Sean Paul has opened up about the time Justin Timberlake kinda, sorta, definitely kicked him out of a studio session back in 2002.
In an interview with DJ 4EIGN (via Dance Hall Mag), Paul revealed all the details of the decidedly cringe-worthy exchange.
According to Sean Paul, he met Justin Timberlake when they happened to be at a Virginia recording studio on the same day.
Having finished laying down vocals on the Beenie Man track ‘Bossman’, Paul was invited to Timberlake’s studio by the producers he was working with, including none other than Pharrell Williams.
Since Williams was also a regular collaborator of Timberlake’s at the time, it is understandable that he would choose to introduce the pair.
However, it seems the meeting didn’t exactly go as planned.
“They was like, yo, when you finish that verse come over. It was just me, the engineer, Pharrell and Justin Timberlake,” Paul began.
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“So I went over there and dude [Timberlake] is playing on the piano and he looks up like, ‘who is this?'”
As if that wasn’t awkward enough, Timberlake apparently responded with “nah” when Williams questioned if he knew who Paul was.
From there, Paul claimed that Williams encouraged him to sing his track ‘Gimme the Light’ to prompt Timberlake’s memory.
Although Timberlake recognised the song, he quickly got to his feet to escort Paul to his bodyguard who would casually throw him out of the building.
“It just felt a little bit weird… this dude just totally walked me out the building, very neatly though…it was so neat. I was like damn, he just kicked me out so nice,” said Paul.
“I gotta use that on somebody one day, but I ain’t like that.”
Despite any embarrassment, it appears Paul has kept his sense of humour about the whole situation.
“Honestly, if you in the studio and you really don’t vibe with the person then you go say to the producer or you even say straight to the dude’s face like ‘yo I’m working on something special, gimme some time…’ I would have understood,” he said.
“I’ve done that to people, but the way he did so smooth, I dunno… that was some funny vibes.”
Check out ‘Temperature’ by Sean Paul:
