“What the public sees is that one day on the radio,” Sheek explains. “We’ll see Puff but he’ll tell you straight up ‘deal with my lawyer’. This has been going on for a while. We did one album with Diddy, he still holding on to our publishing and we feel that [Diddy] should let it go by now, it’s been ten years!”

Refuting Diddy’s later claim that he only owns 20% as opposed to the 50% that The Lox claim, Sheek broke down the situation as being more of a matter of principle.

“No that’s totally wrong. When we brought up paper work to him when he was up at the station the other night, he didn’t care to address none of that. It would have been greater if we were both there. He definitely has way more publishing than that and at the end of the day, even if he has 3%, we feel like yo Diddy it’s over, ten years have passed dog. There’s no reason to hold on to none of it. They paid $3 million to get us off, we sold platinum for you, damn, you good!”

Sheek also addressed The Lox refusing to put out another album under the Jimmy Iovine headed Interscope label. And while the move may leave fans without an official Lox project for a while, the Yonkers MC explained that it was strictly a business move and that the trio would continue to put out material elsewhere.

“The whole thing is, we were not trying to get off Interscope, we were gonna be under the same umbrella and go with Jay[Z], which Jimmy Iovine was cool with. But a lot of things were put in the way. Not to put everything on him, but ya boy 50 over there trying to stop Styles’ project, and ‘don’t play this record’, etc. He couldn’t get at us lyrically so he had to go other routes and it’s not a fair fight over here. So we said we’re gonna focus on everything we got coming from D-Block and [wait] until they get it together and are ready to talk real shit.”

Sheek is also looking to continue moving his career forward, which includes promoting his newly released, Koch distributed album After Taxes, the follow-up project to 2003’s Walk With Me. And for those who think this is an opportunity to air out all of his lyrical beefs on 16 tracks, he has another thing coming.

“It ain’t a lot of money in beefing. I got the #1 independent record in the country right now. I sold 40,000 records in 7 days. That’s $8 off of every record. That’s the reason I went indie. I’m not trying to see 33 cents off every record.”

With top notch production and a guest list that includes hip hop heavyweights like Beanie Sigel, Ghostface Killah, and T.I. as well as his D-Block brethren, Sheek is planning on taking his career to the next plateau.

After Taxes is in stores now.

Written by Anthony Roberts