Why Would I Do That to Jennifer Lopez? | The Mistakes Series

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Irv Gotti's Story

2:35In 2001, the head of Sony Music, Tommy Mottola, called the rap producer Irv Gotti. At the time, Gotti worked with Jay-Z, Ja Rule, Ashanti, DMX. In the hip-hop world of the early aughts, he was at the top of his game. He was like, yo, I need you to make a record. And I said, what? He said, make a record with J-Lo and put Ja on it and make it a duet.

3:05And I said, yo, I need total creative autonomy. I'm doing whatever the fuck I want. Tommy was like, you can do whatever the fuck you want as long as it's a duet with Ja Rule and J-Lo. Mottola wanted Gotti to do a remix of I'm Real, a single off J-Lo's second album. The first time around, it had been a generic ballad. Mottola thought it could be reinvigorated. Gotti went to work and started to make a demo with Ja Rule. And Ashanti. I said, yo, I got the record.

3:36He said, I'm real. Him and his wife, Talia, come to the crack house, my studio in Soho. And it's funny, because the freight elevator used to always go out. So him and Talia walked up six flights of stairs. He gets upstairs. He said, this fucking record better be fucking good. So I played. I played real for him. Him and his wife go crazy. They're like, oh my God. It was a one listen. They listened. And it was like, it's the biggest record. So he puts me on a private jet.

4:08I fly to L.A., record the record with J-Lo. Next thing you know, the record comes out. It's all over the radio. I'm talking about maybe a couple days after we recorded it. It's all over the radio. A few months later, Gotti made another remix from J-Lo's album, Ain't It Funny.

4:39The same thing happened. You don't even understand. Those records was colossal, not just in the States, on the planet Earth. I don't give a fuck if you went to Germany, Australia, Africa. That shit was in heavy rotation. Look, those was the two biggest records. And for me to do I'm Real and instead of fuck it, and did Ain't It Funny, it was like, at that point in my life, I was like on top of the world. It was a feeling of invincibility. It was a feeling of I could do whatever the fuck I want.

5:12To portray who I was at that moment, that's who I was. I'm from the hood. I'm making all of this money. I'm producing records for everybody. All of them are working and going number one. And money's raining from the sky. I could do no wrong.

5:30It was at this point that Irv Gotti made a mistake.

Revisionist History Introduction

5:36My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This is the third episode in our mini-series inspired by Michael Linton and Josh Steiner's book, From Mistakes to Meaning, where the authors sit down with a wide range of people and try to make sense of their biggest screw-ups. One of their interviews was with Irv Gotti, just before Gotti had a stroke and died at the age of 54. I listened to the interview and I found his story so moving

6:08that I asked Steiner and Linton if I could include it in this series. Because in his story, I think, is a really important lesson. Not about the person who makes the mistake, but about the people around the person who makes the mistake. The witnesses. Man, I grew up old, man. I grew up... Let me describe how I grew up. I'm the youngest of eight kids. This is Gotti talking to Linton and Steiner about his childhood and growing up in Queens.

6:41We have no money.

6:44We live in the home. I sleep in the attic. You ever slept in the attic of a house? In the summertime, there's no refuge. It's a hundred and change. You wake up every day, you wake up in a puddle of sweat.

7:01Like, that was my life. It was a lot of love. My family, the most loving family, but we had nothing.

7:10So when you talk about...

7:13The shit you told me, I'm not... I don't give a fuck, yo. I'm getting money. Oh, I'm gonna get it. I'm gonna work my ass off and get it. I don't give a fuck what comes from it. He was blunt, reckless, ambitious, and hugely talented. His rise in the music world was swift. It was no accident that Batola called Gotti to work with Jennifer Lopez, then well on her way to becoming one of the biggest celebrities in America. And when the two of them met

7:44at Gotti's recording studio, Gotti from Queens, Jaila from the Bronx, they click. Just so you know what to expect, we're giving you the unfiltered Gotti.

7:57So I had like 30 hood niggas in the studio and in walks Jaila, and she was straight Jenny from the block. She had on some sweatpants and a tank top. And if I tell you, she got in that studio and she had every one of my guys fall in love with her. She worked and talked with everybody and I was just like, yo, she's just so dope. You know what I'm saying? Because she could have been on some

8:27I'm a big star bougie shit, but she was the total opposite.

8:33The biggest sex symbol, biggest superstar, got on some sweatpants, her ass was looking fucking phenomenal. She worked, she literally worked the whole room. Like when she left, every guy was like, yo, she dope. I think she liked me. I'm like, yo, dog. She's, she worked the show. She, she worked the fucking room. But I thought it was so dope of her. And me and her, specifically, yo, we hit it off.

9:04Benny Medina, her manager.

9:08Benny Medina was like, Irv, you're going to be like the Quincy Jones to her Michael Jackson. He was like, we're not doing nothing musically unless you're involved.

