Jay-Z's 2001 Summer Jam set at the old Giants Stadium lives on as one of the greatest live performances in hip-hop history. Jay's sudden attack on Prodigy and Nas came at such a pivotal moment in the genre that many don't even recall the Roc-A-Fella rapper bringing out King of Pop Michael Jackson to close the show. And even Jay name dropping Nas was outshined by one particular act the great Brooklyn rapper pulled. That being when he exposed P with the "Takeover" line: "When I was pushing weight back in ’88, you was a ballerina/I got the pictures, I seen ya," as a photograph of the Mobb Deep rapper in a leotard flashed on the screen behind him.
While reminiscing about the historic moment during an interview on the Murder Master Music Show on Friday, November 17, Infamous Mobb member Big Twins shared a little-known fact about where the controversial photo was taken and how Jay got his hands on it. As it turns out, one of P's Queens allies was actually responsible for handing it over.
"If you look his grandmother up, his grandmother, that's the person where he was at, dancing. She's a famous person. She is super famous, his grandmother. Like, she teached people that went down in history. Like, they went to her school. Like, her school was number one in New York for awhile. You know what I mean?" Twins said. "Ashanti went there. That's the person that gave Jay-Z the picture ... She had the book because she went to the school with P."
The correlation between Prodigy's attendance at the Bernice Johnson Cultural Arts Center and Ashanti being able to get Jay the photo, as a former student of the school makes perfect sense. As Twins noted, Prodigy (like Nas) indeed came from a family that was richly rooted in music history. His mother Frances Collins sang for the 60's group, The Crystals, and his father was jazz Hall-of-Famer Big Bud Johnson. The matriarch of the family was Bernice Johnson, herself. As a figure who worked alongside the great Ben Vereen and trained Diana Ross' children, there were surely some treasured portraits of some of music's greats lining the halls of her dance institution. And along with those photos, was the image of her own grandson, Albert "Prodigy" Johnson.
With Irv Gotti being somebody who had an intricate connection with Jay as an early Roc-A-Fella producer, it is clear to see how one thing could have lead to the other. During the podcast, Big Twins would blast the move by Irv, calling it "f**k boy s**t."
