A History of Nas vs Jay Z Pt. 2

A while back I began covering the history of Jay Z and Nas' beef. I finish everything I say I will, even if it's a little late. So I present the continuation of their feud as well as the conclusion. Feel free to catch up on part one.

Nas - Stillmatic Freestyle (H to The Omo) - So Jay and the Roc had been firing shots for a while and Nas had not directly responded to any of them. Simply stating that he would not bow down. So one day he goes on the radio and he kicks a freestyle over an Eric B and Rakim remix. It's the normal Nas freestyle then he says "N.Y. City, grab a hold and ride with me." He then proceeds to drop bomb after bomb on Roc-a-fella artist including

Rip the Freeway, shoot through Memphis with money bags. Stop in Philly, order cheese steaks and eat Beans fast and bring it back up top, remove the fake king of New York. You show off, I count dough off when you sample my voice, I rule you, before, you used to rap like the Fu-Schnickens, Nas designed your Blueprint, who you kidding? Is he H to the izz-O, M to the izz-O? For shizzle you phony, the rapping version of Sisqo

Summer Jam - Nas wants to hang Jay Z mannequin on stage during his set at Summer Jame. Nas is told that would not allow this at all or any other actions that can be considered as adding fire to his beef with Jay Z and Roc-A-Fella. Nas then pulls out of the concert and is replaced with Jay Z. Jay Z kills Prodigy on Screen by releasing the photos of Prodigy performing ballet routines, who portrayed himself as a gangster from the poorest of ghettos. Nas boycotts Hot 97 for several years providing competitors with exclusive interviews and tracks first. Afterwards he begins to care less for the beef feeling as if there are certain people who are determined to make him out to be a loser. That is until Takeover dropped.

Jay Z - Takeover - Takeover was primarily a Mobb Deep diss. Mainly because Prodigy didn't know how to shut up. Havoc just happened to catch shots for standing next to him. In fact, Nas had also dissed prodigy in a few bars on It Was Written while featuring Havoc on the album because Prodigy couldn't stop bothering people. Anyway it's all good for Nas until that 3rd verse hits. with "I know you miss it Nas (FAME)" then you just had to sit and listen. One of the coldest lines in the track was:

Yeah I sampled your voice, you was using it wrong, you made it a hot line, I made it a hot song, and you ain't get a coin, nigga, you was getting fucked then
I know who I paid, God - Serchlite publishing.

This was the line that really go under Nas' skin because it just wasn't true but people rode with it. MC Search who owned Searchlite (Named Zomba at the time) waited until 2014 to explain what happened. Jay Z did pay $2000 for the sample and 50 percent of the royalties. However he only paid for clearance because Searchlight only distributed Nas material and did not own any of his masters. Also the name of the company wasn't Searchlight until 2012. Nas Deal with Searchlight actually included the clause that he receive 50 percent of any money they make from his publishing so in the end, Jay really did pay Nas $1000 for that sample. He just didn't know it.

Anyway Nas feelt that Jay had gotten everything off his chest despite saying things like:

You said you've been in this 10, I've been in it 5, smarten up, Nas, 4 albums in 10 years, nigga? I could divide, that's one every...let's say 2, 2 of them shits was due, 1 was "nah," the other was Illmatic, that's a one-hot-album-every-10-year average

Nas - Ether - There was no plan to respond to Takeover. Nas was done with the beef until Jungle informed him that the streets were saying that his career was over if he didn't respond. So Nas rolled out of bed and recorded Ether. Nas really did start a lot of the things that would haunt Jay Z forever. The big lips camel thing, that was Nas. Nas also killed the Roc by claiming all their artists were irrelevant, just Jay's sidekicks and look what happened to them. Kanye is like the one outlier. The first two verses were gentle warning shots that Jay should turn the track off. Here are some excerpts from that last verse:

Y'all niggas deal with emotions like bitches, what's sad is I love you, ‘cause you're my brother, you traded your soul for riches, my child, I've watched you grow up to be famous, and now I smile like a proud dad, watching his only son that made it

Jay did in fact open up for Jaz on a tour that he was sharing with Large Professor's group Mainsource, that featured Nas as a lead member. In a sense, Jay was opening for Nas' opener.