9:22A year later, Elle magazine decided to do a cover story on Jennifer Lopez. It was for their sex and body issue. June 2002, headline, big letters, J-Lo, on fashion, that song, and Puffy. Puffy referred to Puffy Combs, the infamous rap impresario who she'd just broken up with. And that song referred to Ain't It Funny because Gotti's reinterpretation of the song turned it into the story of someone coming out of a very

9:53problematic relationship. The writer asks her, is that song about Puffy? She says, no, it's not. Then the reporter calls Gotti. J-Lo says Ain't It Funny isn't about Puffy. What do you say? And Gotti says, oh, it's absolutely about Puffy. And J-Lo knows it. Here's the exact quote from the Elle magazine article, which, by the way, is nearly impossible to find now. My producer had to get someone at the New York Public Library

10:23to unearth the issue from an off-site storage unit. I ain't gonna lie, we was thinking of effing with Puffy because that's what the world wants to hear.

10:34And Gotti tells the reporter a story about running into Puffy before Ain't It Funny came out and playing him the demo. He says, you know the four seasons on Doheny in L.A.? I pull up and Puff's out there with his security and I say, Puff, come listen to the new record I did with your old bitch. So boom, he gets in the car. So I'm blasting the record and when it gets to the second verse, he jumps out of the car screaming, Gotti, you bastard. This is the second verse. Listen.

11:16He calls J-Lo's ex-boyfriend into his car and says, come listen to the new record I just did with your old bitch. In a very public way, Gotti was essentially saying, Jennifer Lopez wasn't being honest. He called her credibility into question. When I read it in L Magazine,

11:39J-Lo, quote, those records are not about Puff Daddy, end quote. It was, it's the worst mistake I've ever made in my life because I say that to say because J-Lo, Benny Medina, they was friends. They loved me. They loved me. Like, I was a rider for them and I would do things for them that probably no one else could do and I would get done for them

12:10and she was my friend. Like, why the fuck would I say that? Why the fuck would I say that? But Gotti didn't stop there. He kept going. Right? So I

12:28I went on to say other damaging things like how would she know? She didn't write the records. We made the records and wrote the records. She just did what we said. So she don't know who the fuck we was talking about. And yeah, we was talking about Diddy. And then I said some more damaging shit. I was like, guys like me, we didn't listen to J- we don't listen to J-Lo's music. I made guys like me listen to J-Lo's music. I said before then we just hit the mute button

12:59and looked at her ass. Yeah. Gotti reflected on this with Michael Linton and Josh Steiner when they spoke. Wow. And you can pull all this up in the Elle magazine. It's there. Those are vivid quotes. Those are like supreme asshole quotes that wasn't warranted. And when I look back I was like, what did you do to your friend? Yeah.

13:29So needless to say it ruined my relationship with J-Lo. I apologized. I sent her candy and flowers and apologized a million times and I knew I was high. That's no excuse. You know what I'm saying? I apologized. And she accepted my apology but it forever damaged your relationship. Right. You know, superstars like J-Lo they have a small

14:00circle of people who they could trust and I think I was in there for a second. Yeah. And I totally ruined it. Right. so I'm an asshole. Well, you were in that moment. I'm totally in the wrong and I'm a complete idiot. Make sure you say that that I said that I'm a complete idiot. She didn't warrant that. She didn't warrant nothing that I said. She was my friend.

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Mistakes and Their Roots

18:00tried to explore in this series is that mistakes have roots. They aren't random events, they come from somewhere. They arise out of a context, but the context often isn't obvious, not to those around the mistake maker, and often not even to the mistake maker themselves. In Gotti's case, the context was a telephone call he'd been on, just before the reporter called. It was with a prominent music industry executive. Gotti asked that the man's name not be used, so we're going to bleep out every mention

18:31of his name. All you need to know is that the executive is white, and Gotti was black. The two of them had an argument. One of Gotti's artists had played a part in a hit song, and was in the music video, but had been left out of the radio version, and Gotti was unhappy about it. So, I was like, yo, you're killing my artists. You got him on the video, but on radio, he's not there. It's sending mixed signals, why are you hurting me? Their argument got heated.

19:03The executive said it wasn't his fault. The decision was someone else's at his label, a black man. He was like, I told that fat nigga not to put this out. But when he said the N word, oh, that's when I went crazy. Wow. I said, what the fuck you say? I said, you just called Corey Rooney, nigga? I said, when this nigga see you, I'm going to fuck you up. I said, how about that?

19:33And he was like, and we arguing. But he said, he used the N word on some racist shit. He said, I told that fat nigga not to put the record out or put him on him.

19:45Yeah. But when he said nigga, I went, that's, that's, that's the anger. Yeah. I'm not a volatile person. I'm not a pop off. I would describe myself as a cool guy, level headed. But it's something about when a white person like uses the word nigga to me, oh, I'm ready to kill. because it's

20:15like, you start thinking of all of the fucked up shit that black people been through and you got the audacity to say nigga in front of me, oh, I'm going to show you a nigga now. You know what I'm saying? Like I used to always say like, when people would ask me, how would you be able, how would you think you would be able to operate in those times of racism?

