Last year, during an interview with Vlad TV, actor TK Kirkland claimed Jay-Z held back Beanie Sigel’s career because he was afraid the Philly raised-rapper would surpass him.
“Jay and ‘em didn’t let Beanie Sigel get loose,” he told Vlad, while speaking glowingly about the Broadstreet bully.
Now in a new interview with The Art Of Dialogue, Kirkland has doubled down on his claims, explaining he got the info directly from a Roc-A-Fella executive.
“They would only let Beanie Sigel only sell so many records. This came from an executive at Roc-A-Fella,” claimed Kirkland. “I knew everybody and they will only let Beanie sell so many records and that was it. And they won’t push it no more. You couldn’t be bigger than Jay-Z on Jay-Z’s label. You couldn’t be bigger than Jay-Z, you couldn’t sell more records than Jay-Z. All you had to do was listen to Beanie Sigel’s sh-t.”
He also claimed Sigel wasn’t the only victim and that Jay-Z was intentionally suppressing every artist on Roc-A-Fella. “There was nobody else bigger than Jay-Z, so obviously.”
Sigel’s personal life was riddled with numerous legal issues, which ultimately derailed his career. He also had a fallout with Jay-Z and dissed him on records.
In a 2001 interview with Drink Champs, Sigel discussed how he felt when JAY vouched for him in court when he was faced with federal weapon charges and attempted murder in 2003. Though he did vouch for Sigel, he also told the court that he was not responsible for him.
“I never been crushed like that ever in my life. That f-cked me up. That took away a lot of sh-t that I thought we had. Like, that’s big bro. I believe at that time, JAY was thinking that I was unpredictable. I was bugging. I know I was out of pocket. I was uncontrollable.”
In the same Drink Champs interview, Beanie Sigel narrated how he almost missed the opportunity to sign with with Jay-Z because of a dog fight. He recalled his friend Boo-Bonic of Philly’s Most Wanted invited him to tag along to a Roc-A-Fella meeting.
“Still at this time I’m not taking rap like serious,” he said. “It was just something that I knew I could do, like I wasn’t trying to be a rapper. He’s showing me contracts, I mean they had all contracts, yeah, they can’t have offers from like four different labels. So he was like, ‘Yo, we supposed to go up here go to Roc-A-Fella Records for a meeting with Jay-Z.’ He was like, ‘You should take this ride with us,’ so I’m like, ‘Alright, yeah I’ll take the ride.’”
The day of the meeting, however, he found himself betting on a dog fight. “I ain’t trying to go there,” he said. “I’m trying to go to this dog fight. I’m tryna bet— this a sure shot. So long story short, I tried to duck him. I’m trying to get out the crib. They sitting downstairs waiting. I’m like, ‘Oh they outside the crib,’ so I gotta take the ride.”
Watch the full clip of TK Kirkland’s discussion with The Art Of Dialogue below.
