I’ve stated before that the fall out between Beanie Sigel and Jay-Z disappoints me. Bleek is Jay’s protégé, the once 15-year old kid that is now a grown man still riding with Jay. If you’re going to see Jay-Z live you’re likely to see Bleek right there on stage with him. While Bleek is Jay’s loyal protégé who has always had great potential, Beanie Siegel is (or was) Jay’s enforcer. I’ve always said that Beanie has the rawest talent of any MC in the history of Hip-Hop. As far as lyrical ability Beans is right there with the best (including Jay). He has all of the tools of a great MC but it seems like he lacks certain important qualities that hinders his development as an artist.

Jay has expressed his concerns in regards to Bean’s artistry and overall success in his lyrics:

Beans, I ain’t trying to change you
Just give you some game
To make the transition
From the street to the fame

“Blueprint (Momma Loves Me)”
Blueprint
Jay-Z

I stated earlier that Beans has the rawest talent I have ever heard in Hip-Hop. There are several meanings of the word “raw” but here’s the meaning that best fits my opinion of Bean’s talent:

Raw: untempered and unrefined

My “10 Greatest MCs of all Time” list has been the same for several years. I’ll share it with you one of these days but I can tell you right now that Beanie Sigel can hold his own lyrically with ANY of the MCs on my list. Period.

Beans gave two of the most vivid lyrical performances I’ve ever heard on these classics:

This record is quite insightful about, ironically, betrayal, and really shows Beans’s lyrical brilliance.

Beans paints the picture of prison so vividly in this song. This record is like cinema. Hey, it pretty much made up mind to never get locked up!

It seems like Beans’s career has suffered and stalled because of bad judgement and a lack of discipline in his artistry and in his business. The talented brother has had some success the “issues” he’s had in his personal life are long and well-documented. I’m pulling for him to get things right but it wouldn’t be a stretch to suggest that some of his personal issues have had an adverse impact on his artistry and business interests.

Unless you don’t follow Hip-Hop that closely you’re aware of the “beef” Sigel has with Jay-Z. Beans has made what seems like an album’s worth of diss songs directed toward Jay. Beans’s main problems with Jay seem to be business-related and not personal.

If I could ask him a couple of questions in regards to his beef with Jay, they would be:

Why do you think making diss songs every other day directed toward Jay will increase the likelihood of resolving your business disputes with him?

and

How does dissing Jay over and over and over again advance or revitalize your career?

Some may say that Nas’s beef with Jay-Z revitalized the great Queensbridge MC’s career. I agree. But there’s a major difference between Nas’s beef with Jay back in the day and Bean’s beef with Jay: Jay shot first and Nas responded, strongly, I might add.

And also, the timing for the Jay-Z/Nas showdown was right. Hip-Hop was clamoring for it. Not too many people seem to care all that much about Beans vs. Jay. No one segment of Hip-Hop’s audience has that much emotionally invested in the beef.

The streets have some interest but it’s far from being at a fervor pitch and the conflict is barely on the mainstream audience’s radar.

(Speaking of the Jay vs. Nas, I might go in-depth about the legendary battle one of these days. You might be surprised by my opinion. But of course, when and if I write about it, I’m going to come hard with insight NOT emotion.)

If Beans looked at the flawed strategy that other MCs have unsuccessfully used: taking shots at Jay, calling him out over and over again with no or very little response from him, he would had realized that his all out assault is very unlikely to re-ignite his career.

Beans’s many diss songs at Jay may generate so-called “buzz” on YouTube, Twitter and on Hip-Hop sites on the Internet but that doesn’t mean that people who watch, read or listen online are even remotely interested in his actual career.

In the long list of Jay’s foes, Nas stands alone.

(Of course Jay and Nas are cool with each other nowadays. I want to hear more Jay-Z/Nas collabos!)

Unfortunately, Beans comes across as “just another MC” who has dissed Jay-Z.

If we go down the long list Jay-Z attackers and compare each one of them to Hov…

Who is relevant?

Who is not?

Beanie Siegel is a good MC with great talent who is undisciplined, consistently makes poor judgment and has a flawed artistic and business strategy.

Sigel could be completely justified for having beef with Jay (I don’t know one way or the other) but his constant, redundant verbal attacks on Jay-Z essentially makes him look like a bitter, disgruntled employee which is really too bad because Beans’s talent is too great to be confined to the way too common “pro wrestling” beef strategy that MCs with much less talent than him use to get attention.

I won’t go into detail, but I think a much better strategy for Beans would be to try to do as many features and collaborations as possible giving passionate, insightful and skillful lyrical performances and then try to capitalize off that buzz.

