Jermaine Dupri was a recent guest on Ray Daniels' podcast where he revealed that BET's 106 & Park was actually his brainchild.

"106 &Park was created by me," he said. "I created the show for Bow Wow. I was watching MTV and they had TRL. They catered to N Sync, The Backstreet Boys, and anything white that was coming out. They were allowing the kids to scream and holler at them."

Dupri said that he felt that there should be a similar show that catered to young Black audiences, so he approached Stephen Hill, who was then the president of programming for the network.

"I called Stephen Hill and told him that we needed a show like TRL because they wouldn't put a 12-year-old Black boy on rapping. Nobody was on TV at 12 years old causing that kind of 'fandomonium.'"

Beyond his comments about what was once BET's flagship show, Dupri also posted a video to Tiktok recently with Mariah Carey and Slick Rick the Ruler talking about an upcoming holiday collaboration.

"We put Rick on 'Here Comes Santa'" he said. "Y'all gotta hear it. She always does a remix and he's the rapper, she's the diva."

The iconic actress and dancer Debbie Allen appeared in the video as well. JD had been busy as of late prepping his Freaknik documentary and presenting his group Xscape with the 'Lady of Soul' awards at the 2022 Soul Train Awards. He recalled the first time he heard them sing at his birthday party.

"It blew me away when they sang ‘Happy Birthday,’” he said. “I said, I’m going to sign you … but I had no record label.” When he did launch his So So Def label, they were the first act he signed. "People didn’t have belief; thought I was crazy,” Dupri said. “But 30 years later, we’re here.”