Memphis Bleek and Beanie Sigel album-
The “Beans and Bleek” album was originally set to be released way back at the end of 2000. Then it got pushed back to 2001 and then 2002. And then that was it for album. These two have paired nicely on a bunch of tracks, so a full album worth (especially at a time when Kanye was heavily involved in production) would have been decent. Since some music was actually recorded, its probably a good guess that music was recycled somewhere on other Rocafella releases.
Columbian Necktie- Remember Aztek? Half of you probably remember and the other half are like “who?!?!” Aztek was the Colombian rapper from Houston who Jay-Z signed to the new imprint Roca-La-Familia. Aztek was signed at a time that Houston rappers were running the radio stations. Aztek said in interviews that he was going platinum with his first album and was going to be on the cover on XXL in just a year. Aztek has said that after recording a bunch of music, he was not happy with the direction the label was sending him and asked Jay-Z personally to be released. Jay-Z said okay without any hesitation and that was it for Aztek. He did release a few songs and mixtapes after leaving Rocafella, but none it made any major noise.
Prince Of The Roc-
This is an interesting one. Peedi Crakk said that when his time with Rocafella Records was over, his album cost $900,000. He was flying first class everywhere, staying in suites at the nicest hotels and ate fine dinning whenever he could. Dame Dash told him to charge everything to the label and thats just what he did. In the end, there was nothing to show for that album. Not only that, Peedi went on to diss Jay-Z and the label after dropping him. After just spending $900,000. One single was released and that single never even broke the charts. Not even on the top 100 of rap single charts.
Now or Never-
The 2008 album by Young Chris. By the end of ’08 the solo debut was apparently “95 percent done”. Chris was always seen as the young rapper on the label who had the greatest potential. One day it was going to be his time to shine and his time to lead the record label. That time did come in 2008. Young Chris has always had Jay-Z’s support, so you know this one going to be a solid disc of music. That album never came, and an official Young Chris solo debut on Rocafella never did happen. Some of that material from that album was released on a mixtape.
The Process-
This was supposed to be Memphis Bleek’s Blueprint moment. He wanted to make this album the greatest album of his catalog and also an album that could be considered a classic forver. He tried following “The Blueprint” format and was trying to create an album with either a single guest appearance or none at all. He wanted to carry the album by himself. This was his moment and he said if it turned out not to be the classic album he wanted, that he wouldn’t release it. A few songs from the album leaked and during the recording process Jay-Z told him that he was free to record and release the album independently. Bleek did keep talking about releasing the album on his own imprint, but even after the imprint was formed, he never released it.