Consequence has admitted that he was “furious” when Q-Tip joined Kanye West’s G.O.O.D. Music, calling it “the shadiest shit ever.”
The Queens, New York rap veteran revisited his feud with the A Tribe Called Quest luminary in an interview with VladTV, describing the betrayal that he felt when his cousin signed with Ye in 2012, shortly after his not-so-amicable departure from the label.
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“I didn’t get any records for Cons TV,” Cons said, referring to his since-shelved sophomore album, “and maybe not even a year later, ironically, Q-Tip was a G.O.O.D. Music artist and saying that there was going to be a Cruel Winter, which never came out. That was the shadiest shit ever. It was!”
He continued: “I mean, he and I resolved it, but it was shady as fuck. And from the person who said, ‘Industry rule No. 4080: record company people are shady,’ and you did that to your cousin? A n-gga who would’ve done anything for you?”
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Consequence went on to say that he felt especially betrayed by Q-Tip because he was about to become a father at the time and felt a sense of ownership with G.O.O.D. Music having helped the label grow into the powerhouse that it became.
“He knew I was having a baby at the time ’cause this is when Caiden was being born. I was furious, yo. I was fu-ri-ous,” he added. “I was more mad about that than with The Ummah [Q-Tip’s production team with J Dilla and Ali Shaheed Muhammad] not coming out because this is my block. I put in the work for this block to be a block; it wasn’t a block when I got here.
“Even to this day, that’s why you see me take the positioning that I take. I’m a person who can forgive, but I will acknowledge what has occurred. I’m not the secret-keeper and I’m not sweeping nothing under the rug — those are two things I am not doing as a grown man.”
Consequence and Q-Tip’s falling-out first became public in 2011 when the former accused Tip and Kanye West of abandoning his aforementioned Cons TV album.
“We definitely have personal issues,” he told MTV News’ Sway Calloway at the time while announcing his departure from G.O.O.D. Music. “[Q-Tip] and Kanye elected to be executive producers of my Cons TV project. It’s ABG [anybody gets it].
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“I’m not harping on anything, but I’ma point out the obvious. I committed my time, my energy, my efforts to what we all committed to. That’s the Cons TV project. It’s not to be understated. They rolled with me through everything. They heard the stories on the ‘Job Song.’ They heard ‘Uncle Rahiem.’ They rooted for me. This was the coup de grâce [death blow].”
Consequence also referred to himself as “the glue” of A Tribe Called Quest, whose 1996 album Beats, Rhymes and Life he made numerous appearances on amid friction between Q-Tip and Phife Dawg.
Firing back on Twitter that same day, Q-Tip wrote: “GLUE?? I gave the n-gga a look,” before adding: “He DOESN’T know what he’s talking abt.”
The pair buried the hatchet months later, with Consequence telling fans: “After a very intense & extensive meeting, Q-Tip & myself have resolved our public & private issues. With so many manufactured ‘beefs’ in Hip Hop, this situation was very real and shows that their can be resolution through humility & dialogue.”
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For all the tension around the deal, Q-Tip’s tenure on G.O.O.D. Music was remarkably uneventful. Despite promises of releasing his eagerly anticipated album The Last Zulu, Tip’s contributions were limited to a smattering of production credits for Kanye, JAY-Z, Pusha T and John Legend.
Tip did, however, appear on Yeezy’s 2005 LP The Late Registration prior to joining G.O.O.D. Music and recruited the Chicago rap icon for a cameo on Tribe’s final album, We Got It from Here… Thank You 4 Your Service, in 2016. There were even talks of Ye joining the group for the project.
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Consequence, meanwhile, spent roughly six years on G.O.O.D. Music and released just one studio album on the label, 2007’s Don’t Quit Your Day Job!, while also landing guest verses and songwriting credits on many of Kanye’s early albums.
