James Prince has been in the headlines for his instrumental role in diffusing the Drake and Pusha-T beef.
During a trip to L.A. to promote his new book The Art & Science Respect: A Memoir by James Prince, the Rap-A-Lot Records CEO spoke about his father-son relationship with Drake, who penned the book’s forward.
He met the Canadian rapper in Houston years ago, but didn’t know he would turn into the global superstar he is today. “I didn’t have that imagination,” J Prince tells Rap-Up. “My son Jas Prince] did. He saw it, he believed in it, and he encouraged me to get behind him.”
The two have a close bond to this day, and Drake even calls Prince “Pops” (“He told me he’s my adopted son”). So when he heard Pusha-T’s diss “The Story Adidon,” Prince called up Drake, who was planning a response.
“I didn’t tell him to not release the record he had recorded because I don’t know if he had recorded it or not, but what I was familiar with was the ingredients that was gonna be in the record,” he reveals. “I definitely told him pull the plug on that. We’re not finna get in the pigpen and wallow in slop when you’re a big picture thinker and you have a movement going such as Drake.”
He advised him not to let “a moment stop a movement.” “He has so many moving parts, where his career is concerned, then you don’t allow a moment like a Pusha-T, somebody that’s been really disrespectful towards you, your mother, your father, your friend, you don’t allow something so tril to stop a big movement,” adds Prince.
He went on to call Pusha-T’s diss “desperate.” “I understand that mentality. I dealt with it all my life and that’s why I had enough sense to pull the plug on that situation.”
During the interview, J Prince also recalls an encounter with The Notorious B.I.G. and Puff Daddy in L.A. that might have saved the late rap icon’s life.