Dame Dash and longtime record executive Lyor Cohen are in the middle of a nasty beef. They’ve actually had problems with each other for years, but in the past week their issues have resurfaced and new shots have been taken.
In fact, the latest diss came from Dash, who called Cohen a “culture vulture” when he was a guest on “The Joe Budden Podcast.” It was the second time Dash used the term to describe the music exec in a matter of days.
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If you didn’t know, Cohen was the president of Def Jam at one point, and he used to work closely with Dash, who’s label Roc-A-Fella was a Def Jam subsidiary.
“A culture vulture is someone that exploits the culture that he’s not a part of, doesn’t benefit the culture and takes care of his culture and has no respect for the culture he’s exploiting,” said Dash.
“He’s been making money off of our culture. He is not part of it. And he’s been exploiting it, never helping, teaching or anything. Doing what’s in the best interest of his own pocket over the culture. And to add insult to injury, he is not accepted in his own culture. He cannot get no money in his own culture, so he comes to ours, acts like a big cat, pretends we need him when we don’t,” he added.
Plus, Dash accused Cohen of only placing other white people in positions of power to manipulate Black music. He also asked why Tina Davis, a prominent Black female record executive, couldn’t run things instead of him.
Davis has been a major player in urban music for years and is known for discovering Chris Brown.
“Isn’t it a shame that all these Black girls in the industry have to work for all of these white people who don’t know nothing about music?” asked Dame. “That’s what he’s done. He’s killed our nepotism. He’s used his nepotism.”
“Why isn’t Tina Davis running one of these businesses? It’s because he’s the one putting all these people in business to further control our culture. Why is something called urban music run by anybody white? Or Black music, how can it be run by someone that’s not Black? What is that for our culture? … I want the smoke with Lyor.”
Dash also said he’d love to have a public debate with Cohen, which Budden said he’d love to organize.
Elsewhere in the interview, Dame said that Cohen likes to take credit for other people’s hard work, then try to erase that person’s name from history. He was referring to a comment Cohen made during a recent interview on “The Breakfast Club” where he denied even knowing the Roc-A-Fella records co-founder.
“Who’s Dame Dash?” asked Cohen after Charlamagne mentioned his name. “You brought him up. I don’t even know him. I really don’t.”
Dame responded by posting an old photo of himself and Cohen to prove they know each other and left a scathing message in the caption space. It was the first time in years he called Cohen a culture vulture, which is a term he made up just for him.
“I want the smoke with Lyor,” Dash said.
After Dame’s appearance on Budden’s podcast, some praised him for talking about Cohen so openly.
“Great point, Dame,” someone wrote.
“I’m glad Dame is speaking on Lyor,” wrote another. “Our culture doesn’t understand [that] legacy-building is important.”
You can listen to Dash’s comments below at the 1:34:00 mark.
