So while you’ve been busy Christmas shopping (in stores and online for Cyber Monday), Ashanti hit up Hot 97 to talk about her new music and upcoming album, Braveheart. But of course, instead of asking her much about said album, the questions from Ebro Darden and Laura Styles were mostly about Nelly. Well, at least for the first seven minutes of the interview anyway. The singer gave a “final” answer on if she and Nelly will ever get back together, talked about how that relationship impacted her music (including the song “Never Should Have,” which she confirmed was about him), and how they had an amazing sex life. No, seriously, she touches on that with only the nervous Long Island-based laughter that Ashanti can (she’s so charming). Check out the tea from that sit-down, as well as her thoughts on issues with Irv Gotti, and be sure to watch the interview below.
Ebro: Are you guys getting back together again?
Negative. Nelly and I are kind of in the space where, I’m kinda like focusing on my career, he’s focusing on what he’s doing, you know there’s a lot of things that happened this year, you know a lot of things kinda went public more than other things have gone public before, you know what I’m saying? And um, I kinda just…I have to do me. We’re in that space right now and there are things that were said and things that were done, that probably shouldn’t have been said or done, but they have been.
Ebro: On your part, his part, or both?
Probably both. Probably both.
Ebro: Like you call him a f**king a**hole, and ‘I never want to speak to you again, get the f**k out of here you f**king punk’?
Oh, it was way worse than that! [laughs] No, I mean, like I said, you know, when people are around each other for a long time, you know, there are feelings, there are things there, and people get hurt. Men handle hurt differently than women handle hurt, you know what I’m saying? So…
Laura: How long were you guys together? TOGETHER, together?
I mean we’ve known each other for a long time. It was a lot of time. Nine years is a long time…There’s a record that I have called “Scars,” which is really, uh, it’s a very deep record–
Ebro: Is it about your scars pertaining to Nelly?
Um, he put a couple of scars on me. Not physically, we don’t want to put that out there [laughs]. We’ve definitely scarred each other in a sense to say. Getting back to the record, it’s a deep record. It’s something that, I feel like I’m revealing very much, more than I have on previous records. So I’m really really excited. It kind of takes you on a nice emotional level.
Laura: You have a song called “Never Should Have,” and everybody wants to know if that’s about Nelly…
You know what’s weird, you know me and Nelly, you know, sometimes we were cool, sometimes we weren’t. You were together, you’re not together. You getting on my nerves right now…you go over there, I’m over here…
Ebro: It makes for the best sex by the way. Keep it real.
It does. Amazing. Amazing! But um, at that time, at that very moment when I was physically writing that record, I was in the studio in LA, and me and him were in this space of we were getting back together. We were back being cool. You know you go through that space where you don’t talk. ‘I’m not messing with him right now,’ whatever. It could be months, it could be whatever. Okay, so we were in a space where we were getting back cool. And we were actually Skyping while I was recording the record. So the record was about [laughs] when we were going through the bad times, but we were cool when I was recording it so it is weird, you know? I always get inspiration from real experiences whether I’m going through it or someone close to me is going through it. But that particular song, it was just weird because I was just writing about it because I was mad. We were going through whatever we were going through, but when I started recording it, we were okay. We were cool. We were Skyping. So it was about him, but it wasn’t. But he picked it, he loved the record. I remember when I played it for him in the studio he was like, “Ma this is crazy!” He loved it.
Ebro: How Is You And Irv’s Relationship?
There’s definitely no beef but, for me, again, just me talking about my movement and being brave and kind of just revealing a little bit more of myself at this point in my career, I feel like Irv kind of paints a picture of what happened with me and Murder Inc. very one-sided. I hear him a lot talk about, “She’s disloyal,” and “Oh, she didn’t throw up the Ms and she didn’t do this and that.” And I feel it’s time to kind of set the record straight on what it really is…I’m a Libra, I’m a very loyal person. Anybody with any sense of logic could see that I rode out. I rode until the wheels fell off [laughs]. You know what I mean? I went to the trial, I was there, I was filming in Vancouver and in my contract, I wasn’t ever supposed to leave Canada. I came to the court, to the trial, three or four times when I was not supposed to. I was contractually doing what I was supposed to not be doing, paying those round trip tickets to come and support and it’s crazy because at that time me and Irv weren’t even speaking. Like, we weren’t even speaking at all…regardless, I’m going to always have love for Irv. Regardless. We’ve made history together. Our chemistry in the studio is amazing. But I’m not going to sit here and let the picture be painted one side anymore.
This is the most open and honest Ashanti has ever been, which is good, because all that “Who said we were in a relationship!?” ducking and dodging was tired. What do you make of her responses?
