She just wanted O.T. Genasis to respect the art that she created, but unfortunately, the back and forth between the rapper and members of Keyshia Cole's family has turned verbally vicious. After chopping and screwing Keyshia's hit song "Love" to create his chuckle-worthy, Crip-heavy track "Never Knew," the singer wasn't thrilled. When Keyshia Cole vocalized her disapproval, O.T. Genasis seemed to take things personally and unleashed a barrage of insults.
Over the past few weeks, things have kicked up a notch as he's talked about Keyshia's private area and teased her mother for her drug addiction, resulting in Keyshia's siblings to step into the ring. They've even insulted Malika Haqq, O.T.'s baby mama, making the situation even worse. In a recent Instagram Live session with Ari Lennox, Keyshia spoke openly about the exchange and said she felt "unprotected" and bullied throughout.
Before Keyshia brought up her beef with O.T. Genasis, she and Ari were talking about the right to carry firearms. "That’s why I was so…like honestly—I’m just not going to talk about that situation—but it just pissed me off so much because you know, at a time that everybody was going through so much in the Black community, getting killed and all that, getting pulled over and getting killed, and then you wanna do a whole song that I wrote about love and make it about shooting and killing and bang-banging," she said. "It's like, yoooo, sir. And then get mad that I say that I don’t like what you did like, turned the integrity of my music. And then just bully and bully and continue to bully."
Keyshia added that she spoke with hip hop legend MC Lyte about the situation. "I was just saying how it felt like I was so unprotected," she continued. The singer said that anytime she did try to speak up for herself, she felt as if things just escalated. "It was like no, ‘You come from the hood. You really ain’t sh*t. Your mom was on drugs your whole life. You don’t really have a right to what you feel about what you’ve created.' More so like, 'Lighten up. Why are you taking everything so seriously? It was just a joke.'"
When things turned nasty, Keyshia said she actually attempted to connect with O.T. Genasis by using some of her industry connections. "Like, ‘Do you know this guy? Like...is he okay? What's going on? Is he stressed out?’" she said she asked. "I don't know, what the hell... It should have been more so like... ‘My agenda didn’t fit your agenda. I apologize for that. I didn’t mean no disrespect when I did it.’ Then it would have just been the end of that instead of it having to be a thing." Watch Keyshia Cole and Ari Lennox below.