Dame Dash was not moved by Jay-Z’s Yankee Stadium celebration, and he said so with his usual bluntness. In a new interview with The Art of Dialogue, the Roc-A-Fella cofounder called Jay’s onstage reunion with Nas a little cringe and went on to pick apart several pieces of the three night run, from the Yankee hats to the now viral video of Beyoncé cutting Jay’s hair.
The Nas moment is where Dame Dash started. Jay-Z brought out Nas during the Reasonable Doubt anniversary night for a medley of “The World Is Yours” and “NY State of Mind,” a full circle moment given the brutal beef the two traded in the early 2000s. To most fans, watching two New York legends share a stage was a highlight. To Dame Dash, it was a letdown. He said he is used to seeing them beef and never wanted to watch Nas rap over a Jay beat or Jay play background for Nas, comparing the truce to seeing Godzilla and King Kong high five each other on stage. Dame even acknowledged the rivalry is not literally real, but said he simply loves the art of rap and the tension that comes with it. He likes when artists can battle, show each other respect, and keep battling, rather than what he dismissed as kumbaya.
From there, Dame Dash moved to the dress code. The entire residency leaned hard into Yankee Stadium iconography, with Jay opening in a Yankees fitted and jacket and the crowd draped in pinstripes. Dame said it was simply too much, joking that he does not want to see another Yankee hat for a while. His bigger point was about individuality. He said that once a hundred people are wearing the same hat, he is out, because he has no interest in wearing what everybody else is wearing. It was a small complaint, but a very Dame one.
The part that got the most detailed critique was the haircut. The residency opened with a cinematic clip of Beyoncé cutting Jay-Z’s hair while the two sat in the empty Yankee Stadium bleachers, a visual that debuted Jay’s fresh low cut and instantly went viral. Dame Dash was not buying the presentation. He said it looked scripted and unrealistic, pointing out that nobody gets a real shape up in the bleachers with no mirrors and no razors. He added that his own girl does not cut his hair, that he keeps a barber who comes to him, and that the whole thing read as Jay flexing his relationship rather than a natural moment. To Dame, it looked contrived, and that was the problem.
Underneath the jokes, Dame Dash landed on a bigger idea about legacy, and he reached for a comic book analogy to make it. He compared Roc-A-Fella to Batman, saying he wants to see Batman with the good uniform and the good car, crispy and at his peak, not the old and worn down version. Roc-A-Fella, in his telling, was that superhero, and he does not want the brand or its image shown aging. He said he never wants to see the old version of Batman or Superman, and by extension does not want to see Roc-A-Fella presented as anything less than its prime.
Dame Dash cofounded Roc-A-Fella Records with Jay-Z and Kareem “Biggs” Burke, and he was in the room for Reasonable Doubt, the 1996 debut the entire Yankee Stadium series was built to honor. The two later split in one of the most well known business fallouts in hip hop, and Dame has spent years as one of Jay’s most vocal critics. So watching him break down a Reasonable Doubt anniversary celebration, an album he helped put out, adds a layer that a random opinion would not carry. This is a founder reviewing the empire he helped build, from the outside looking in.
It should be said that Dame Dash is very much in the minority here. Jay-Z’s Yankee Stadium residency was a genuine event, drawing record crowds that included a reported 45,832 on the second night, and a guest list that ran from Beyoncé, Blue Ivy, and Nas to Eminem, Slick Rick, Pharrell, Rihanna, and Usher across the three shows. Most of the coverage framed it as a career defining, city shaking moment for Jay and for New York. Dame’s take is the lone loud skeptic in a room full of applause, which is more or less where he has always liked to stand.
None of it is likely to shake Jay-Z, who does not tend to respond to Dame Dash’s commentary, and Dame did not seem to expect a reply. He was doing what he does best, offering an unfiltered read that cuts against the consensus. Whether you think he is protecting the legacy of what Roc-A-Fella was or just critiquing a celebration he was not part of, Dame Dash made sure his opinion on the biggest hip hop moment of the summer was on the record, cringe and all.
