Madonna allegedly went for the kill upon meeting Montell Jordan in the 1990s.
Both artists had major success during the era, but it was Jordan that made a breakthrough with his debut 1995 hit “This Is How We Do It.”
On the May 1 episode of podcast We Sound Crazy, Jordan recounted a trip to the Grammys at the height of the song’s success. Around the 37-minute mark of the video below, the R&B singer said that he was introduced to Madonna at the awards ceremony, and the pop icon gave him a cold reaction.
“When I reach out my hand to shake her hand, she looks at me and she goes, ‘Don’t I own you?'” Jordan recalled. He initially wasn’t “processing” the question until putting the pieces together.
“When ‘This Is How We Do It’ runs up the charts, before it gets to number one, there’s a song there called ‘Take a Bow’ from Madonna. So ‘This Is How We Do It’ is the song that took Madonna’s record off the charts,” he said.
“They tried to do a publishing deal with me for my portion of ‘This Is How We Do It,’ and we wouldn’t do a deal with them. She had a company called Maverick Records.”
But Jordan said that his co-writer, the late Oji Pierce, did sign a deal with Maverick, meaning that “This Is How We Do It” was partly owned by the seven-time Grammy winner.
“She was still basically saying, “Yeah, don’t I own you, because I still have that spot that you had, that number one spot,” he concluded.
Jordan still eats off the 1995 classic, which is RIAA certified 5x platinum. He also isn’t the only artist to allege that they had an awkward first encounter with Madonna: Pink has a similar story.
