Dame Dash, who had a long friendship and partnership with Jay-Z, says that R. Kelly played a role in their broken friendship.
In an interview with Hip-Hop Motivation posted on Saturday, Dash spoke about the Surviving R. Kelly documentary, and he talked about Jay’s decision to partner with Kelly on 2002’s Best of Both Worlds. The album and tour came as the infamous tape showing Kelly with an underage girl was circulating and he was facing child pornography charges.
READ MORE: REVIEW: “Surviving R. Kelly”: the good, the bad, and the really, very ugly
“I watched some of it yesterday, as much as I could tolerate and I’m not gon’ lie, as a human, I was tight. I was tight about a couple things,” Dash, who was in a relationship with Aaliyah at the time of her death in August 2001, said. “There was a girl [on there], when she was even trying to talk about it and she couldn’t, and I remember Aaliyah trying to talk about it and she couldn’t,” Dash said.
“[Aaliyah] would just leave it at ‘That dude was a bad man.’ I didn’t really want to know what he did, to the extent that I would, you know, deal with it,” he added. “Because that’s what a man does. But it was so much hurt for her to revisit it. I wouldn’t want to revisit it without a professional. Whatever got done was terrible.”
READ MORE: Mother of late singer Aaliyah denies back-up singer’s claim that R. Kelly had sex with her then underaged daughter
When talking about Jay’s partnering with Kelly, Dame said that he didn’t want to be involved in the project because Kelly “violated” Aaliyah and others. He added that Jay was aware of how he felt.
“I never wanted no parts of that,” he said. “I knew morally we weren’t the same. The moral fabric was compromised.”
Dame says that Jay-Z’s decision to work with Kelly contributed to the eventual end of Roc-A-Fella Records. Jay-Z, like many celebrities, has remained silent during the documentary’s airing.
To everyone telling me how courageous I am for appearing in the doc, it didn’t feel risky at all. I believe these women and don’t give a fuck about protecting a serial child rapist. Easy decision.
— John Legend (@johnlegend) January 4, 2019
One who hasn’t was John Legend, one of the few to appear on the documentary and openly call out Kelly. He pulled no punches on Twitter on Thursday night about his participation in the doc and Dame praised him for being “man enough” to do it.
READ MORE: John Legend blasts R. Kelly in tweet explaining his participation in explosive docu-series, “I don’t give a f*ck about protecting a serial child rapist.”
Despite going platinum and debuting at No. 2 on the Billboard charts, The Best of Both Worlds was critically panned. Their second album, 2004’s Unfinished Business also went platinum and came during the duo’s ill-fated Best of Both Worlds tour that eventually ended when Jay-Z kicked Kelly off the tour amid tensions.
Kelly eventually sued Jay for $75 million.
