Jay-Z and R. Kelly dropped their joint project, The Best of Both Worlds, in 2002. The studio album release came on the heels of two straight number-one albums for Jay-Z and R. Kelly's award-winning LP, TP-2.com. The latter featured a guest appearance from the co-founder of Roc Nation, and it also served as a prelude to the first of two collaborative albums together. The working relationship between Jay-Z and R. Kelly turned sour during their co-headlining tour in 2004 when an altercation involving members of their teams led to allegations, a bitter war of words, and R. Kelly being removed from the tour. R. Kelly filed a lawsuit against Jay-Z one year later, prompting the NYC native to return to favor in court. In the end, the case was rejected by a judge that Summer. Fourteen years later, R. Kelly was arrested and charged with multiple sex crimes. He remains behind bars.
According to R. Kelly's former cellmate, Ronnie Bo, the iconic R&B singer believed that Jay-Z threatened his life indirectly while they were on tour in the mid-2000s. During a recent interview with Hip Hop Uncensored, he dived deeper into R. Kelly's theory.
"He felt like Jay-Z was kind of secure because, at the time, R. Kelly was technically bigger than him," Ronnie Bo recalled. "He felt like [during] one of the shows when they was in Madison Square Garden [in 2004] prior to that event, he said days before the event that he was getting death threats that he felt was coming from Jay-Z. Like Jay-Z was trying to basically...I don't know if this is going to sound outrageous...but he felt like Jay-Z was trying to get him killed for whatever reason..."
Scroll up and skip ahead to the 2:21 mark to watch Ronnie Bo's full take regarding R. Kelly's fallout with Jay-Z back in 2004.
Source: YouTube
