In an interview on The Bootleg Kev Podcast, Ghostface Killah said that Diddy helped block The Wu-Tang Clan from getting radio play around the release of their second studio album, Wu-Tang Forever.
While reminiscing about Wu-Tang’s tour with Rage Against the Machine in 1997, which they left before it ended, Ghost said that Diddy prevented them from getting radio play that same year. “We left that tour, and it was messed up because we had to make a decision,” he said. “Like, come back to your people over here, or stay over here and get big with these guys… We left.”
The group was blacklisted by Hot 97 after Ghostface Killah led a “fuck Hot 97” chant during their performance at Summer Jam that year.
“When we left and did the Hot 97… Shit was a disaster,” he said. “They cut our records off that day, they didn’t play no Wu shit no more. That’s when Puffy was really getting on his shit, know what I mean? … It just wasn’t the same no more… I cursed them n***a’s out.”
He said that he only found out recently that Diddy was partially responsible for the Hot 97 blacklisting.
“RZA told me this like maybe a year ago, and said like, ‘Yo, Puff admitted to saying that he stopped our records up there.’ … So it was all Bad Boy. 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. … 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 to right now would have been a little bit different.”
While the Wu-Tang Clan and Diddy never had an outright beef, there was a sense of animosity between them. This came out in Raekwon and Ghost’s famous “Shark N****s (Biters)” skit, in which the latter makes a pointed comment about rappers “biting off your album cover and shit,” specifically criticizing unnamed “happy go lucky n****s” who copied Nas’ album cover — which most people at the time took to be a dig at the Notorious B.I.G., whose debut LP cover featured a baby, just like Nas’ debut Illmatic, released months prior. Diddy also named his 1999 album Forever, a title surprisingly similar to the name of the Wu’s 1997 project, the aforementioned Wu-Tang Forever.
The only public confirmation of issues between Diddy and Wu-Tang at the time came when Ol’ Dirty Bastard crashed the 1998 Grammy Awards stage.
The late rapper interrupted Shawn Colvin’s acceptance speech for Song of the Year to express his disappointment at Diddy winning Best Rap Album over them. “Puffy is good, but Wu-Tang is the best,” he said. “I want you all to know that this is ODB, and I love you all.”
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