The book, It’s No Secret, is Carmen Bryan’s side of the story, detailing her relationships with Nas, Jay-Z, and others. The book touts Carmen as the “hip-hop Helen of Troy,” and within its pages, Carmen claims to be the reason why former rivals Jay-Z and Nas had one of the biggest rap battles in hip-hop history.
“The truth is that the dispute between these two individuals is a result of my affair with Jay-Z, plain and simple,” Carmen said previously in a DVD interview for XXL magazine. But just last year, Jay-Z and Nas squashed their beef and joined forces, resulting in Nas signing a deal with Jay-Z and Island Def Jam Records. Though the deal will be a collaborative effort between Columbia and Def Jam, the two have been working together as labelmates (Jay-Z guest appears on Nas’s upcoming Hip-Hop Is Dead album) and in their respective artist-label executive capacities.
In the book, Carmen reveals that Jay-Z’s song “Is That Your Chick?” was all about her. But lyrics such as “She keep calling me Big/But my name is Jay-Z” suggest he was referring to someone else. It was also rumored that the song sparked the beef between Jay-Z and Lance “Un” Rivera, which some believe resulted in Un’s stabbing. Still, Carmen claims to be the “chick” Jay is referring to on the record.
Carmen’s relationship with Jay-Z became public back in 2002 at the height of the Jay-Z/Nas beef when Jay-Z released a song called “Superugly” in response to Nas’s “Ether.” Since then, talks of Carmen’s book have circulated in the music industry. Then, earlier this year, Carmen was reported to have linked up with 50 Cent and his G-Unit book imprint. The book, however, has no G-Unit logo on the cover.
In an interview with BET.com, both Nas and Jay-Z commented on the book. Jay-Z seemed to dust it off his shoulders with a response that downplayed his relationship with Carmen. “You know the first book sparked this,” he said referring to Karrine “Superhead” Steffans’ steamy sex-o-graphy Confession Of A Video Vixen. “I expect to be in 12 more books, so I guess I’m gonna be hot for 12 more years,” said Jay-Z.
Nas, on the other hand, was a little more sympathetic. “You wish that things were different for certain people so they wouldn’t have to pull out drastic things,” he said. As the ex-boyfriend and father of Carmen’s daughter, Nas is prominently featured in the book. But for him, as opposed to Jay-Z, it’s a bad look. Carmen writes that Nas beat her with a closed fist during a quarrel they had over Jay-Z.
In her book, Carmen also spills the beans about Nas’s request to have a three-some with her and his current wife, Kelis. Then, in an interview with radio personality Wendy Williams, Carmen admits that she has never had sex with Nas since his marriage to Kelis, but says the invitation to participate in the ménage trios came just a year before they were married.
Nas says he’s not surprised by the release of the book. “In this day and age, nothing surprises me. It’s like people are doing whatever they gotta do…so do it.”
It’s No Secret also namedrops celebrities such as Allen Iverson, (who Carmen also had a sexual relationship with), Foxy Brown (who allegedly told Nas that Carmen was sleeping with A.I.), Beyonce (who Nas said had bad breath), and P. Diddy (who supposedly slipped his tongue in Carmen’s mouth).