You seem to be only concerned with dissin' women, were you abused as a child? Scared to smile? They called you ugly? Well, life is harsh; hug me! Don't reject me!

Jay admitted all of this on 'Song Cry'

You a fan, a phony, a fake, a pussy, a Stan

Jay Z has literally mentioned Nas, had a Nas sample or a Nas feature on every album except Watch The Throne

I still whip your ass; you 36 in a karate class? You Tae-Bo ho, tryna work it out, you tryna get brolic?

Jay Z was known to take martial arts classes at the time, he however stopped after this line.

Jay Z - Supa Ugly - If you ever heard the Angie Martinez interview with Jay the first time he heard Ether you would know he was upset by it. Not mad, just upset and on the verge of tears. He responded with one of the nastiest diss tracks ever. Supa Ugly came right after the passing of Nas mother so it didn't actually hit Nas because he was so emotionally numb at the time. It did hit him when Jay Z's mother forced him to call and apologize. The first verse has Jay claiming Nas ran away from a fight because Jay had Beanie Sigel and Memphis Bleek with him, but neither has backed up the story. The second claims Nas had his chain stolen and JT The Bigga Figa bought it back for him, but again nobody backed Jay on this. That third verse, well that shit is all true. Here are some bars from Supa Ugly, it may not be the greatest diss of all time, but it was the most disrespectful:

Me and the boy A.I. got more in common than just balling and rhyming, Get it? More in Carmen, I came in your Bentley backseat, skeeted in your Jeep, left condoms on your baby seat.

That's the part that had Jay Z's mother force him to apologize. Yes it's true, he did sleep with the mother of Nas' first child Carmen Bryan, and so did Allen Iverson. In fact a lot of people did, she wrote a book about it. The thing is, the book was flattering to Jay either. During interviews she claimed that most of the time they spent together wasn't having sex in Nas' vehicles. It was him asking increasingly personal questions about Nas. She claimed that it was almost as if Jay wanted to be Nas best friend.

Jay goes on to make reference to the fact that Nas already knew about the affair but was trying to keep quiet so as not to ruin his street cred. This was the last diss in beef that most people look at and it just wasn't the last one. It did however bring a lot of things to the front that caused Jay and Nas to spill their hearts on tracks about how they really felt.

Jay Z - Blueprint 2 - This is Jay's last dissin the feud. He actually promised to diss Nas every year until Nas quit rapping. The instrumental is probably one of my favorite's of all time, but lyrically, Jay just comes off bitter at Nas, Rosie Parez, Prodigy and a lot of other people. The track equates to "Why y'all don't love me like y'all love him." It sounds petty and that's probably why Jay didn't go through with his promise to diss Nas every year, after hearing Nas' response with "Last Real Nigga Alive." Jay sounds bitter, but he does bring up some good points. Rosie Perez wrote an article for XXL applauding Nas for his lyrics praising women of color and shaming Jay Z for his overuse of the words "bitch and hoe," which Nas also uses, just to a much lesser extent, especially at the time. Jay states:

I'm sorry Miss Rosie Perez, I call a spade a spade, it just is what it is, but you can't give cred to anything dude says, same dude to give you ice and you owe him some head, shorty, it's time to wake up the dead, you sound a little naive in them articles that I read

He's got a point. Nas will do songs like "The American Way" where he defends black women and turn around and drop songs like "The Makings of a Perfect Bitch" on the same album. Jay also brings up a good point when bringing up charities. This is the first and last time Jay ever mentioned his giving to charity on a song. Jay states:

Can't y'all see that he's fake, the rap version of T.D. Jakes, prophesizing on your CDs and tapes. Won't break you a crumb of the little bit that he makes and this is with whom you want to place your faith. I put dollars on mine, ask Columbine, when the Twin Towers dropped, I was the first in line, donating proceeds off every ticket sold, when I was out on the road, that's how you judge Hov, no? Ain't I supposed to be absorbed in myself? Every time there's a tragedy, I'm the first one to help, they call me this misogynist, but they don't call me the dude to take his dollars to give gifts at the projects. These dudes is all politics, depositing checks, they put in they pocket, all you get in return is a lot of lip and y'all buy the shit, caught up in the hype

