Notorious BIG Stopped Lil Kim From Recording with Jodeci, Member Reacts

In a 2012 interview with “RapFix Live,” Lil Kim shared that The Notorious BIG locked her in a room to prevent her from working with legendary 90s r&b group Jodeci.

“Big was very protective of me, like overprotective,” said Lil’ Kim.

Per MTV: Lil’ Kim on a remix of their 1995 single “Luv U 4 Life” and offered her a lot of money to do it, but Big, who was both Kim’s musical mentor and lover, vetoed the feature.

“At that time, it was the beginning of my career; I hadn’t seen that much money for one record,” said Lil Kim.

“So Big comes to where I was stayin’ and he’s like, ‘You ain’t goin’ nowhere, I’m gonna go out there to see what’s goin’ on,’ ” Kim remembered of Biggie’s interference while laughing. “He locks me in the room; he was like, ‘Oh you ain’t gonna go do no song with them.’ “

Appearing on a recent episode of the Scoop B Radio Podcast, I asked Jodeci member, Dalvin DeGrate, what he knew about it.

INGLEWOOD, CA – OCTOBER 04: Jodeci perform onstage during the Bad Boy Family Reunion Tour at The Forum on October 4, 2016 in Inglewood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Live Nation)

“You know, I heard Lil Kim say that,” he told me on Scoop B Radio.

“To my knowledge when I saw her and I saw that interview, I knew that she was supposed to be on one of our remixes and the label offered at the time it was like $100,000 dollars; something that was really a lot against our knowledge. And me and Lil Kim are friends and you know, she had said a couple things and I guess this was when the East Coast/ West Coast fighting and they thought that we took sides because of the whole Suge Knight thing. I guess they were upset about that. I saw it in the interview and this was maybe a couple of years ago. So I guess it must be true. She wasn’t on the remix we’re friends and our friendship kind of came to a close at a time but we became friends again about 4 or 5 years ago. Other than that, yeah. I guess it is true. She said it, so…”

The Notorious BIG thought the world of Jodeci. In fact, Biggie was once caught on video singing his rendition of Jodeci’s “Freek’n You.”

RARE: The Notorious B.I.G Singing A Song By JODECI2014-02-15T20:43:37Z

In that Biggie crooned: “Every time I close my eyes, I wake up feeling so horny,” he sings after the individual filming tells Big to “hit that note” that must have been stuck in their heads all day.

Dalvin DeGrate tells me he thinks the world of the late great. “Let me tell you this, Biggie was a good friend of mine before he dropped the record,” he told me on the Scoop B Radio Podcast.

“I knew Biggie before when he was doing his first record when he was on the Who’s the Man? Soundtrack. Before he recorded anything, Puffy brought him around and he had this guy who wanted to put a record out which was his first record and we was cool. Then all of the sudden after he blew up I think – just like me a Tionna [T-Boz]. It’s the same thing. When people get in the middle and sometimes they pull you away; it happens all the time man. You forget the things and the times before you were successful. I’ve seen it a lot. I’ve ushered a lot of people into this industry that you wouldn’t even know unless I said something. They would probably cut their own wrists if they say they came from the Jodeci camp or the Dalvin and Devante or be introduced by Dalvin and Davante. You don’t get these accolades from people that are not in the business. Like I said, Biggie took a long drive to D.C. it was Biggie and my cousin and we drove to D.C.; we was following Diddy and these were friendships that I had. I don’t know where the animosity came along the lines through the rest of the years unless, it was for that whole East Coast/ West Coast thing. But other than that, Biggie was a big Jodeci fan. He was there though the MCA days, all those days; the early days, know what I’m sayin’?”