want that one.’
“I wrote the song that night. I did the song. I said, ‘Cool, we’re gonna work the paperwork out and get this together.'”
He continued: “Two weeks later, I heard, ‘H to the Izzo, V to the Izzay.’ [I was like], ‘Is the fucking beat you just told me I could have?’ He gave it to Hov and I was pissed.”
Cam’s rhymes didn’t go to waste, though, as he revealed that the song he penned to Kanye’s beat ended up being used for a different track: “Live My Life (Leave Me Alone),” a remix of 2Pac‘s “Ambitionz Az A Ridah” from his 2002 album Come Home With Me.
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“If you listen to the song… ‘Leave me alone, let me just live my life.’ That’s to that beat,” he said. “Listen to the pianos and all that. I wrote it to that.”
