Memphis Bleek Says Michael Jackson Didn’t Want ‘Eye-to-Eye’ Contact During 2001 Summer Jam

Memphis Bleek let the jokes fly during his recent Drink Champs appearance. The 45-year-old made his return to N.O.R.E. and DJ EFN-hosted podcast, where he retold a humorous story about Michael Jackson’s run-in with Roc-A-Fella at the 2001 Hot 97 Summer Jam. According to Bleek, Jackson didn’t want too much close contact with the label’s team and associates.

"Rest in peace to the GOAT of the GOATs... Mike came through, right — listen, if you wasn’t with Hov you had to turn around and face the wall,” he said. "His security guards came in before he came in they like this: ‘Everybody who don’t got the Jay-Z pass.’ Like, I’m with the family. You had to have that pass."

The Brooklyn emcee added that Jackson’s security team took extreme measures to avoid eye contact. "G, they was making n***** turn up face the wall like it was the pat-down on the block. Like, everybody because Mike didn’t want eye-to-eye contact. Nobody [could] look him in his eyes," he revealed. "Me, I gotta see Mike. So I’m looking at everybody in the hallway facing the wall like, ‘These n***** is bugging.'"

Jay-Z brings out Michael Jackson Summer Jam 2001www.youtube.com

While Jackson surprised the Nassau Colosseum crowd that year, the 2001 Summer Jam also marked the date when JAY-Z debuted the Nas diss track “Takeover.”

Elsewhere in the conversation, Bleek shared that to surprise his wife with a birthday trip to Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour, he had to hit up Hov.

Bleek’s MJ story is the latest to come out of the Roc-A-Fella camp, as Just Blaze revealed in March that the King of Pop recorded vocals for Jay-Z’s “Girls Girls Girls (Remix).”

“So Michael Jackson is on the ‘Girls, Girls, Girls remix’ — the A version,” the producer said on Idea Generation. “And I never knew that. I don’t know if I didn’t go to the studio that day. I thought it was an urban legend or something that Jay said like in jest one day or just was some kind of a myth."

Just Blaze on Shaping Roc-A-Fella’s Sound, Writing Hit Records & Disrupting the Video Game Industryyoutu.be

He continues: “So one day I was looking for something on the server and I find this straight folder that says ‘MJ vocals.’ And I’m like, ‘MJ — don’t that mean Michael Jackson — oh whatever.’ And I’m thinking it’s probably stuff from — remember Jay had or remember they had the ‘[You] Rock My World’ — so I’m thinking it’s, like, takes from that session. And I’m like, ‘I don’t think they recorded this at Baseline, but let me take a listen and see what it is.’ And I realize as I’m listening to it it’s him singing on ‘Girls, Girls, Girls.’ And I’m like … ‘It’s true.’ The last 20 years, I just found it during quarantine. So all these years, I’ve never known it was a real thing. And turns out the files had been sitting downstairs this entire time.”