Hollywood icon Robert De Niro reportedly had some dicey words for rap mogul Jay-Z a few nights ago at actor Leonardo DiCaprio’s birthday party in New York City.
According to reports, De Niro publicly scolded Young Hov over him not returning a handful of phone calls.
Sources add that Jay tried to joke his way out of the situation, and even his wife, Beyoncé, tried to intervene, but De Niro wouldn’t back down. “Bob was sitting at a table, and when Jay-Z went over to say hello, De Niro told Jay that he never called him back,” a source says. A spy then overheard De Niro complaining to the rapper, a fellow TriBeCa resident, about a song Jay-Z agreed to record for the Tribeca Film Festival. De Niro had reached out to discuss further details, but Jay never returned his calls. “Bob wasn’t in any mood to make polite conversation,” the spy says. “He told Jay that if somebody calls you six times, you call them back. It doesn’t matter who you are, that is just rude.” (New York Post)
The rap star’s wife, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, also reportedly got involved to cool things down.
When Jay-Z tried to make a joke of it, saying he is terrible on the phone, a source says, “De Niro kept telling him that he thinks he’s the man, but that he was disrespectful.’ Beyoncé came over, but that didn’t calm Bob down. It was the talk of the party. Everyone was saying there’s only one star in New York bigger and badder than Jay-Z, and that’s Robert De Niro. He can be quite scary when he’s angry.” But a source close to De Niro told us, “It was a low-key private conversation between two people that was apparently overheard. It was not a heated discussion.” (New York Post)
On Jigga’s “Empire State of Mind,” he raps about living next to the famous movie star.
“Yeah, I’m out that Brooklyn /Now I’m down in Tribeca/Right next to DeNiro /But I’ll be hood forever /I’m the new Sinatra/And since I made it here/I can make it anywhere /Yeah, they love me everywhere /I used to cop in Harlem” (“Empire State of Mind”)
Last summer, G-Unit’s 50 Cent spoke on developing a close-knit relationship with De Niro after working together on multiple films.
“It was exciting. It’s a challenge, but you understand the spectrum, both sides of the coin. I went to the firing range with New York City police officers just to see what the exact procedure would be to fire the actual weapons and what their protocol is,” 50 said in an interview. “I went with Robert De Niro. We had worked together on the Righteous Kill project, so it had come full circle when we worked together on Freelancers. Yeah, yeah…if you remember, on that project [Righteous Kill], I got him to do the cover of Vibe. You don’t really see him doing press like that. We got a chance to talk about things away from the actual entertainment stuff. Now, I developed the kind of relationship with him where I can call him and see if he’s interested in some of these projects.” (XXL Mag)
