Streets is Talking

(((From MTV News)))

Roc-A-Fella Records or the Dame Dash Music Group? Beanie Sigel found himself caught in the middle when Dash and Jay-Z ended their long partnership a few years back.

"I definitely didn't want to pick between my friends," Sigel said recently in New York, where he was at work on his new LP, The Solution. "Who wants to do that? Where I'm from we don't do that. I don't blow whichever way the wind goes. I couldn't pick between my friends.

"The reason why I didn't make that decision, I didn't know what the situation [with Jay and Dame] was, why [the split] happened. I've asked both sides and didn't get a legitimate answer before I had to go [to prison]. It unfolded while I was locked up. I just wanted my own situation where if I was to make music, it wouldn't be me choosing Dame Dash Music Group or the Roc. Technically I was still a Roc-A-Fella artist during the split."

It took more than a year to make a decision — different scenarios of Sigel going to G-Unit as well as starting his own label were rumored — but ultimately, Beans went with Hov, and will release his next album on Roc-A-Fella this year. The move may seem a bit surprising from the outside looking in, because it seemed like Sigel was in fact closer to Dash and business partner Kareem "Biggs" Burke, who was the third head of the Roc before the split. Dash and Burke were even there to pick Beanie up from jail when he was released on August 9, 2005, after being sentenced to a year in prison on a gun charge in October of 2004.

"A lot of things be smoke and mirrors," the Broad Street Bully reflected. "A lot of people thought I was leaning toward Dame Dash Music Group — they seeing Dame in the videos we shooting and the 'House Arrest' thing they put on BET, and him coming to court and coming to jail to see me. It was like 'OK, Dame is riding with him.' That was never the case with me. A lot of people look at it like Dame did this, that and third, that should have been my obligation. But for what? If you doing that, you doing it from the heart."

Damon Dash
Sigel said when he was released from prison, he started feeling like Dame had ulterior motives for staying close to him. "When you look at Roc-A-Fella as whole — no disrespect to any other artists over there — but if you don't have Jay-Z, who's the next best thing for you to have? I'm no dummy, I'm no fool. I seen through all that. I was letting that weigh out. There's a song by Bill Withers: 'Use Me.' "

Asked if he thought Dame's intentions were pure, Beanie simply answered, "I don't know what his intentions were, but in all honesty: Nah.

"After a while I felt like sh-- for feeling like that," he continued. "You don't want to question your friend, or who you thought was your friend. Their loyalty and sincerity towards you, you don't want to question that. As time went on, I did things to bring stuff out to light, and I was finding out a lot of stuff that wasn't right."

Sigel also hinted that the State Property clothing line that Dash ran and Beans had a stake in may be all but over. "Ain't no status," he said. "Ain't no status." ...