Revisionist History - Why Would I Do That to Jennifer Lopez? | The Mistakes Series

Episode Date: April 30, 2026

Years ago a music producer named Irv Gotti–a hitmaker for Jay-Z, Ja Rule, and Ashanti–was tapped by Sony Music to make a record with Jennifer Lopez. They wanted a big hit. And Irv delivered. But then he made the biggest mistake of his career.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bushkin. This guy calls me like seven in the morning. Like Tommy was out. In 2001, the head of Sony music, Tommy Motola, called the rap producer Irv Gaudi. At the time, Gadi worked with Jay-Z, J-Z, J-Rul, Ashanti, DMX. In the hip-hop world of the early odds, he was at the top of his game. He's like, yo, I need you to make a record. And I said, what?

He said, make a record with J-Lo and put J-L on it and make it a duet. And I say, yo, I need total creative of Tommy. I'm doing whatever the fuck I want. Tommy was like, you could do whatever the fuck you want, as long as it's a duet with Jarlal and Jailo. Motolo wanted Gotti to do a remix of I'm Real, a single off Jalo's second album. The first time around, it had been a generic ballad.

Matola thought it could be reinvigorated. Gotti went to work and started to make a demo with Jarl and Ashanti. I said, yo, I got the record. I'm real. Him and his wife, Talia, come to the crack house, my studio in So-oh.

And it's funny because the freight elevator used to always go out. So him and Talia walked up six flights of stairs. He gets upstairs. He said, this fucking record better be fucking good. So I play,

I play a real form. Him and his wife go crazy. They're like, oh my God, it was a one listen. They listened, and it was like, it's the biggest record. So he puts me on a private jet. I fly to L.A., record the record with J-Lo.

Next thing you know, the record comes out. It's all over the radio. I'm talking about maybe a couple days after we recorded it. It's all over the radio. A few months later, Gadi made another remix from J-Lo's album. Ain't it funny? The same thing happened. You don't even understand.

Those records was colossal, not just in the States, on the planet Earth. I don't give a fuck if you went to Germany, Australia, Africa, that shit was in the heavy rotation. Look, those were the two biggest records. And for me to do unreal

and instead, fuck it, and it didn't, ain't it funny? It was like, at that point in my life, I was like on top of the world. It was a feeling of invincibility. It was a feeling of I could do whatever the fuck I want. To portray who I was at that moment,

that's who I was. I'm from the hood. I'm making all of this money. I'm producing records for everybody. All of them are working and going number one. And money's raining from the sky. I could do no wrong. It was at this point that Irv Gotti made a mistake.

My name is Malcolm Globwell. You're listening to Revisionist History. My podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This is the third episode in our mini-series inspired by Michael Linton and Josh Steiner's book, From Mistakes to Meaning, where the authors sit down with a wide range of people and try to make sense of their biggest screw-ups.

One of their interviews was with Irv Gaudy, just before Gaudy had a stroke and died at the age of 54. I listened to the interview, and I found his story so moving that I asked Steiner and Linton if I could include it in this series, because in his story, I think, is a really important lesson. not about the person who makes the mistake, but about the people around the person who makes the mistake, the witnesses.

Man, I grew up, oh, man, I grew up. Let me describe how I grew up. I'm the youngest of eight kids. This is Gotti talking to Linton and Steiner about his childhood and growing up in Queens. We have no money. We live in the home. I sleep in the attic. You ever slept in the attic of a house?

In the summertime, there's no refuge. It's a hundred and change. You wake up every day, you wake up in a puddle of sweat. Like, that was my life. It was a lot of love. My family, the most loving family, but we had nothing. So when you talk about the shit you told me, I'm not, I don't give a fuck, yo. I'm getting money.

Oh, I'm going to get it. I'm going to work my ass off. get it. I don't give a fuck what comes from it. He was blunt, reckless, ambitious, and hugely talented. His rise in the music world was swift. It was no accident that Batola called Gotti to work with Jennifer Lopez, then well on her way to becoming one of the biggest celebrities in America. And when the two of them met at Gotti's recording studio,

Gotti from Queens, Jaila from the Bronx, they click. Just so you know what to expect, We're giving you the unfiltered gaudy. So I had like 30 hood niggas in the studio and in walks, J-Lo, and she was straight Jenny from the block. She had on some sweatpants and a tank top. And if I tell you, she got in that studio, and she had every one of my guys fall in love with her.