Jay is right, he does donate a ton of money to charity, then and now. Nas donates to charity as well, but not on the same levels. However, to be fair to Nas he has always been about creating economic equality through building businesses from the ground up. While Jay has purchased business and made a lot of money from them, the number Nas has invested in is ridiculous. Nas actually owns Queensbridge Venture Partners where he invests in different small businesses.  As of 2015 Nas managed to get in on the ground floor in over 40 businesses including; Bevel, Dropbox, Lyft, Lookout and many more.

Jay has good points but the reason people thought he sounded bitter was his flustered and angry tone as well as bars like:

You opened the door god, I'm at you annually

Cause the nigga wear a kufi, it don't mean that he bright, cause you don't understand him, it don't mean that he nice, it just means you don't understand all the bullshit that he write

Since I will not lose, they try to help him cheat

I will not lose, for even in defeat, there's a valuable lesson learned, so it evens up for me

I'm a legend, you should take a picture with me

You should be happy to be in my presence

This was probably my favorite diss track from Jay. If he had started the beef saying this stuff it wouldn't have been as debated about who won. Instead he waited until his feelings were hurt to actually say these things.

Nas - Last Real Nigga Alove - So this is Nas putting the all of his beef to rest. Not because he gives up but because he's tired of it. For some perspective it comes from his album God's Son. Nas' mother had just passed and he had actually retired from music at this point. However before his mother passed she asked that he never stop making music. The result was God's Son featuring a different Nas more focused on trying to enjoy life than past problems.

The first verse features Nas explaining how he met BIG and Diddy as well as what led to their beef. In this case it was because Nas was too passive. He let other people drag him into a beef he wanted nothing to do with and this one actually hurt because he considered him and BIG to be friends. He opens the verse with:

Y'all don't know about my Biggie wars, who you thought "Kick In The Door" was for? But that's my heart, y'all still tripping off the Jigga shit

If you listen to "Kick in The Door" that first verse is about Nas and uses the same Leprechaun bars that Jay Z would recycle on "Takeover." Nas never even responded to the track before "Last Real Nigga Alive" because he was too upset about it.

The second verse touches on a lot of issues. The big one here is Nas admitting Carmen cheated on him with more than Jay Z and it was Nas' own fault because he didn't pay her any attention. He's also not mad about it anymore which is a big jump from his song "The Cross" earlier in the album. Then he talks about Jay. Nas was spending time with his mother when "Takeover" dropped and he understands why Jay did it. Nas believes Jay did it because Jay wanted to be the top rapper in New York and for that to happen, Nas had to be taken out. But Nas goes on to say, he doesn't care about chasing that crown, because as he stated in verse 1 king of New York brought him nothing but problems and lost friends. The big kick here is how Nas ends it:

I was Scarface, Jay was Manolo, it hurt me when I had to kill him and his whole squad for dolo

If you've ever seen the movie Scarface, Manolo is the best friend of Tony the title character. Tony kills Manolo after he sleeps with Tony's sister. Despite Tony always thinking Manolo was soft killing him actually did hurt Tony. In this case, Nas had been friends with Jay. Large Professor backed this up. Large Professor also stated that there where three other versions of "Ether" that Nas scrapped because they went too far with lines like "It should have been you who died in that plane crash instead of Aaliyah." So yeah, Nas was hurt and he was done with the beef because.

The End

So that's the history of Jay and Nas. The next thing that happened was Jay became president of Def Jam and immediately signed Nas to one of the biggest contracts in the label's history. They followed it up by closing out Jay Z's "I Declare War" concert together after Jay had brought a bunch of rappers together to end their beefs. Then they did a bunch of songs together and hang out now. It's weird seeing Jay and Beyonce at Nas birthday party or Nas at the openin

You can hear Darrell on the CP Time and Powerbomb Jutsu podcasts. He also plays classic arcade games on The Cabinet. You can also check out his playthrough of Sleeping Dogs.
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