Former Boston Celtic Stephon Marbury opens up on his feud with Jay-Z

Ex-Celtic guard Stephon Marbury spoke about the roots of his feud with rapper Jay-Z in a recent interview.

Hip hop has been a part of the overall cultural package of the NBA almost as long as the genre has been around, but that doesn’t always mean the relationship has been a smooth one.

And the tension between former Boston Celtic guard Stephon Marbury and rapper Jay-Z is one of the more high-profile examples of how the pairing has been occasionally fraught where elsewhere it has fit hand-in-glove.

Both Marbury and Shawn Corey Carter — Jay-Z’s real name — hail from Brooklyn, New York, but it isn’t a turf battle that led to the two falling out years ago.

Instead, it’s about the music Jay-Z creates — and the lifestyle that inspired it.

The first blow was thrown by Carter, who, in a song entitled “La-La-La (Excuse Me Miss Again),” took a shot at the former Celtic in his lyrics.

“Pink diamond necklace, strawberry wrist/Please excuse yourself, you’re very sick/Don’t confuse me with Marbury out this [expletive]/Run up on me at the light, you could lose your life.”

The lyrics were likely a reference to a robbery of the NBAer at a traffic light that saw Marbury lose a necklace and diamond studs worth $150,000 in 2000 while he was with the (then) New Jersey (now Brooklyn) Nets, according to the New York Post’s Larry Celona.

In a recent interview with Heavy.com’s Brandon “Scoop B” Robinson, Marbury shared his thoughts on the rapper behind that verse.

“I look at Jay-Z and I say, ‘Wow, here you are trying to be something that you’re not,'” offered Marbury.

“You’re not an advocate for Black people, you sold drugs to Black people and you rapped about it and talked about it,” he continued. “How do you do that? Like, I’m trying to figure that part out; like, you can’t make that right. This ain’t snitching, this ain’t telling on nobody, you told on yourself already. You already told people what it is that you do and how you do it and how you feel about what you’re doing. So, how are you rapping about something that you did?”

“I’m confused,” Marbury added.

Critical of his past as an unapologetic dealer of crack cocaine, Marbury is no fan of the rapper, who reportedly originally fell out with Carter over a woman many years ago, the rapper jealous their mutual friend decided to dance with Marbury at a club.

Whether or not the billionaire musical artist ever cares to tell more about his side of the story — whether in interview or lyrical format — remains to be seen.

But we shouldn’t expect to be seeing the duo out dancing at the club any time soon based on what we’re hearing from Marbury.

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