She worked and talked to everybody, and I was just like, yo, she's the first. dope. You know what I'm saying? Because she could have been on some I'm a big star boogie shit but she was the total opposite. The biggest sex symbol, biggest

superstar got on some sweatpants. A ass was looking fucking phenomenal. She worked, she literally worked the whole room. Like when she left, every guy was like, yo, she's dope. I think she liked me. I'm like

yo, dog. She's, she worked. She worked the fucking rule. But I thought it was so dope of her. And me and her, specifically, yo, we hit it off. Benny Medina, her manager, Benny Medina was like, Irv, you're going to be like

the Quincy Jones to her Michael Jackson. He was like, we're not doing nothing musically unless you're involved. A year later, Ellen magazine decided to do a cover story on Jennifer Lopez. It was for their sex and body issue. June 2002 headline Big Letters, J-Lo, on fashion, That Song, and Puffy. Puffy referred to Puffy Combs, the infamous rap impresario who she'd just broken up with. And that song referred to Ain't It Funny, because Gaudy's reinterpretation of the song turned it into the story of someone

coming out of a very problematic relationship. The writer asks her, Is that song about Puffy? She says, no, it's not. Then the reporter calls Gotti. Jalo says, ain't it funny, isn't about Puffy. What do you say? And Gadi says,

Oh, it's absolutely about Puffy. And Jalo knows it. Here's the exact quote from the L magazine article, which, by the way, is nearly impossible to find now. My producer had to get someone at the New York Public Library to unearth the issue from an off-site storage unit. I ain't going to lie, we was thinking of effing with Puffy because that's what the world wants to hear.

And Gatti tells the reporter a story about running into Puffy before Ain't It Funny came out and playing him the demo. He says, You know the four seasons on Dohaney in L.A.? I pull up and Puffs out there with his security and I say Puff, come listen to him. the new record I did with your old bitch. So boom, he gets in the car. So I'm blasting the record. And when it gets to the second verse, he jumps out of the car screaming, Gotti, you bastard.

This is the second verse. Listen. See, you never had to be this way. You should have never played the games you play. Now I'm seeing that you kind of late. He calls Jalo's ex-boyfriend into his car and says, come listen to the new record I just did with your. old bitch. In a very public way, Gotti was essentially saying Jennifer Lopez wasn't being honest.

He called her credibility into question. When I read it in L magazine, J-Lo, quote, those records are not about Puff Daddy, end quote. It was, it's the worst mistake I've ever made in my life. Because I say that to say,

because J-Lo, Benny Medina, they was friends. They loved me. They loved me. Like, I was a rider for them, and I would do things for them that probably no one else could do, and I would get done for them. And she was my friend. Like, why the fuck would I say that? Why the fuck would I say that?

But Gotti didn't stop there. He kept going. Right? So I went on to say other damaging things Like how would she know she didn't write the records We made the records and wrote the records She just did what we said So she don't know who the fuck we was talking about

And yeah we was talking about Diddy And then I said some more damaging shit I was like guys like me we didn't listen to Jaylo's music I made guys like me listen to JLo's music I said before then we just hit the mute button and looked at her ass. Goddy reflected on this with Michael Linton and Josh Steiner when they spoke. Wow.

You can pull all this up in the L magazine. It's there. Those are vivid quotes. Those are like supreme asshole quotes that wasn't warranted. And when I look back, I was like, what did you do to your friend? Yeah. So, needless to say, it ruined my, my relationship with J-Lo. I apologized.

I sent her candy and flowers and apologized a million times, and I, you know, I was high. That's no excuse. You know what I'm saying? I apologize. And she accepted my apology, but it, it forever damaged your relationship. Right. You know, superstars like J-Lo, they have a small circle of people who they could trust. And I think I was in there for a second.

Yeah. And I totally ruined it. Right. So I'm an asshole. Well, you were in that moment. I'm totally in the wrong and I'm a complete idiot. Make sure you say that, that I said that I'm a complete idiot. She didn't warrant that. She didn't warrant nothing that I said. She was my friend.

And why would I do that with the biggest thought and most beautifulest person? Why how did I do that with J-Loh? One of the themes we've tried to explore in this series is that mistakes have roots. They aren't random events. They come from somewhere. They arise out of a context. But the context often isn't obvious, not to those around the mistake maker and often not even to the mistake maker. And often not even to the mistake maker themselves. In Gotti's case, the context was a telephone call had been on, just before the reporter called. It was with a prominent music industry executive. Godi asked that the man's name not be used, so we're going to bleep out every mention of his name. All you need to know is that the executive is white, and Gotti was black. The two of them had an argument. One of

Godi's artists had played a part in a hit song and was in the music video, but had been left out of the radio version, and Goddy was unhappy about it. So I was like, yo, you're killing my artists. You got him on the video, but on radio, he's not there. It's sending like mixed signals, why are you hurting me? Their argument got heated. The executive said it wasn't his fault. The decision was someone else's at his label, a black man.

He was like I told that fat nigger not to not to put this. this out. But when he said the N-word, oh, that's when I went crazy. Wow. I said, what the fuck you say? I said, you just call Cory Rune in, nigger? I said, when this, when this nigger see you, I'm going to fuck you up. I said, how about that? And he was like, Irvin, and we arguing.

Yeah. But he said, he used the N-word on some racist shit. He said, I told that fat n-nigger not to put the record out or put him on him. Yeah. But when he said nigger, I went, that's, that's, that's the anger. Yeah. I'm not a volatile person. I'm not a pop off.

I would describe myself as a cool guy, level-headed. But it's something about when a white person like, uses the word nigger to me, oh, I'm ready to kill. because it's like you start thinking of all of the fucked up shit that black people been through when you got the audacity to say nigger in front of me, oh, I'm going to show you a nigger now. You know what I'm saying?

Like I used to always say, like, people would ask me, how would you be able, how would you think you would be able to operate in those times of racism? And I always answer I would die. You know what I'm saying? Because I couldn't take the racism that would have been bestowed upon me, I would have killed me a couple white people, and they would have hung me and killed me, and my life would be over.

I couldn't take them doing something to my mother or, you know, hanging my father, and I'm living life. Nah, you're going to have to kill me too. So these are the thoughts that's in my mind. Yeah. Have you experienced that before, where you had one? white people say things, which you told. A lot of my wife friends say,

yo, that's my nigger, but I'm not mad at that. Yeah. When they say that's my niggia, it's N-I-G-A, he said, yo, I told that fat n-ig-r. That's N-I-G-E-R. It's a big, big difference. Like, I couldn't believe that he just used the N-word to me.

That's what made me so volatile. And it was so weird. It was like as soon as I hung up with the phone rang without. It wasn't like a five minute. It wasn't even like a five minute cool off period. No. Hung up. You know, this is our magazine.

Yeah, what the fuck y'all want? They're like saying hello. A little different. Can I ask, so what do you think it was that made, you, you think you were just going to lash out and anybody who showed up in that moment? Yeah, within that five minutes, yeah. They was going to get the exact same vibe.

What the fuck you want? Yeah. He just thought it was Elle magazine, not one of my boys. Yeah. So I said, what the fuck you want? And he was like, oh, I see, like, as soon as he heard that response, he immediately cut to the chase. He said, oh, I'll just get right to it.

You know, Jalo said that the records, I'm really named funny, and not about Puff Daddy, her ex-boyfriend. And I was like, what? That bitch is lying. This was Erf Gotti's mistake. It changed his life. There was a version of the next 20 years where he could have been a creative partner

with one of the biggest stars in the world. He had ideas from movies. collaborations. J-Lo was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. That's why this was a mistake. It had consequences. But there was a point in Gotti's interview with Steiner and Linton that I couldn't get out of my mind. Listen. How quickly did you realize that you'd made a mistake? I didn't realize quickly. I was so angry and mad when I got off the phone with L magazine. I thought nothing of it. it hit me when they sent me like the transcripts of what they was going to print. How long after that was that?

A couple of weeks or so, I would say. And when you read that, did you realize it right away? Yeah, I was like, don't print that. But they was like, it's too late. Yeah. They loved it. They loved it. and he said it was too late.

You know, I was trying to get them not to print it, but they were like, hey, buddy, you said it. Yeah. Did you get me help to try to get them not to do it, or did you just let it go? I let it go. I gave it my effort, but after my effort out there, I just let it go.

He realized he'd made a mistake, that in his anger at one person, he had said something he didn't mean to another. And when he tried to prevent his mistake from having consequences from turning into a serious mistake, he was told, hey, buddy, you said it. It's too late. After Linton and Steiner's book came out, I interviewed them on stage at the 92nd Street Y in New York, and I brought up their chapter on Godi. So, who's the villain of the story?

Not every story has to have a villain. No, but tell me who the villain of the story is. So don't Michael, don't fall for this. Like, this is okay, this is why he's so good. But don't fall for his trap. Like, okay, you can say not every story. Well, I got to keep the conversation going. I would argue it was the executive who used the N-word.

Josh, who's the villain of the story? Here's what I think. That guy acted terribly. There is no villain in the story. And I think an important piece of what we tried to describe is that there isn't always a villain. There isn't always some outside danger. there isn't always some consequence that has been derived from a villain, that these things are deep-rooted in ourselves.

And we're not villainous. And so that aspect of our personality doesn't make us bad. This isn't a morality test. This is an opportunity to explore oneself and come to terms and acceptance of the fact that we're flawed and the way to get hopefully healthier and better to talk about it. Who do you think the villain is? A man who has a very close relationship to the biggest rock star in the world.

a relationship that has resulted in extraordinary commercial success is called by a reporter and is asked a question about that relationship. And in the course of answering that question, the man says, oh, she's a liar. Who's the villain in the story? Do you think it's Irv? No. It's the reporter. But the reporter doesn't. No, no, no, no.

This is a crucial, crucial point, Michael. Okay. And I think this is because it's about when mistakes are made. and they are as deeply rooted as you suggest they are. They're not, what your, the whole argument of the book is, a mistake can come out in the spur of the moment, but it's not something that's coming out in the spur of the moment. It's something that has roots.

Right. And what does that require of those who observe and are part of the process in which the mistake is played out? It requires some degree of grace and forgiveness and understanding. Yep. So the reporter, here, some Irv Gotti say something that is completely out of place, right? It makes, the reason, the reason that story, so that's sorry, what you didn't, what is an important detail is here,

is it goes, it's all across the country. It's like, it's huge. That's why it blows up so much. Everyone seizes on this, her longtime collaborator called J-Lo a liar, right? If you are the reporter in that instance, and someone says something they shouldn't say, your obligation is to say, wait, why did you say that? And if they can't give you a satisfactory answer, your obligation is not to use it. I'm sorry, it's not to use it. You're not, you shouldn't, you can't make someone, the reporter turn that from a nothing into a destruction of someone's career because they had not the slightest concern for his

well-being or his reputation. And they, if they had an ounce of self-understanding or of general understanding, they would have understood that he didn't mean to say that. They should at the very least have said, did you mean to say that? Right? That's your responsibility. And the reporter failed in that fundamental... Why do people hate the press?

Because in an interview like this where we could talk for three hours and you say one thing out of place because you have to be irritated about something else and a reporter runs with that one thing, that's malpractice. Why is this person getting a pass? That's terrible.

I'm sorry, I'm really upset about this. I was upset. about this. Because you can't do this if you're a journalist. The whole profession works on an implied contract. Somebody grants you the gift of their time and attention and thoughts. They make themselves vulnerable. And in return, you pledged to respect that vulnerability. You're not a stenographer. You've entered for the duration of the interview into an intimate relationship. And intimate relationships have rules. But then I went home after that interview at the Y. after I had called the reporter a villain and a disgrace to our profession,

and I realized, I don't even know who this person is. And then I thought to myself, Oops, now I've made a mistake. So I decided to track the reporter down. That's after the break. What do you remember about that interview? It's funny you're asking this, something that no one's ever asked me, because I remember that interview quite well for a few reasons.

This is Carter Harris. He wrote The L Profile. He's now a screenwriter, teaches at NYU. And one of the reasons this article he wrote 25 years ago sticks out is the reaction it got, particularly from J-Lo and her manager, Benny Medina. I actually remember being in a car with Benny Medina in Los Angeles. And I can't remember why we were in a car.

