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Last night, New York bred rappers Fabolous and Jadakiss went head to head against one another in a Verzuz battle. Personally, given Fabolous’ violent history, I opted to sit this one out. But the internet being what it is, I still caught a couple of highlights from the night. Including the fact that Jadakiss wrote Diddy’s verse on “All About The Benjamins.”
Then, Fabolous shared an interesting story about one of his greatest hits, a duet so big it required two different versions: one with Ashanti and one with Tamia.
Call me late to the party because I had no idea that there was a version with Ashanti. But during last night’s battle, Fabolous played that one and offered a bit of an anecdote as to why there were two versions.
“How this happened too—because it’s a lot of back and forth about how it was Tamia and Ashanti. Tamia is who the original song came from. Tamia was getting surgery on her throat at the time when we did the song. So we got Ashanti to do the song. And then when we did the video, she was back. She got her sh*t back together. And Ashanti was running all around. Ashanti was scorching. And a little bit Irv too. You know Irv Gotti. Ashanti was scorching at this time so we couldn’t get her schedule wise. So, we came back with Tamia and she laid the vocals after her throat surgery.”
It sounds plausible. Because I think we’re all in agreement that Tamia is a better vocalist than Ashanti. And while Ashanti did have a meteoric rise in the music industry, we can attribute this song’s staying power to the work Tamia put in.
As Fabolous was telling the story, Ashanti was in the comment section trying to let the people know that this is not how it went down.
She wrote, “Nooooooo Ima text u and tell u the real story!!! [three crying laughing emojis]”
The fact that she couldn’t share this publicly makes me wonder if there was something shady and shiesty afoot.
But that’s another story for another day.
After the Verzuz battle, Tamia took to her own Instagram page to offer a little clarification to Fabolous’ anecdote, basically letting y’all know that there was no truth to it.
“25 years, 8 albums, 0 throat surgeries. [heart emoji]”
I would like to think that Fabolous wasn’t just lying for lying’s sake. But apparently, there was some miscommunication along the way. And he should fact check before continuing to tell this story.
Check out people’s thoughts and theories on the subject.