In now way am I indicting Beans (no pun intended). I love his talent. I missed the Roc the way it was and it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if Jay is truly the one who deserves the most blame for the crew’s dismantle. I absolutely loved the collaborations between Jay and Beans. Those two cats had great chemistry. I miss that- a lot. Beans is definitely the kind of MC and man that you want with you in battle- for real. Jay-Z has given Beans “game” (guidance) throughout his career but as Jay stated in “Blueprint (Momma Loves Me)”, Beans have had a difficult time fully making “the transition”.

(Watch from the beginning up to 1:50)

“If my life is a movie then Sigel be the sequel”

“It’s On”
Jay-Z

The transition from the streets to any kind of legitimate success is a challenge but MUST be done.

You won’t sustain your success, or even succeed at all with raw talent alone.

Is there someone, such as a mentor, giving you “game” on how to make the transition in your life?

How will you receive that “game” and how will you respond?

I remember reading Cedric Muhammad’s 2-part column on how-to market Beans and let’s just say that I thought it was a rather ambitious plan (meaning: unrealistic. Lol). Me and Cedric had a laugh about that in a conversation we had a couple of months ago. Though I think it’s unlikely that anyone currently around Beans or Beans himself have the kind of vision Muhammad laid out in the 2-part column, I agree with Muhammad’s general premise:

Beanie Sigel is a MC with great talent and potential whose career could be revitalized and even be greater than his days with the Roc if he (and the people around him) fully commit to artistic, business and even community activist excellence.

Some of you may want to know:

Why won’t Jay-Z respond to Beans’s attacks?

He did, for like 2 minutes…

Many believe that part of Jay’s verse on Drake’s “Light It Up” is directed at Beans. I agree. Of course, there have been several MCs no longer down with the Roc that have dissed Jay, so his lyrics could be directed toward all of them collectively:

Drake, here’s how they gon’ come at you
With silly rap feuds trying to distract you
In disguise in the form of a favor
The Barzini me, watch for the traitors
Uh, I done seen it all, done it all
That’s why none of these dum-dums could done him off

One of my first pieces published on “The Book of Hov” was about Jay’s lyrics on “Light It Up”.

“Silly rap feuds” not only distract those they target, they distract those who do the “shooting”. Beans’s tireless verbal attacks toward Jay are done in hopes of rattling him. Beans continuously baits Jay in hopes that he will respond. Jay, I think wisely sees a response as a distraction from his ambitious grind. What I don’t think Beans realize is that his verbal attacks toward Jay serve as distractions from his own ambitions.

I think Jay’s indirect responses at his attackers are actually insightful and show how strategically sound he is as an artist and businessman.

Jay has so many attackers that it doesn’t make sense to create specific diss songs for each MC who attacks him. He would waste a whole year just responding to any and everyone who takes a shot at him. Responding to everyone who disses him is a waste of his artistic talent. It also doesn’t make much business sense because diss songs may generate millions of plays on YouTube but don’t sell.

Jay is at the point in his career where he simply does not need a “pro wrestling” beef strategy to generate interests in his projects.

The summer’s ours, the winter too
Top down in the winter, that’s what winners do
And to these niggaz I’m like, Windows 7
You let ‘em tell it they swear, that they invented you
And since no good deed go unpunished
I’m not as cool with niggaz as I once was
I once was, cool as the Fonz was
But these bright lights turned me to a monster

I didn’t talk about this in my previous post about these lyrics but I think it’s interesting that Jay states that “no good deed go unpunished”. It seems like he’s basically saying:

People are often unappreciative of the guidance and support you give them and will even attack you (verbally and/or physically), particularly when they’re going through a tough time.

This unfortunate dynamic in relationships (such as the mentor/protégé relationship) is why Jay states:

I’m not as cool with niggaz as I once was
I once was, cool as the Fonz was
But these bright lights turned me to a monster

Jay seems to have greater perspective on the motivation and meaning behind Bean’s verbal attacks toward him than Beans does himself.

This kind of fall-out may happen in your mentor/protégé relationships and in other relationships that you have with those in your life.

Jay’s lyrics can give us some insight on how and why things go wrong in both our personal and professional relationships and what to learn from conflicts in order to become even more determined and focused as we move on and move forward.

What to look out for next week: We’ll dig further into the mentor/protégé relationship taking a look at Jay-Z and Memphis Bleek’s lyrics on “Coming of Age (Da Sequel)”. Also, I’ll share the song that I believe is the best rap collaboration ever made, reveal the similarities between that song and the great tradition of jazz music and how the song can serve as inspiration for YOU and ME as it relates to the “collaborations” in our day-to-day lives.