It’s been several years since St. Louis, Missouri rapper Chingy was accused of having relations with Sidney Starr, a transgender model. And during an interview with Vlad TV, Chingy revealed that rumors of his relationship with Sidney Starr injured his music career and resulted in the loss of his record deal due to the negative publicity.

He went on to criticize those who fell for a rumor that he says was created without not one piece of evidence and also spoke on those who wanted the rumor to be true.

“It goes to show you how many people wanted it to be true,” Chingy said. “That’s what it goes to show you. It goes to show you that that person who nobody knew had that much power to come out and say one negative thing about me and a whole mass of people just instantly took to it. And they didn’t have not one piece of evidence. Not one piece—a clue, nothing. They had nothing. They just had this person’s lie…It actually, it injured my career a little bit. I watched it happen. I lost a deal cause of that…It was said to me. Cause it was so much bad publicity around it…I’ve never been through a sabotage situation like that. And it was so fabricated and false.”

Prior to speaking on the backlash, which resulted from Sidney Starr’s rumors, Chingy recalled meeting the model/backup dancer at a show with Ludacris in Chicago.

“I remember that day we had that show,” he said. “When me and Ludacris had that show in Chicago. The promoter had some girl dancers on stage that were dressed in body paint. Just for promotion. They were promoting whatever he wanted them to promote. And one who I thought was a young lady that came up to me that wanted a picture—I just took the picture. I thought she was a fan. I thought it was a young lady who was a fan. She seemed pretty cool. I took the picture. And that was it. Two years after that, I see something come out of some bull crap about this transsexual person was in a relationship with me. I was just like everybody else. I didn’t have a clue at what this person was talking about.”

In a video posted in 2012, Sidney Starr confessed to lying about her relationship with Chingy who she says she met merely as a fan.

“I wanna give a huge apology to Chingy,” she said in her video. “I’m very, very sorry Chingy for anything that I caused to throw dirt on your name…I met him as a fan because I was a backup dancer. Chingy didn’t know anything about me. Didn’t know my background. He didn’t know I was transgender. I just need people to know that the things I said about Chingy weren’t true.”

While speaking with Vlad TV, Chingy revealed that he has forgiven Sidney Starr in an effort to remain good-natured and good-hearted.