Just Blaze Calls Out Producer in Alleged Jay Z Extortion Plot
Chauncey Mahan, the producer/engineer at the center of an alleged extortion plot involving Jay Z's lost recordings didn't do a very good job when he was on the team constructing music for The Roc, according to Just Blaze's Twitter feed from yesterday (April 21).
Mahan continuously made mistakes resulting in super engineer Young Guru stepping in to take his place, Blaze wrote. "Chauncey stayed effing up. Big part of the reason Hip and I brought in Guru."
Mahan was questioned last week after he attempted to broker a $100,000 deal to return the music to Jay's people. He worked with Hov between 1998 and 2002, and got his hands on music from albums like Volume 3…Life and Time of S. Carter and The Dynasty: Roc La Familia.
Apparently, this isn't the first time Mahan has caused friction. "I'll never forget the day Chauncey stepped to Duro wanting to fight lol," Blaze recalled of an altercation between Mahan and Roc-A-Fella records engineer Kevin "Duro" Ifill. "This guy ruined every tape transfer for the Dynasty Album. Duro calls him out on it. He runs over to Soundtrack studios, comes in the room like 'yo Duro I ain't no b---h' takes his jacket off. Me and Duro just looked at him. Blankest of stares.. And went back to work."
Mahan remembers things much differently. In his recollection, Hov was actually the irresponsible one and nothing more than a "stupid kid smoking blunts" back in the day. He also denies blackmail allegations and claims that Def Jam Records told him to keep track of the master recordings from those albums because no one else was doing the job.
Furthermore, Mahan only requested $100,000 from Jay's business partners at Live Nation to cover the storage costs of keeping the music for the last several years, he says. He also claims the master recordings don't sound very good.
Mahan turned over the recordings to authorities after he was busted trying to hand over the music to Live Nation in exchange for money.
A judge will decide which of the parties is the rightful owner.
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(photo: John Ricard / BET)