Ashanti and Irv Gotti have a long history.
She was discovered by Irv when she was just a teenager, and he signed her to his old record label in 2002.
Did Ashanti And Irv Gotti Ever Date?
But their relationship was reportedly more than just professional.
The two have given two very different stories about the way that they felt about each other in the early 2000s.
And these days, Ashanti allegedly does not want Irv to be a part of her life at all.
After hearing both sides of their story, the internet has pretty much sided with Ashanti, as have a bunch of other celebrities who know both her and the record producer.
Irv Gotti Opens Up About Relationship Status With Ashanti
Revolt reported that Irv openly talked about the status of his current relationship with Ashanti while on an episode of Drink Champs.
He told hosts DJ EFN and N.O.R.E that Ashanti was done with him.
But he claimed that he wasn’t sitting around thinking that she still looked great.
The outlet wrote that he also boasted about how he supposedly could get all kinds of beautiful women.
It wasn’t the first time that he’d spoken about Ashanti on that show, though.
And the last time he did that in a 2022 episode, he ended up getting himself into a lot of trouble.
He didn’t do himself any favors by speaking badly about her.
Fat Joe Calls Out Irv Gotti
Irv and Ashanti’s mutual friend Fat Joe even cut the record producer out of his life because of his choice of words on the show.
In an Instagram Live session, the rapper said: “When you keep ranting about somebody 20 years later, it feels like he’s not over the young lady, right?”
During his more recent Drink Champs interview, Irv explained how his and Fat Joe’s friendship had been affected.
He revealed that he didn’t feel like the rapper was his ‘brother’ anymore.
Irv claimed that Fat Joe’s defense for being cold with him was that he still did shows with Ashanti.
He went on to say that after Fat Joe called him ‘a sucker,’ he chose to pull back.
Irv justified his decision by saying: “If I was to go respond or anything with that, it could get crazy.”
Fat Joe Supports Ashanti And Nelly
Fat Joe has publicly remained supportive of Ashanti.
In an interview with PEOPLE, he said that now that Ashanti and Nelly had become parents together, he was known as ‘Uncle Joe.’
He also added that Ashanti was ‘the best mom in the world.’
50 Cent Trolls Irv Gotti
Irv’s broken relationship with Ashanti has attracted a lot of media attention, thanks to another celebrity, too.
One of his well-known rivals couldn’t resist teasing him when the news came out that Ashanti had spun the block with Nelly in 2023.
TMZ reported that 50 Cent used his social media to publicly shame Irv after the pair got hot and heavy on stage during a Las Vegas show.
He reposted a video of the saucy performance on his Instagram and then captioned it by saying that somebody should check on Irv ASAP.
He said that he knew that Irv was ‘going through it’ at that point.
According to VIBE, 50 Cent was at it again a year later when everyone found out that Ashanti was expecting Nelly’s baby.
He returned to Instagram to repost a meme that joked about how ticked off Irv must’ve been to find out about the pregnancy.
This time, 50 Cent captioned it with: “LOL I HAD TO SHARE THIS LMAO.”
But what did Irv say on the Drink Champs podcast in 2022 that resulted in so much public hatred for him?
Ja Rule Defends Ashanti
He went on the show with his and Ashanti’s mutual friend, Ja Rule.
They were there to promote the new docuseries on the rise and fall of Irv’s old record label.
An article on Andscape revealed that during the interview, Irv dished some unbelievable things about Ashanti and their alleged romantic relationship.
At first, Ja Rule, who’s been known to call Ashanti his little sister, was trying to play along with the kind of comments that Irv made about her.
But eventually, he stepped in and defended Ashanti when Irv kept calling her the ‘B’ word.
Irv Gotti Recalls Alleged Relationship With Ashanti
Irv claimed that during a moment when he’d separated from his wife, he and Ashanti were briefly involved in a romantic relationship.
He alleged that one time, after he and Ashanti had been physical together, he came up with her hit song Happy while he was taking a shower.
Ashanti ended up going out with Nelly between 2003 and 2014.
And Irv revealed in the interview that he found it difficult to accept the relationship since it began around the time he claimed that they were an item.
How Irv Found Out Ashanti And Nelly Were In A Relationship
According to him, he first learned about their romance in the worst way possible.
And he credited God for wanting him to find out.
Apparently, Irv was watching basketball at home when he heard that there was some kind of commotion going on at the stadium where the game was being played.
The commentators at the NBA game revealed that the commotion was caused by the arrival of Ashanti and Nelly.
At one point in the interview, Irv claimed that he MADE Ashanti and that she wouldn’t have gotten to where she was without him.
He ended up getting a lot of backlash on social media for his comments.
Online users talked about how he still had a wife at the time, and they brought up the 10-year age difference between him and Ashanti.
Ashanti Reacts To Irv Gotti’s Relationship Allegations
But how did Ashanti react to all of Irv’s comments and allegations about her?
Everyone knows that she is a famously private person and rarely talks about her personal life.
But after the way Irv had tried to make her look bad in his interview, Ashanti chose to speak up about it all.
According to the LA Times, she went on the Angie Martinez IRL podcast to set the record straight.
She said that by that point, she and Irv hadn’t even talked for ten years, except for a text that she got from Irv in 2016, where he apologized for talking about their relationship in a radio interview.
And he promised her that he’d never do it again.
But he clearly wasn’t able to keep that promise.
Ashanti Said Irv Tried To ‘Paint A Horrible Picture’ Of Her
Ashanti said that she thought that Irv’s rant about her might’ve been an attempt to hype up interest in his BET docuseries.
She also noted that in the docuseries, it seemed like he really went out of his way to ‘paint a horrible picture’ of her.
She was reportedly asked to be in the documentary multiple times, but she kept saying no.
Ashanti explained that she loved Irv’s record label and that they’d accomplished so much, but the way he handled the documentary just cheapened the brand.
Ashanti Said Her And Irv Gotti ‘Dealt With Each Other’
She also shared that she wanted to clear things up about what really went down between her and Irv.
She said that they ‘dealt with each other,’ but they were never actually in a romantic relationship together.
And she thought that it was unusual that he even used that label to describe what they had because he supposedly had several girlfriends back then.
Ashanti felt like Irv had built up the idea of what they were in his head.
And when it became clear to him that she didn’t feel the same way, he reportedly turned into a totally different person.
Ashanti Claims Irv Gotti Threatened Her
She revealed that things got really bad when he found out that she was with Nelly.
She said: “Irv would not let me come to the studio to record. Irv was telling everyone not to record with me.”
He allegedly told her that if she wanted to be with Nelly, then she should just go and sign with Nelly’s Derrty Entertainment label instead.
Ashanti went on to claim that he even threatened to cut ties with anyone who worked with her and requested that DJs stop playing her records.
She even alleged that Irv went as far as sending threats to people who were still working with her while she was dating Nelly.
She told Angie that she thought that at the time of the interview, Irv was mentally ill and not in a good place.
She explained that as a grown woman, she felt like there was a difference between when men are hurt and when women are hurt.
And how they carry that hurt and how LONG they carry that hurt.
