Tony Yayo revealed in a new interview with VladTV that he was an early believer in artists like French Montana, Nicki Minaj, Max B, Danny Brown, and J. Cole.
“I brought Max B and French to Fifty[50 Cent] earlier, a lot of people don’t remember that,” he said.
Tony continued by claiming that he brought J. Cole to 50 Cent before he was signed to Jay Z. The former G-Unit member remembered visiting 50 Cent’s house with J. Cole and playing “Simba” from “The Come Up Mixtape, Vol. 1.”
“I was on J. Cole early when J. Cole was in Fifty’s crib. He was in the basement playing Simba and all that. Before he was signed with Jay.”
The 44-year-old rapper also stated that one of his strengths is identifying new talents.
“I was on Danny Brown early, I was on Nicki early, I was on a lot of them early, cause that is one of my talents is finding the next ones, it is easy,” he said.
Yayo tweeted a selfie of himself and J. Cole in 2015, echoing some of the same points mentioned in the VladTV interview above. Tony captioned the post, writing:
“TBT Overseas with J. cole it’s crazy he was at 50 Cent’s crib playing Simba I knew he was going to blow before Jay signed them. If the Label had let me do the A&r work Cole, DannyBrown, and a couple of other mainstream artists would have been on the Unit.”
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Not only that, but J. Cole has also talked about the visit to 50 Cent’s house in a 2013 interview with Vibe, saying that former G-Unit Records CEO Sha Money XL tried to arrange a meeting between them.
During the same conversation with VladTV, Tony also recounted how many times he’s been shot at. Claiming the incident happened five times. The former G-Unit member briefly described the moments, saying he heard the noise of the bullets.
