When Jay-Z established his Roc-A-Fella Records label in the mid-1990s, one of the first artists he signed was Memphis Bleek. Growing up in the same Brooklyn neighborhood as Jay in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Bleek appeared on many of Jay-Z’s early studio albums such as Reasonable Doubt, Vol. 2… Hard Knock Life, Vol. 3… Life and Times of S. Carter, The Dynasty: Roc La Familia, and The Blueprint 2: The Gift & The Curse.
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So, when Bleek did a recent interview with N.O.R.E. and DJ EFN of the esteemed Drink Champs podcast, he had many interesting insights on Jay’s decades-long career. One of them, though, included a peculiar instance involving now-deceased pop icon Michael Jackson.
According to Bleek, when Jay brought out Jackson to perform at the 2001 Summer Jam at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in New York, the singer made everyone backstage who was not part of Jay-Z’s entourage turn around and face the wall.
“Rest in peace to the GOAT of the GOATs,” Bleek said when beginning his story. “Mike came through, right—listen, if you wasn’t with Hov you had to turn around and face the wall. His security guards came in before he came in, they [were] like this, ‘Everybody who don’t got the Jay-Z pass.’ Like, I’m with the family. You had to have that pass, hey was making n****s turn up face the wall like it was the pat-down on the block.”
Bleek went on to explain that Jackson did not want to make eye contact with anybody that he didn’t need to. Oddly enough, Bleek said, everyone obliged.
“Everybody [did it] because Mike didn’t want eye-to-eye contact,” he added. “Nobody [could] look him in his eyes. Me, I gotta see Mike. So I’m looking at everybody in the hallway facing the wall like, ‘These n****s is bugging.'”
[RELATED: Ranked: Each of Michael Jackson’s No. 1 Songs]
This is now the second time somebody has mentioned in an interview that Jackson made people face away from him. During a March interview with former NBA player Stephen Jackson’s All The Smoke podcast, West Coast rap legend DJ Quick said that Jackson made him and his friends do the same back in the day when Quik booked a session at Jackson’s Westlake recording studio.
“This shit seem weird as shit, like some police shit; ‘hands up on the wall,’” Quik recalled. “So the door opens, then you just hear some penny loafers running through the little thing. Turn around and you can see him, his little hair and shit. That motherfucker went in the door and closed it. They were like, ‘Alright, y’all cool, y’all can turn around.’”
Photo by Kevin Mazur/WireImage
