Comprised of Styles P, Sheek Louch and Jadakiss, The Lox began their musical journey in their hometown of Yonkers, a suburb of New York City. Here, they aimed to follow in the footsteps of DMX, an emcee from their area who had taken over hip-hop.
The group began to make noise following a demo they created produced by the Brooklyn musician Jaz-O. Jaz-O was a key player in the career of Jay-Z and, along with Big Daddy Kane, was one of the first individuals to teach the Reasonable Doubt musician how to navigate the music industry
During the early-2000s following a string of successful albums, Roc-A-Fella was one of the hottest crews in hip-hop. However, even during the height of their success, the collective was having issues behind the scenes.
At the turn of the millennium, the tension between Roc-A-Fella and The Lox began to build as Styles P saw Jay-Z attempting to block and overshadow his crewmate Jadakiss by consistently appearing on tracks alongside him almost as if he were trying to steal the limelight.
In an appearance on Math Hoffa’s My Expert Opinion podcast, the emcee (real name David Styles) explained how conniving Dame Dash and Jay-Z were back in the 2000s, stating, “You already know what HOV and Dame and them were doing, so that was more personal for me. Kiss and HOV kept being on the same remixes, and something happened. It just felt like they were aiming at Kiss for me.”
The Lox and State Property (Roc-A-Fella’s first signed group) were consistently crossing paths at shows, and the situation only worsened when the camps clashed in person. Revealing to Hoffa that even when he was famous, he still carried two pistols, Styles unveiled, “With Beans and HOV it was more like I got love for them and this is our story when we came up. At that time, I had two guns on me every day — not because of them but because of life.”
However, he admitted that although The Lox had beef with G-Unit as well as Roc-A-Fella, the rage he had towards Jay-Z could have led to death as he admitted, “We didn’t go to war with 50. I would’ve shot Beans and HOV at that time, I wouldn’t have shot 50.” You can watch Styles P talk about the Roc-A-Fella feud in the video below.
