Dame Dash says Jay-Z’s Yankee Stadium freestyle was garbage and questions why only ex-enemies like Jadakiss and Fat Joe showed up to support him on stage.
The Roc-A-Fella co-founder watched the freestyle and came away unimpressed, but his real issue wasn’t just the bars themselves. It’s the company Jay-Z kept on that stage, and what it says about where he stands in hip-hop right now. He’s talking about Jadakiss and Fat Joe, both artists who had serious beef with Jay-Z back in the day. That’s not a coincidence to Dame, and he’s questioning what it means that these are the only names willing to share the stage with him. The Fat Joe situation goes back to the late 1990s when Terror Squad and Roc-A-Fella were at odds, with both crews claiming New York supremacy. That tension lasted years until they finally squashed it when Fat Joe signed to Roc Nation in 2017. The Jadakiss and The Lox situation was similar.
The early-2000s beef between the Yonkers crew and Jay-Z’s camp seemed permanent, but The Lox eventually signed to Roc Nation in 2016, and Jadakiss had already worked with Roc-A-Fella in 2007 on “Last Kiss”. Beyond the performance, Dame took shots at Jay-Z’s fashion choices during the shows, pointing out his heavy reliance on Mitchell and Ness merchandise and baseball uniforms rather than developing his own style. He contrasted this with his own approach back in the day, when he wore custom Dapper Dan pieces that made a statement. According to Billboard, Fat Joe’s management deal with Roc Nation followed years of tension between the two camps, which finally ended. Dame also reflected on the nature of rap beef itself, arguing that most conflicts are performative and lack real substance.