Beanie Sigel Speaks On Prison Sentence, Relationship With Jay-Z

by Sean Ryon

Beanie Sigel reflects upon his upcoming two-year prison sentence and why the time for a sit-down with Jay-Z has passed.

In less than a month, Beanie Sigel will head back to prison to serve out a two-year sentence for failure to pay his taxes. Now, in a recent interview with XXL, the Philadelphia emcee reflects on his impending time behind bars.
Beans explained that his upcoming sentence is a painfully sobering experience. He said that it's difficult to prepare oneself for jail and the concept of becoming a number rather than a person. Still, he said that once he's released in 2014, he plans on changing his lifestyle and never looking back on his past.
"I’m done [with prison]. It’s over!" he said. "In that environment, this outside world…you gotta hang all that up. When I go in there, I won’t be Beanie Sigel. I’ll be 57613-066. That’s who I’ll be. I won’t be Beanie Sigel. I’m not gonna sit in my cell and write rhymes everyday. That’s a real thing inside. There’s people inside who ain’t ever coming out of those buildings. I would talk to them and do my best to be a window for some of ’em who are never gonna make it outta there. We all have the same commissary, we all have the same amount of money on our books, we all gonna eat the same food and nobody cell gonna look different. I’m gonna be a number like everybody else."
Sigel also spoke on his rocky relationship with former Roc-A-Fella cohort Jay-Z. Referencing his 2009 song "What You Talkin Bout? (I Ain’t Ya Average Cat),” Beans said that the time for a conversation with Hova is long gone; he's come to understand that his partnership with the Brooklyn emcee wasn't built on friendship, but rather business.
"There’s no need for that conversation anymore [with Jay-Z]...it’s been too long," he said. "That’s all I ever wanted. Jay-Z don’t owe me a dime. What me and Jay had or what I thought we had was a brothership that was beyond music and business. A brothership that I trusted and that I’d put my life in harm’s way for ‘this thing of ours, this La Familia.’ I thought it was bigger than music, I thought it was bigger than business, but as I got older and thought about it…that’s all it was, it was business. So, the conversation is for what? I kind of understand…Jay was growing, he’s in a different space, he was rubbing shoulders with different people and when you get around certain people and you get into a certain bracket, sometimes you got to disassociate yourselves with the hoodlums...at one point, I thought this rap shit ruined me. I got in more trouble being Beanie Sigel than when I was just Mac."