Kanye West claims Dipset tried to “kill” him over Jay-Z
‘Izzo (H.O.V.A.)’ is one of the biggest songs on Jay-Z’s The Blueprint album, but it almost went to Dipset. Kanye West played Cam’ron the instrumental and told him he could use the beat, only to find out that Hov had claimed it two weeks later.
In a clip from Justin LaBoy’s The Download podcast, Ye stood alongside Dipset’s Jim Jones and recalled the Harlem crew being annoyed at him.
“I remember the story. They was gonna kill me for that ‘H to the Izzo’ beat!” he said. “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.”
Cam previously told the story during an episode of Gillie Da Kid and Wallo’s Million Dollaz Worth of Game podcast, claiming he was upset with Kanye for a while. Instead, he ended up using the lyrics on the song ‘Live My Life (Leave Me Alone)’, a remix of 2Pac‘s ‘Ambitionz Az a Ridah’.
“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. “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.’”
He continued, “I wrote the song that night. I did the song. I said, ‘Cool, we’re gonna work the paperwork out and get this together.’ Two weeks later, I heard, ‘H to the Izzo, V to the Izzay.’ [I was like], ‘Is this the fucking beat you just told me I could have?’ He gave it to Hov and I was pissed.”
Water was quickly under the bridge, with Kanye producing ‘Un Kasa’, the opening track on Dipset’s debut album Diplomatic Immunity, in 2003. He was also behind Cam’ron and Jim Jones’ ‘Dead or Alive’ from the former’s 2002 album, Come Home with Me.
Then, in 2003, on Cam’s next album, Purple Haze, he produced ‘Down and Out’ and ‘Dip-Set Forever’. Kanye recruited both Cam and Jones for ‘Christmas in Harlem’ in 2010 as part of his G.O.O.D. Fridays series.