In 1999, rap legend Jay-Z was placed on three years probation after he admitted to stabbing music industry executive Lance “Un” Rivera.
Rivera recently opened up about the night in question and admitted that Jay-Z was not the man who stabbed him that evening, confessing that he is not sure where the rumor came from.
Lance “Un” Rivera is an American film director, film producer, screenwriter, record producer, and music executive. Rivera famously funded Notorious B.I.G’s rap career after meeting him in Brooklyn and hearing him rap.
Rivera became one of the people behind Biggie’s massive success as well as the success of Junior M.A.F.I.A and Lil Kim. He would later discover Cam’ron and Charlie Baltimore before transitioning into film production with Queen Latifah and her Flavor Unit imprint.
In 1999, Rivera was stabbed at a party at the now-closed Kit Kat Club in New York City. He was in attendance for Q-Tips album release. The story goes that Jay-Z approached Rivera following the supposed leak of his album Vol. 3… Life and Times of S. Carter.
Jay turned himself into the police the following day and took the fall for the stabbing after initially claiming he did not do it. “I stabbed Lance Rivera,” Jay-Z said during his court appearance in October 2001, according to the BBC.
Rivera recently sat down with DJ Vlad to tell his side of the story. He claims he was surrounded by men that evening and several of them had knives drawn on him. “I ended up getting surrounded by a bunch of people. It was probably ten knives that I knew of, and I ended up getting stabbed.”
Rivera says he is very vindictive, so if Jay-Z was the man responsible for his stabbing, Jay would not have made it to his next album.
“If Jay-Z had stabbed me, y’all wouldn’t have got ‘The Black Album’ because, through my whole history, I’m an eye-for-an-eye type of guy,” he elaborated.
In the two decades since, Rivera has continued working and helped produce films like The Perfect Holiday, The Cookout, and 2014’s The Percentage, written by Cam’ron and starring Omar Gooding.
