Ghostface Killah, member of the legendary rap group Wu-Tang Clan, alleges the reason the group never dominated the airwaves was due to Diddy.
In promotion of his upcoming album Supreme Clientele 2, Ghostface stopped by Bootleg Kev’s podcast. In the interview, posted Sunday, August 17, Tony Starks recalled the time when the Staten Island-based rap collective toured with Rage Against The Machine in 1997, the year Wu-Tang Forever released. The optics of this tour created static between the group and HOT 97. “We left that tour, and it was messed up because we had to make a decision,” Ghostface explained. “Like, come back to your people over here, or stay over here and get big with these guys… We left.”
The unlocked memory led to a conversation about Wu-Tang’s experience with the Bad Boy Records founder. Ghostface said RZA told him that Diddy allegedly blocked the group from being played on HOT 97.
“RZA told me this like maybe a year ago, and said like, ‘Yo, Puff admitted to saying that he stopped our records up there,’” Ghost explained.
“So it was all Bad Boy,” he continued. “We dropped ‘Triumph,’ no radio play with that shit. So it came out that he told the truth, like, ‘Yo, I had to do it.’ He had the power. I don’t know what he paid ’em, but he had the power.”
He continued, “Listen, we was a threat. We was coming, if ‘Triumph’ was promoted like it was supposed to be and we would have stayed on that radio right there, I think things right now would have been a little bit different.”