N.O.R.E. has been accused of baiting The Isley Brothers into bad-mouthing Beyoncé during their appearance on Drink Champs.
The legendary group stopped by the podcast for a two-hour conversation that aired on Thursday (March 16). During part of the interview, N.O.R.E. brought up Beyoncé’s loyal fan base and claimed that people can’t say anything bad about her due to backlash from fans.
“You see what Stephanie Mills is going through right now?” he began. “She said something about the Beyhive — they ain’t like it. You cannot say nothing about the Bey. Leave it alone. It’s a well-known fact. You cannot say nothing about Beyoncé. Everybody knows it.
AD LOADING...
“It’s like the mafia — we don’t discuss it. We just follow the rules. But Stephanie Mills held it down. She went to The Breakfast Club, she held it down, she didn’t back down. She just said she thought that Diana Ross was on a different level than Beyoncé.”
The Isley Brothers remained tight-lipped while N.O.R.E. spoke about Beyoncé, who they worked with last year on “Make Me Say It Again, Girl,” a remake of their 1975 song and the title track from their latest album.
AD LOADING...
“And we all understand what she meant, but how it was expressed was like, you can’t say nothing about Beyoncé,” N.O.R.E. said. “And in this day and era, you know, god bless you guys, you guys didn’t have Instagram, but I’m telling you, you lucky, ’cause Instagram is some crazy… like, oh my God!
“I just go on Twitter just to be negative sometimes. I just need an ounce of negativity, so I’ll just go on there and be like, ‘Hey, how’s everyone doing?’ People be like, ‘Fuck you!’ I’m like, ‘I said hi. I did nothing wrong to offend you.’ It’s the wild wild west, I swear to God. I literally will go on there and just say hi.”
Earlier in the interview, Ronald Isley explained how “Make Me Say It Again, Girl” came about and revealed Beyoncé’s mother cried when she heard it.
“I called her mother and said, ‘We’re getting ready to do this album, I wanted her to do the record with us,'” he recalled. “Her mother called her and in five minutes, she called back: ‘Yes, yes yes, I wanna do [it]!’ She had recorded this record with her group before but it was a different recording.
“So we decided on that record, and you know, she’s so talented, man. I mean, she’s so talented. I think the people know that. But she works so hard, man. We’re just blown away with the record. Her mother cried about it. Her favorite song is ‘For the Love of You.'”
The Destiny’s Child song he referred to is their 1998 track “Second Nature,” which appeared on their self-titled debut album and sampled “Make Me Say It Again, Girl.”
AD LOADING...
The Isley Brothers’ latest album, Make Me Say It Again, Girl, was released in September with other features from 2 Chainz, Quavo, Takeoff, Snoop Dogg, Rick Ross, Trey Songz, Earth, Wind & Fire and El DeBarge.
