Benny The Butcher has revealed in a conversation with Joe Budden that a monumental collaboration between himself and JAY-Z was intercepted before it was supposed to happen.
In a interview with Budden on Conversation Lovers Only published on Sunday (June 4), the Griselda rapper started by discussing the nearly executed collaborative record with Hov.
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“They hit me and was like, ‘Hov got an idea of a song he wanted you to do,'” he explained. “I went out there and I stayed for three days waiting on a phone call. And then the day that I linked up with him, I’m just kicking it with him and we having drinks and shit and he didn’t mention the song.
“So I brought it up. I’m like, ‘Yo, you said you had an idea,’ and he like, ‘Oh yeah, this what I wanted to tell you.’ And as soon as he said that, somebody was like, ‘Yo, we need you,’ and they called him over, and he left and it never got brought up again. This like, two, three years ago.”
Benny The Butcher has always given kudos to JAY-Z’s influence over his career throughout the years. In May, Benny stopped by Math Hoffa’s My Expert Opinion and discussed some advice the Brooklyn icon gave him when he signed a management deal with Roc Nation in 2019.
“The thing about Hov, man, he is who he say he is,” Benny said. “He and Snoop, they remind me of each other. We had a bunch of conversations. He told me things that I didn’t want to hear, he told me things that I did want to hear — just all-around game.
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“He was basically just telling me … basically trying to keep Griselda together. Not saying that we was leaving, but he knew n-ggas’ contracts was up. And before that, me and him had a three-hour conversation. He was asking me my plans. He was like, ‘Ok, I’ma bust this move and see what we can do.’”
The Butcher continued: “He went back, we all kicked it. It just ain’t go that way … But just because I’m not signed to Griselda — I’m Big Griselda. And I explained that to him and he was like, ‘Man, people gonna interpret it different.’”
In this same aforementioned conversation with Joe Budden, Benny discussed his claims of bringing validity to Griselda in his verse on 2022’s “Johnny P’s Caddy” off his album Tana Talk 4.
“This what that line is really towards,” he began. “It’s toward the fans. It’s when you coming up under a two-headed monster, or whoever is ahead of you, or whoever laid the path for you. For me, West and Conway, my family. A lot of people be thinking like, ‘Where do I fit in at?’ I dealt with that. That was something that I dealt with. People acting like I never brought nothing to the camp.”
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The bars Benny was referring to go as follows: “And this Eastside shit still in me/ My ability to turn words to imagery prolly the reason they gon’ remember me (Let’s talk)/ Figure me, walk this tightrope with a feline’s agility/ The streets did so much shit to me, I can never live civilly/ I can never leave the scene without checkin’ my mirrors visually (Mm-hmm)/ Come with that energy ’cause some shit gon’ always stick with me/ They wanna know what I brought to Griselda, I say, ‘Validity.'”
