Mario has revealed that he turned down performing with Jay-Z to go on a date back when he was a teenager.
During a recent episode of Drink Champs, the “Let Me Love You” singer revisited the time his hit single “Just A Friend 2002” had just come out and he was beginning to blow up.
“(Jay-Z) had two shows in Madison Square Garden and he wanted me to come out on his set and meet me,” Mario explained. “At the time, I was dating this girl in Jersey. And the night they wanted me to come out, I already had plans with her.”
Mario said his manager called and told him about the opportunity but that he had to refuse. “I was like, ‘Shh, ahh, I can’t,” Mario revealed.
He hadn’t been thinking about potential repercussions at the time, but Mario revealed a surprising one that could still have implications to this day. “I passed up on that, and I don’t know if Jay took that some type of way, but I was young, having fun,” Mario explained before revealing that he’s never been invited to the Roc Nation Brunch.
Mario could have a point. Jay-Z isn’t the type of person to forget about what people in the industry have done — just ask Ne-Yo, who revealed on Club Shay Shay in 2023 that Jay-Z constantly asks him why he gave away the hit song “Let Me Love You” to Mario.
“Shortly before the Def Jam situation happened, I leaned on songwriting,” Ne-Yo said. “I was just a songwriter, so I wrote a song for Mario, [‘Let Me Love You’], so this song goes on and stays at number one for 12 or 13 weeks, something like that, becomes one of the most played songs in radio history.”
“The first time I got to meet Jay-Z, I’d been signed for a couple months at this point. I walk into the room and he’s in there,” Ne-Yo continued. “It’s in L.A. Reid’s office. I walk in, ‘Hey it’s nice to meet you.’ He like, ‘Man, why you give that damn song away?’ Nice to meet you too bruh, cool. I’m Ne-Yo. ‘Why you give that damn song away?’ To this day, he yell at me about giving that damn song away. But I was just a songwriter when I wrote it, I didn’t write it for myself.”
