Ashanti’s name has been in the news repeatedly this past week as a result of Irv Gotti’s new documentary series, The Murder Inc. Story, on BET. The conversation began when Gotti made an appearance on the N.O.R.E podcast, Drink Champs, and went into great detail about dating the singer while he was separated from his wife. When their relationship became the focus of last Tuesday’s episode of The Murder Inc. Story, audiences began to accuse the label CEO of being obsessed with Ashanti. And even label mate Ja Rule spoke out saying, he does not “condone or agree with the behavior nor the way Gotti handled things on drink champs.”
When Irv Gotti approached us on the MTV VMA Red Carpet, we gave him a chance to reassess his comments given the backlash, but instead he doubled down on what he calls his “truth.”
“It’s my life. They paid me a bunch of money to talk about my life at Murder Inc. and I caught all this flack because of it,” Gotti tells ESSENCE. “It’s my life. I’m not a lying type person. I wish Ashanti all the best. If you’re watching Ashanti, I wish you all the best. But I just told my truth.”
So far, Ashanti has not publicly responded to her former boss or spoken on the details of their private relationship which also raised brows because of their 10-year age gap and the fact that Ashanti would have been around 19 or 20 years of age at the time he shared he kissed her. However, Irv maintains his behavior wasn’t predatory.
“It was funny for me to see the backlash I received. They were trying to get the #MeToo Movement and I was like, ‘Yo, I said I loved her. We were together for three years…I wish her all the best.”
Watch his full remarks in the video above.
