Beanie Sigel Disputes Memphis Bleek Comments

Despite rapper Memphis Bleek's claims in a recent interview that he had reached out to his former Roc-A-Fella Records labelmate Beanie Sigel, Beans is claiming that he hasn't heard from Bleek at all. Sigel is preparing to enter prison for the next eighteen months, and says that Bleek has not uttered a word to him.

"Memphis Bleek ain't never reach out to me or try to reach out to me," Sigel told XXL. "I brought Memphis Bleek to my neighborhood. Memphis Bleek been to my mother's house. He ate from my mother's food. So, if he wanted to reach out to me, I ain't a hard person to find. I ain't a hard person to find at all. But, I don't have no gripe with Bleek. There's no gripe with Bleek. That's like my brother. We came into the game together. We grew up together in the music business. I don't have no gripe with him."

Memphis Bleek Talks About His Career

Memphis Bleek was Jay-Z's most well-known affiliate in the late 90s/early 2000s, but the rapper seemed to fall completely off of the radar as the years have progressed. The former Roc-A-Fella Records artist spoke to MTV about his extended silence.

"I've been in the cut, raising my son, doing the family thing and leaving music on the backburner a little bit," Bleek explained. "It's like Jay said: 'The rap game reminds you of the crack game.' I been away so long, you can't just come back selling product; you've gotta give away some testers so they know you got the raw. It's just what it is."

"Get Low Records took a break a little bit," he said in reference to his previous label. "My man H. Money Bags got incarcerated after we dropped the record; he's just coming home. My man Geda K, he was out there doing his thing. Livin' Proof, Calico, everybody just went their own way as grown men to do their thing. But we're all family at the end of the day. I just spoke to everybody. We're trying to put this thing back together and get Get Low where it's supposed to be."

9th Wonder Isn't Begging Drake For Work

9th Wonder was recently asked about working with Young Money superstar Drake and the producer had an interesting response. He says he'd love to collaborate with the Toronto rapper, but that he isn't going to beg to work with anyone.

"It's up to Drake man. You know it's, it's - I've never been one, after all the albums I've been on whether it be Jay-Z's, Destiny Child, Mary J Blige, Erykah Badu, Ludacris, Memphis Bleek, Lloyd Banks -- all the records I've done on a major level, I've never slept outside somebody's door with a demo cd. It's always been, '9th, I want you to rock on my record'. So maybe I'm spoiled, maybe whatever, but I am not into sitting down with an A&R and playing an A&R beats. Jay-Z kinda ruined all of that because I dealt with him directly. If I dealt with him directly, I'm not about to play no beats for no A&R's, that's wack."

" I dealt with him directly; I sat with Beyonce for 3 hours and played her beats. Well played all 3 of them [Destiny's Child] beats. It was just me and them. It wasn't me, the A&R dude and them. I've dealt with everybody directly, so I'm past that."

Memphis Bleek Is Still Working?

As Jay-Z has only solidified his place at the top of hip hop and become an even bigger force in the larger world of pop culture, one of his proteges seemingly fell off of the public's radar. But Memphis Bleek is here to remind people that he ain't dead yet.

His career, on other hand...well...

"I've been working for three years, four years, so, I've got a bunch of records," Bleek said in an interview. "I ain't released an album since 2005, 2006? It's 2011. It's almost like, I don't want to say this on national TV, but it's real. It's like selling drugs. You can't just get on the block and say, 'I got this.' You gotta give out some samples or who's gonna come buy it from you just because you got it? ... I want to give it away so people can appreciate it. I feel like I have to throw the big single out, the radio record, to make you appreciate the album and spend your hard earned money. I don't want to do that. I don't want to convince you that this is the best album. I just want to give it out and you decide."