Mannie Fresh Squashes Beef With Lil Wayne, Signs New Deal With Jay-Z

Mannie Fresh recently called a New Orleans radio station, Q93, to discuss his new projects for 2007. In the interview, Fresh revealed he’s signed a new deal with Jay-Z and Def Jam Records. “I just did a deal with Jay-Z,” he said. “Dude reached out to me. He flew me up, we talked about it and they wrote something nice. It was a nice little proposal.” Fresh continued to say, “What made me take the deal is, they didn’t want me to only do this exclusive deal with them. They were like, “You can go do whatever it is you do.” So my thing [at Def Jam] is to overlook the southern artists they have, as well as sign [new] artists.”

Fresh also disclosed a conversation he had with Lil Wayne a month ago. “We had some words. I asked him if he had a problem with me, because in all honesty, I never had a problem with him,” Fresh said. “So I stepped to him like a man, like, ‘Dude, the problem is not with you, so don’t take sides that don’t got nothing to do with you. I got a problem with another man, it has nothing to do with you.’” Fresh went on to say, “[But] he [Lil Wayne] said, at the time, he was trippin’ and he took sides. But he reached out for his new album, so hopefully we gonna put something together and do business.”

In addition, Mannie says he’s going to produce on T.I.’s next album and is planning to get in the studio with Nas in the next two weeks. He’s also producing most of Juvenile’s next album. “I did the whole Juve album,” he said. “I executive produced the whole album and I did about 13 tracks on it. It’s that Juve y’all wanted.”