Beyoncé may have released her single “Check On It” featuring Bun B and Slim Thug in 2005, but the drama behind the scenes recently came to light. During a Thursday, July 9 interview on hip-hop journalist Sama’an Ashrawi’s podcast, “The Nostalgia Mixtape,” rapper Bun B recounted a time when Jay-Z booted him and Slim Thug out of the MTV-Award winning music video shoot.
The UGK legend revealed that Jay-Z and Beyoncé had just started dating, explaining that the Brooklyn rapper was not comfortable with other men being in the room while she was performing.
“This is in New York,” Ashrawi asked at the 43:29 mark. “So we’re on the set and we’re filming the video, and if you look at the video, there’s a lot of kind of skimpy outfits,” said Bun B. “Queenie [Bun B’s wife] is there also, so it’s not like I’m there salivating over another woman, but we’re like, ‘Woah, this is crazy. Beyonce’s dancing in this short skirt and she’s dancing in like a bikini,’ type of thing you know?”
“While all of this is happening, I think this is during the scene with the chair, so it’s like her and several other girls and they all have these short skirts on or dresses, whatever,… and they’re all dancing seductively on the chair. They’ve got a leg up on the chair so you can kind of see the thigh and maybe a little bit of butt if you’re staring hard enough.”
Bun B went on to explain that Jay-Z then called Beyoncé’s assistant because he wanted to know how many men were at the shoot. “If I had to guess it would’ve been her cousin Angie that he would’ve talked to because Angie has always been a right hand to Beyoncé,” he recalls. “He’s like, ‘Yeah how’s the video going, what’s going good, are the guys there?’ All the guys that are with us are the only men there. Well let me say this. There were other men there, but they weren’t straight.”
After learning how many men were present, Jay-Z decided to kick them out. “So he’s like, ‘Wait a minute, how many dudes are there?’ So she’s like ‘Well there’s about nine or 10 guys that are there.’ And he’s like, ‘Where are they now?’ She says, ‘Well, they’re on the sound stage you know, they’re kind of watching everything going on.’ ‘What is she wearing?’ She describes the outfits and he’s like, ‘Yo, clear the room.’ So they immediately come over to us and they kick all of us out, send us up to our dressing rooms and we’re told to stay there until we have to shoot. We’re not allowed to watch Beyoncé dance anymore.”
Beyoncé figured out what Jay-Z did and apologized to the crew for her then boyfriend’s antics. “So I guess Beyoncé gets wind of the call, she comes up, and she apologizes,” he continues. “ ‘I’m so sorry you guys had to leave the room, but Jay’s not comfortable.’ And we’re all like, ‘we understand fully; we’re like ‘no, it’s no problem;’ we’re happy to be here.”
Listen to the story below starting at the 40 minute mark.
