Too Short Believes Jay Z Remade “Blow the Whistle” to Try and Get LeBron James to Sign With The Nets
A quick perusal of his lyrics will show you how much Jay Z prides himself on being ahead of his competition. So, when LeBron James found himself embroiled in a feud with DeShawn Stevenson back in 2008 after the former Washington Wizards guard called The King “overrated,” Hov came to James’ defense. But there may have been an ulterior motive in play, like possibly appealing to the soon-to-be free agent James.
When pressed by reporters about Stevenson’s remarks, LeBron wasn’t entertaining the idea of returning fire because it was like “Jay Z responding to Soulja Boy.” Following Game 3 of the 2008 NBA Playoffs where the Wizards cut the Cavaliers’ series lead to 2-1 with the help of a solid shooting performance from Stevenson, and a surprise appearance by Soulja at the Verizon Center.
Even though James repeatedly told the media that “there is no LeBron/DeShawn rivalry,” two days after the Cavs’ Game 3 loss, The King hosted a party at the now defunct Love Nightclub in Washington D.C. where the DJ played a new song from Jay Z that the rapper recorded earlier that day.
The track used the instrumental and chorus from “Blow the Whistle” by Too Short, and took some direct shots at Stevenson.
Uh! Ask my nigga Lebron!
We so big we ain’t gotta respond
When you talkin‘ to a don, please have respect like your talkin’ to your mom
We let the money do the talkin’
As you see we be talkin’ rather often (chatterbox!)
The ROC Boys in the buildin’
Another hundred fifty million don’t it sound like we yellin?!!!
Who the fuck overrated?! If anything they underpaid him
Hatin’ that’s only ‘gon make him spend the night
Out of spite with the chick you’ve been datin’
We the best of the best
We ‘gon be here so the rest could take a rest
I gotta get this off my chest
No pause none of that shit, get off my dick!!!!
Over the weekend, Too Short appeared on the Scoop B Radio Podcast with Brandon “Scoop B” Robinson where he discussed the origins of Jay Z’s song. “He was like, ‘Could you send me the instrumental to that?,’” he recalls. “If a rapper called me and said, ‘Send me the instrumental,’ I’ll probably say something like, ‘We didn’t even bounce the instrumental, so we don’t even have one.’ When Jay called, I was like, ‘It will be there in a couple of hours, man.’ I had no idea what he was going to do with it, but I am glad he did.’”
Too Short believes that Jay, who was a minority owner of the Brooklyn Nets at the time, was making a play at trying to entice James to sign with his team in the upcoming offseason. “So I guess in his mind he was gearing up to, at that point, I think he was thinking about signing LeBron and having him play for the Nets and he was courting LeBron and LeBron was special to him and ol’ boy [Stevenson] stepped on LeBron’s toes talking shit and Jay was like, ‘I’m going to shut this down,’” he said. “And he probably saw the moment where the crowd reacted to the song and then that was on his mind.”
We all know how that story ends. Check out Too Short’s interview in its entirety below.
