Styles P has revisited the time that Suge Knight tried to sign The LOX and DMX to Death Row Records in the 1990s.
In an interview clip of The Art Of Dialogue, which was posted on Tuesday (May 2), the Yonkers rapper started by talking about how The LOX got signed to Bad Boy.
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“Our sister Mary J. Blige was on tour, playing our music on the tour bus, and the story was, Puff came on the tour bus, heard it, and was going crazy,” Styles P said. “Then at the time, Ruff Ryders was our managers and they didn’t have a label, so Puff reached out to them, we met up with Puff one day, rhymed in front of him, and that was it.”
He continued: “[Suge] tried to sign us before we got to Bad Boy. Our music was circulating, people were checking for us, and Suge Knight was on that list. It just didn’t make sense for us at the time.”
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He then recalled a time when the former CEO of Death Row was looking to expand his imprint by signing DMX.
“I’m pretty sure of that,” Styles P said of the move by the former music executive. “I don’t remember that specifically, but I’m pretty sure of that because before X signed to Def Jam, he was on the market, and pretty much everyone wanted to sign him, like the whole industry really.”
Jadakiss echoed similar statements about the former CEO of Death Row back in 2015 in an interview with Hot 97’s Listening Lounge.
“It’s Suge Knight,” Jadakiss said. “‘I hear Puffy wants to sign y’all. This that and the third. I want all, I got tickets for y’all to get on the Red-eye tonight with however many people y’all want. We want you to fly to L.A. to sign to Death Row.’ That was crazy.”
The Yonkers, New York rapper said they were so excited as teenagers to be receiving the call. They even thought it might have been a prank, but the person on the other line insisted it was real.
Kiss said that he thinks the group made the right decision signing to Puff Daddy, even though The LOX only released one album through Bad Boy before leaving to join Ruff Ryders.
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“The Lox probably woulda never panned out to where we turned out to be if we woulda went over there,” he said. “We woulda had some production from Dr. Dre, though. We woulda had some vintage Dre back then. Could you imagine hearing young ‘Kiss on Dre?”
