Sean Paul has stepped forward to clarify some recent comments alluding to Jay-Z being jealous of him being around Beyonce.
In a January interview with RJR 94’s Too Live Crew radio show in Jamaica, Sean Paul was cornered with questions about the long-lived conspiracy that Jay-Z was not very fond of him and was even quite jealous of him and Beyoncé. While Sean seemed to agree that there was something odd at play, he never admitted to anything happening between him and the famous singer. However, he believes his words were taken out of context after the interview.
Sean Paul spoke with HotNewHipHop for a new interview where he addressed the speculation once more. For those who thought ‘nothing’ was code for ‘something’, SP made it abundantly clear that he never disrespected Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s relationship. Somehow the media’s obsession with the almost two-decade-old story has forced the dancehall star to address the conspiracy on more occasions than necessary.
“It was a radio show here in Jamaica and I get this regularly. When I go to Texas, also, radio shows there, I don’t know what it is, people are like, ‘So tell me…’ and it gets to that part in that interview where they’re like, ‘What happened with you and Beyoncé?’ Nothing really happened. The hit song was dope,” Sean Paul explained.
He went on to say a pivotal part of what he said in the recent radio interview with radio host Burgerman was omitted in most publications. According to Sean Paul, his experience has taught him that refusing to speak on something is usually taken to mean that something scandalous went down so he opted to agree that the situation was strange but maintained that everything that’s been whispered about him and Bey is merely a rumor.
“You know, some of them made up their own mind. That’s the whatever. Sometimes with interviews, you can say, ‘I’d rather not speak about it,’ but then, people would think that something was going on,” he said. “So, I was trying to defend it like, ‘Hey nah, but weird things did happen, that’s probably why there were rumors,’ but people leave out ‘that’s probably why there were rumors’ part.”
Most of the details that fed the rumor all these years were deduced by fans who seemed to read into everything, including Sean Paul not getting the chance to perform the song with Beyoncé at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards. “There were weird things that happened on stage with our performance, with the video. I know a headline said that ‘Oh, Jay-Z didn’t want me there.’ It had nothing to do with him as far as I’m concerned,” said Sean Paul.
To this day, people still speculate that it was Hov’s raging jealousy that caused it. Though Sean Paul met Jay-Z first, when he met Beyoncé, he found her to be rather meticulous and serious about her craft, so he highly doubts that her boyfriend at the time thwarted any of her career-enhancing efforts. “[Beyoncé’s] her own artist that was managed by her own manager. They were going out at the time. They weren’t married yet,” he explained. “I don’t think he would have influenced whatever her vision was. She’s a very determined person. She’s very precise with her thoughts and her movements and she works very hard. It was probably her vision.”
Sean Paul also elaborated on what he said in the Bugerman interview that suggested something was amiss. “So, what I did speak about in that interview was that there were some weird things that happened and that’s probably why people had rumors about it because a couple of times while on stage, we tried to perform [‘Baby Boy’] properly,” he said. “There were problems with the ProTools, which doesn’t usually happen. There was problems with my mic in one performance in Germany. That’s probably why people started talking about [it].”
The dancehall star is chalking this rumor up to simply that – a rumor. Even though the gossip seems to be standing the test of time, basically spanning Sean Paul’s entire career, it was born out of pure speculation and fans simply blowing things out of proportion. While he has clarified that nothing ever happened between him and Beyoncé several times now, it wouldn’t be surprising to hear this staple conversation piece come up in his interviews again.
