The hills and valleys of Dame Dash‘s career have been well documented. In the last several years, fans have witnessed Dash’s fall; from among the top-tier hip-hop moguls to an industry footnote struggling through financial and legal hardship. In a recent interview with VladTV, super producer Just Blaze shared his perspective on the Roc-A-Fella co-founder’s decline.
“It’s hard to say what ultimately contributed to Dame’s decline,” said Just Blaze. “My take on Dame has always been he’s a great guy with a good heart whose mouth just got in the way too much. And that just comes from my own personal dealings with him. There [are] times where Dame has been a very great dude to me just on a personal level. And then there were times where he was just an absolute jerk. And I think that it’s a thing where sometimes along the way you — rub enough people the wrong way you lose out on certain opportunities.”
“I can’t speak on everything cause I don’t know all the details,” Blaze revealed. “Even with me, when I deal with people even though there’s certain things I may be entitled to say contract-wise or negotiation-wise or things that I feel I should have, sometimes I don’t like to rock the boat too much. Don’t get me wrong, I’m gonna get what I deserve, but there’s a certain way to go about it because when you’re on the rise or you’re at the top it’s easy to have people do whatever you say, but it’s when you’re in a lull and things are getting a little bit quiet for you, which happens with all of us. If you do good business when you’re up here and you treat people the right way when you’re up here it’s much easier to make moves and generate new business when you’re going this way a little bit.”
But Blaze said he would still be open to working with Dame in the future.
“If it was something that made sense. It would have to be something that made sense and not necessarily, to be honest, it wouldn’t even be because it’s coming from Dame, but that’s just how I treat all my businesses,” the former Roc-A-Fella hitmaker explained. “One thing that Puff said to me a long time ago when me and him didn’t have a problem, but there was an issue, but it wasn’t like a real problem … He said to me, he was like ‘Yo, you don’t have to like me. We just have to do business.’ ”
