Too Short has a musical career respected by the masses! But there seems to be that one song of his that the industry loves: “Blow The Whistle!”
After all, it was sampled by Drake last year, in “For Free” and in 2008 in Jay-Z’s remake.
But that remake by Hov is what had everybody talking!
member that time DeShawn Stevenson called LeBron James overrated?
The scene was the 2008 NBA Playoffs, former Washington Wizards guard, DeShawn Stevenson called the Cleveland Cavaliers overrated. James could care less and said that Stevenson calling him overrated is the equivalent of Jay-Z responding to negative comments from Soulja Boy.
And with the snap of a finger, Jay-Z released a diss track. In fact, with Too $hort’s blessing, Hov got the instrumental and lyrics and took shot back at Stevenson in his friend, LeBron James’ honor.
For those keeping score at home, Jay-Z said:
“Ask my n**** LeBron! We so big we ain’t gotta respond. When you talkin to a don, please have respect like you’re talking to your mom. We let the money do the talkin. As you see we be talkin rather often. The ROC Boys in the buildin. Another hundred fifty million don’t it sound like we yellin?!!! Who the f*** overrated?! If anything they underpaid him. Hatin that’s only ‘gonna make him spend the night out of spite with the chick you’ve been datin. We the best of the best. We ‘gon be here so the rest could take a rest, I gotta get this off my chest, No pause none of that s***, get off my d***”
Whoa!
Recently, Too Short was asked about that track. He spoke with radio host Brandon ‘Scoop B’ Robinson about LeBron, Jay Z and the incident itself on Robinson’s “Scoop B Radio.”
Click Here to Listen To Short’s Interview On Scoop B Radio In Its Entirety
According to Too Short, in addition to Jay-Z airing out Stevenson, he believes that the song served another purpose as well.
Too Short said the following…
“So I guess in his mind he was gearing up to…at that point I think he was thinking about signing LeBron and having him play for the Nets. (Jay Z) was courting LeBron and LeBron was special to him and (Stevenson) stepped on LeBron’s toes…and Jay was like ‘I’m going to shut this down.’ And he probably saw the moment where the crowd reacted to the song and then that was on his mind.”
Too Short walked Scoop B through the process of Jay-Z approached Too Short with the instrumental and chorus vocals:
“He was like, ‘Could you send me the instrumental to that?’ If a rapper called me and said: ‘send me the instrumental,’ I’ll probably say something like: ‘We didn’t even bounce the instrumental, so we don’t even have one.’ When Jay called, I was like: ‘ it will be there in a couple of hours man.’ I had no idea what he was going to do with it, but I am glad he did.”
The feud with Jay-Z, James and Stephenson happened in 2008. But the Nets were gearing up for a big 2010. If you recall, ‘10 was a big NBA free agency year. The Nets were looking to sign at least one free agent in a player pool that included James, Chris Bosh, Amar’e Stoudemire, Joe Johnson, Dwyane Wade, Rudy Gay and Carlos Boozer.
James never came anywhere close to the Hudson River except on road games facing the Nets and the Knicks. He’d end up teaming with Wade and Bosh out in South Beach; winning multiple NBA championships.
One can’t help but wonder what if?