But he was... telling me how disappointed J-Lo was and he was, because it seemed like a negative interview. I wasn't negative at all, from my perspective. At some point, his profile of J-Lo completely disappeared from the internet. And he always wondered if J-Lo and her manager had something to do with it. Was Gotti upset during the call? Yes, he was, Harris remembers.

He seemed like he was in a state. He mentioned something about having just gotten off the phone with someone. He thought Harris was a fashion writer. and Gotti seemed relieved to learn that Harris had been an editor at the source, the magazine that was the Bible of rap at the time. They talked about Puffy Combs, and I'm Real, and Ain't It Funny? And then Gotti said that bit about J-Lo not telling the truth. When you heard it, when you were interviewing him and decided to use what you were using,

did you think that you might be jeopardizing his relationship with J-Lo? No. and maybe that was naive of me. But what I thought was in the moment was, wow, that was honest. She might be a little bit irked, vexed by one or two of the quotes. But I never imagined that it would be such a big deal for her or for him. I mean, I thought she'd be vexed. I mean, when you say, you know, I gave her more hood credibility, that's going to be like, come on, dude.

Or when you say it was really about ditty and basically you're accusing her of not being honest, you know? Yeah, that, I totally understand why she was vexed. And even at the time, I was like, oh, she might be a little ticked off about this. But I figured they'd air it out either publicly or privately that she'd be like, come on. He overstepped on this one, and maybe he comes back and says, yeah, all right, I was on Molly, which he was willing to say back then. Is it weird to hear someone say 25 years later that the biggest mistake they made in their life was something they said to you in an interview? Oh, absolutely. That made me feel very strange. When I heard that, I was, I was, I was, I was very surprised and very, I was a little disturbed, too, because when I heard that, then I did have feelings.

Then I was like, oh, shit, what did I do wrong? You know, it was like, was I responsible for this somehow? Did he run the quotes by Gotti and tell him that it was too late, you said it? No, that would have been the fact checker. That's the way things worked in the magazine world of those years. If he had called me and said, I was in a state, can you take those quotes out? Yeah, I probably would have worked with him on that. But I never got that call.

Nobody ever asked me about those quotes. So, you know, what can I really do? But, yeah, I certainly felt weird about it. I mean, you know, I don't take any joy in being, you know, part of anyone's biggest regret. Carter was frank and thoughtful. I liked him. He was talking about a decision he made many years ago when he was much younger.

And he said that he wouldn't necessarily do the same thing today. I understand that. You have to make a certain number of mistakes to understand what a mistake is. It's really interesting because if I had been in the gym and somebody had told me this story and I was not the reporter and I was not Gotti, I probably would have had the exact same response. I'm pretty sure. I would have been like, what? They said, what?

They messed with Gotti? like and they screwed up a relationship with J-Lo and Gotti, you know, this is bullshit. This is like the media, you know, they do this, especially L and these corporate magazines and, you know, all that. So, so I'm not surprised to hear that that was your response. That probably would have been my response. But to the larger point,

I think we all do this in our own way, in lots of different contexts. we jump to conclusions, mistaken conclusions, and I certainly do in my life, and if I've learned anything, it's that I have to check myself sometimes and say, wait a minute, I'm human like everybody else,

I'm jumping to a conclusion. I should go look and see if there's more to this story. It doesn't necessarily mean my conclusion that I wanted to jump to is wrong. It could be right. Could be worse than I thought it was. But I don't.

do think that that's the thing to take from this is like, hey, everybody, each of us can check ourselves, you know, we all have the ability to check ourselves and say, hey, maybe I should look into this a little bit more. We can all check ourselves a little bit more. On that, I have to agree. Revision's history is produced by Nina Bird Lawrence, Lucy Sullivan, and Ben Nadaff Halfrey. Our editor is Karen Shakurgy. Fact-checking. by Angelie Mercado. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith, engineering by Nina Bird Lawrence,

original music by Luis Gera. Sound design and mastering by Marcelo DiLivera. I'm Malcolm Godwell. Coming up on the next episode in our Mistakes series. This is madness. And yeah, and it was just jaw on the floor. I just never experienced anything like that. And I didn't see it coming.

Thank you.