Jay-Z Reflects On Feeling Betrayed By Irv Gotti

Loyalty is one of the ideas Jay-Z keeps returning to throughout JAŸ-Z In 8, and one exchange with Rick Rubin showed how complicated that standard became once friendship and business stopped moving in the same direction. Asked whether he had ever been the betrayer in a relationship, Hov said not “consciously” or out of hate, then offered Irv Gotti as an example of how he could retaliate after deciding someone had already crossed him.

“Irv, who was like my DJ in London, like, it was early, early days. I’ve done everything for Irv,” Jay recalled during Chapter 7 of the HBO series. According to his version of events, trouble started when one of Gotti’s artists began “talking crazy” about him, and Gotti let it happen. The situation worsened when the Murder Inc. founder entertained signing Nas while Jay and Nas were in the middle of their famous feud.

Jay admitted that his own response crossed the same line he felt Gotti had already crossed. At the height of Murder Inc.’s issues with 50 Cent, he appeared with Fif in a 2003 Reebok commercial promoting their respective sneaker lines. “That’s betrayal because that’s his rival,” he said. “But in my estimation, I’m justified in it, ’cause I put him in a certain box already.”

That justification did not stop him from recognizing the behavior for what it was. Jay explained that once he feels someone has changed the terms of a relationship, his loyalty to them changes with it. “You already showed your hand and you already done moves to take you out of the space of a person that I have to have loyalty and integrity to,” he said. “But it’s still betrayal.”

Years before Jay revisited the fallout with Rubin, Gotti publicly acknowledged that trying to sign Nas was one of his biggest regrets. During a 2017 appearance on Drink Champs, he said his ambition got ahead of his loyalty to Jay, whom he had known since the late 1980s. “I should have thought of my brother Jay,” Gotti said, calling the move “one of the biggest regrets of my life”.

The two never completely severed ties. Jay told Rubin that he later stepped into a meeting to help Gotti secure a deal with BET, even after their friendship had changed. Now, in Hov's telling, the relationship became one where affection remained, but access had limits.