How Styles P dissed Jay-Z on his own song ‘Reservoir Dogs’
Comprised of Styles P, Sheek Louch and Jadakiss, The LOX began their musical journey in their hometown of Yonkers, a suburb of New York City. Here, they aimed to follow in the footsteps of DMX, an emcee from their area who had taken over hip-hop.
Styles P is regarded as one of hip-hop’s most versatile MCs. Although he began his career as part of the epic Yonkers supergroup, the rapper has also cemented himself as an exceptional solo emcee outside the collective.
Since 2002, Styles P has released seven full-length studio albums, the last of which was his 2018 project, Penultimate: A Calm Wolf Is Still a Wolf. As a lyricist raised in the state in which hip-hop was born, Styles P’s musical journey has led him to great heights.
In fact, the lyricist reached a level so high that in 1998, he was asked to record a verse for Jay-Z’s Vol 2…Hard Knock Life. That said, Styles P happily contributed to the song ‘Reservoir Dogs’ alongside his other LOX members.
However, in an interview, Styles P’s closest friend, Jadakiss, unveiled that Styles was actually dissing Jay-Z in his verse on the song and managed to get away with subtly dissing the Brooklyn icon on his own album. Opening up about how the track was made, Jadakiss explained that he and Styles P had returned to New York just after a tour when they received the call that Jay-Z wanted to do a song with them.
Recalling the day they got off tour, Jadakiss told Genius’ Rob Markman, “So we’re like, ‘That’s cool. We’re gonna go home, put our luggage [away], and they were like, ‘Nah, [Jay] wants you to come there right now.’ We ain’t got carry-ons. We got big shit we had to check. So that put us on edge a little, ’cause we always lookin’ at it like, ‘If [Jay] just landed, would he just come to the studio with his luggage? No!’ But that was a good edge.”
The host began to recite Styles P’s verse from ‘Reservoir Dogs,’ which begins, “I don’t give a f*ck who you are, so f*ck who you are / I don’t care about a pretty bitch, watch or a car / I don’t care about your block and whoever you shot / I don’t care about your album, and whenever it drop / I don’t care about your past if I did, I woulda asked / I’m too busy lighting ‘dro with a whole lotta hash.”
Following this, Jadakiss revealed that P was aiming at Jay-Z with the verse, revealing, “He was going at Hov on there. Hov was like, ‘Well, it sounded like you talking about me on it.'”
Styles P actually discussed this claim of the Art of Dialogue podcast, “I always took shots in verses. That’s what it’s about. Mines was just blatantly obvious but all rappers during that time ’cause there was a lot of shots going back and forth.”
He continued, “We were on the road somewhere, and we flew in to do it. We didn’t want to. We wanted to put it off until the next day or at least be able to drop our bags and do some shit, but we ended up going straight to the studio, and we were there for obviously a few hours. So it got up to the part where everybody had laid their verse except for Hov and myself. Me being me, I laid my verse. That was the ’90s attitude, man! That was the cowboy days!”