20:41And I always answer, I would die you know what I'm saying? Because I couldn't take the racism that would have been bestowed upon me, I would have killed me a couple white people and they would have hung me and killed me and my life would be over. I couldn't take them doing something to my mother or, you know, hanging my father and I'm living life. Nah, you're going to have to kill me too. So, these are the thoughts that's in my

21:12mind. Yeah. Have you experienced that before where you had white people say things? A lot of my white friends say, yo, that's my nigga, but I'm not mad at that. Yeah.

21:25When they say that's my nigga, it's N-I-G-G-A.

21:30He said, yo, I told that fat nigga, that's N-I-G-G-E-R. It's a big, big difference. Like, I couldn't, I couldn't believe that he just used the N-word to me. That's what made me so volatile. And it was so weird. It was like, as soon as I hung up with the phone rang with L. It wasn't like a five minute, it wasn't even like a five minute cool off period. No. Hung up, yo, this is L Magazine.

22:04Yo, what the fuck y'all want?

22:08Sort of like saying hello, a little different.

22:12Can I ask, so what do you think it was that made you, you think you were just going to lash out at anybody who showed up in that moment? Uh, yeah, within that five minutes, yeah. It was going to get the exact same vibe. What the fuck you want? Yeah. You just go out and do L Magazine, not one of my boys. Yeah.

22:35Yeah. So, I said, what the fuck you want? And he was like, oh, I see ya. Like, as soon as he heard that response, he immediately cut to the chase. He said, oh, I'll just get right to it. you know, J-Lo said that the records I'm Real and Ain't It Funny are not about Puff Daddy, her ex-boyfriend. And I was like,

23:05what? That bitch is lying.

23:09This was Irv Gotti's mistake. It changed his life. There was a version of The Next 20 Years where he could have been a creative partner with one of the biggest stars in the world. He had ideas from movies, collaborations. J-Lo was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. That's why this was a mistake. It had consequences. But there was a point in Gotti's interview with Steiner and Linton that I couldn't get out of my mind. Listen.

23:37How quickly did you realize that you'd made a mistake?

23:41I didn't realize quickly.

23:45I was so angry and mad when I got off the phone with Elle magazine. I thought nothing of it. It hit me when they sent me like the transcripts of what they was going to print. How long after that was that?

24:02A couple weeks or so I would say. And when you did that, did you realize it right away? Yeah, I was like don't print that. But they was like it's too late. They loved it. They loved it.

24:20And they said it was too late. I was trying to get them not to print it but they wasn't. They were like hey buddy, you said it. Yeah. Did you get any help to try to get them not to do it or did you just let it go? I let it go. I gave it my effort but after my effort I just let it go. He realized he'd made a mistake that in his anger at one person he had said something he didn't mean to another. And when he tried to prevent his mistake from having consequences

24:51from turning into a serious mistake, he was told, hey buddy, you said it, it's too late. After Linton and Steiner's book came out, I interviewed them on stage at the 92nd Street Y in New York and I brought up their chapter on Gaudi. So, who's the villain of the story?

25:12Not every story has to have a villain. No? But tell me who the villain of the story is. So don't Michael, don't fall for this. Like this is okay, this is why he's so good, but don't fall for his trap. Like okay, you can say not every Well, I gotta keep the conversation going. I would argue it was the executive who used the N-word. Josh, who's the villain of the story? Here's what I think. That guy acted terribly. There is no villain in the story. And I think an important piece of what we tried to describe is that there isn't always a villain.

25:43There isn't always some outside danger. There isn't always some consequence that has been derived from a villain. That these things are deep-rooted in ourselves. And we're not villainous. And so that aspect of our personality doesn't make us bad. This isn't a morality test. This is an opportunity to explore oneself and come to terms and acceptance of the fact that we're flawed and the way to get hopefully healthier and better is to talk about it. Who do you think the villain is? A man who has a very close relationship to the biggest rock star in

26:14the world, a relationship that has resulted in extraordinary commercial success, is called by a reporter and is asked a question about that relationship and in the course of answering that question, the man says, oh, she's a liar. Who's the villain in the story? Do you think it's Irv?

26:32No? It's the reporter. But the reporter doesn't. No, no, no, no. This is a crucial, crucial point, Michael. Okay. And I think this is because it's about when mistakes are made and they are as deeply rooted as you suggest they are. The whole argument of the book is a mistake can come out in the spur of the moment, but it's not something that's coming out in the spur of the moment. It's something that has roots. Right. And what does that require of those who observe and

27:02are part of the process in which the mistake is played out? It requires some degree of grace and forgiveness and understanding. Yep. So the reporter hears