Robert De Niro Confronts Jay-Z

No matter how big you think you are, there’s someone out there who still has no qualms with checking you if need be. For Jay-Z, that person is Academy Award winning-actor Robert De Niro. It seems Hov made a promise to De Niro about recording a song and didn’t follow up. De Niro himself kept reaching out to Jay-Z, only he never got a call back.

Stand back…somebody’s getting fired.

Page Six reports:

Spies say “Godfather II” and “Taxi Driver” star De Niro gave Jay a dressing-down in a roomful of celebs including Martin Scorsese because the rap mogul had refused to return De Niro’s calls.

Sources add that Jay tried to joke his way out of the situation, and even his wife, Beyoncé, tried to intervene, but De Niro wouldn’t back down.

“Bob was sitting at a table, and when Jay-Z went over to say hello, De Niro told Jay that he never called him back,” a source says.

A spy then overheard De Niro complaining to the rapper, a fellow TriBeCa resident, about a song Jay-Z agreed to record for the Tribeca Film Festival. De Niro had reached out to discuss further details, but Jay never returned his calls.

“Bob wasn’t in any mood to make polite conversation,” the spy says. “He told Jay that if somebody calls you six times, you call them back. It doesn’t matter who you are, that is just rude.”

When Jay-Z tried to make a joke of it, saying he is terrible on the phone, a source says, “De Niro kept telling him that he thinks he’s the man, but that he was disrespectful.’ ”

“Beyoncé came over, but that didn’t calm Bob down,” the source said, adding that afterward, “It was the talk of the party. Everyone was saying there’s only one star in New York bigger and badder than Jay-Z, and that’s Robert De Niro. He can be quite scary when he’s angry.”

But a source close to De Niro told us, “It was a low-key private conversation between two people that was apparently overheard. It was not a heated discussion.”