Shoe guru was grateful for cred

When my recent podcast guest was in prison, he got a cred boost from Jay-Z.

In “Excuse Me Miss Again,” Jay rapped, “Fake Manolo boots straight from Steve Madden,” and the line couldn’t have come at a better time. Madden was locked up for stock manipulation, money laundering and securities fraud, and was released in 2005.

“So I told my kids about that, and they didn’t believe me . . . I was in federal prison. And it was fantastic.” (He meant the song, not the sentence.)

“You know, I would be with all the guys in the rec yard, and I’d be, ‘You know Jay-Z (inset) just rapped about me.’ And sure enough, boom, I became an honorary brother at that moment. So it was kind of cool.”

When you’re in jail and you’re the minority, it’s like getting a blessing from the hip-hop pope.

Sadly, his Jay-Z pixie dust did not help him with Nicki Minaj. Madden — who said he had met Minaj once through record producer Irv Gotti — was working with her nemesis Cardi B. In 2018, after Minaj landed a contract with Diesel, Cardi B noted that she had turned it down and essentially said Minaj took her castoffs. Minaj threw it back in her face tweeting that Cardi B was working with Madden, whom she shot down after numerous offers from Gotti to sign on with the brand. Madden soon found himself out of his depth. “I tweeted Nicki, stop lying, I never offered you the job . . . and she called me every name in the book . . . They beat me up so bad, I was under the covers for a week,” he said, adding that he likes Minaj. And he did want to work with her, but she had another contract at the time.