Chicago rapper, producer and entrepreneur Kanye West is one of the wealthiest figures in hip-hop who acquired a vast amount of wealth after signing with Roc-A-Fella in 2002. However, after buying and flaunting an array of jewellery, on one occasion, another rapper had to save Kanye from getting robbed in New York.
Despite Kanye’s heavy involvement in the genre of rap music, it is well-known that he did not grow up in the low-income housing projects that figures such as Jay-Z and Snoop Dogg did. West was raised in the safe suburbs of Chicago. As such, he wasn’t too familiar with street adversity.
During the early-2000s, before the dissipation of Roc-A-Fella, Kanye was very close to all the label’s members, and after a studio session in New York, the producer decided to eat at a New York diner with some of his crew. Unfortunately, a couple of strangers approached Ye, ready to rob him of his jewellery.
In an interview with DJ Vlad for Vlad TV, Beanie Sigel unveiled that while West confronted his antagonists, the Chicago native asked him for help. Speaking with Vlad candidly, Sigel disclosed, “He felt threatened. I let the robbers know nothing was going to go down – not while I was there. They had chairs pulled up to his table where he was eating at with his friends, and they weren’t eating…it was real.”
He continued, “It was going down. So I got there, and I asked Kanye, ‘Yo, do you know this guy right here?’ He was like, ‘Nah,’ and I just pulled the chair from [under] him, and Kanye had his jewellery tucked in on him.”
Beanie Sigel, who was one of Jay-Z’s first signees, was a proud member of Roc-A-Fella and told West to untuck his chain, divulging, “Their plates of food was cold. They ate only a couple of bites, and it was just like a wait of, like, ‘Hurry up, and would you come out here?’, and I was like, ‘Take your chain out’ – that was like a badge, that Roc-a-Fella chain!”
Beanie Sigel stressed that he saved Kanye from having his Roc-A-Fella chain snatched by robbers in New York and highlighted that had he not stood up to the thieves, West would have been caught in a media firestorm. You can watch the Philadelphia emcee’s interview below.
