“Ether”—Nas

What's up everyone? I'm Nora Prinziati. And I'm Nathan Hubbard. And we're coming in like a wrecking ball to announce a brand new series. That's right. It's every single album, Miley Cyrus. Deep dive with us into the career of one of our most creative and confounding pop stars. We're starting, of course, with the best of Hannah Montana. And ending with her brand new album, Something Beautiful, in June. And don't forget about Miley Cyrus and her dead pets. We certainly will not be doing that. So listen now on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I do not enjoy conflict. I don't like it when people argue. It makes me viscerally uncomfortable. I don't like it when people argue in books. I don't like it when people argue in sitcoms. I don't like it when people argue in movies. You know the part in every romantic comedy when the couple breaks up? I hate that part. This happens without fail like 70% of the way through every rom-com ever made. When there's exactly 20 minutes left in the movie, the couple angrily breaks up. And they say terrible things to one another. And then they're both alone and miserable and remorseful for like five minutes of screen time. While like a song by Peter Gabriel or Mary J. Blige or The National is playing. And then the couple triumphantly reconciles in the last 15 minutes of the movie. But I can't even enjoy that tender, super sweet, climactic, triumphant romantic comedy reunion. Because I'm still recovering from when they angrily broke up 20 minutes ago. I hate that part. I don't like it when people say mean things to each other. I certainly don't like it when people argue IRL. And I am nearly physically incapable of being one of the people arguing. You know the Jonathan Richmond song, couples must fight? Jonathan Richmond, phenomenal singer-songwriter, leader of the modern lovers back in the 70s, proud Bostonian, infectiously childlike, plays a nylon string acoustic guitar, fantastic dancer, one of the best live shows I've ever seen. Jonathan Richmond, he's the guy singing in the tree at the beginning of There's Something About Mary. You know, this guy. They've tried to set him up with Tiffany and Indigo, but there's something about Mary that they don't know. That's Jonathan Richmond. There's something about Mary. That's a classic 90s rom-com. And I haven't seen it in like 25 years, but I just looked up the plot summary on Wikipedia and yeah, Cameron Diaz and Ben Stiller break up with roughly 20 minutes left. And there's something about Mary. And then they joyfully reconcile with the help of Brett Favre. That's even worse. But so Jonathan Richmond puts out a song in 2001 called Couples Must Fight. Couples Must Fight. Couples Must Argue. From time to time, must clear the air. And I disagree. No, they mustn't. Please don't fight, couples. I'm sorry, Jonathan Richmond. I don't mean to argue with you. That's so rude of me. Whatever you think is fine. I'm sorry. Forget I said anything. There's some famous movies I will never, ever watch because it's clear to me that the whole movie is just people being super mean to each other. Whiplash? The mean jazz drummer movie? No. Hell no. I don't even like whimsical, absurdist, ostensibly comedic arguments in movies. Please, both of you, knock it off. You are not a man. You are a big fat joke. I'm a man who discovered the wheel and built the Eiffel Tower out of metal and brawn. That's what kind of man I am. You're just a woman with a small brain. No, I don't even like it when Will Ferrell and Christina Applegate fight in Anchorman, Colin, the legend of Ron Burgundy, the 2004 semi-romcom where they're trading ridiculous insults for basically the whole movie. Wait, though. Christina is about to have what you might call her a minor moment. You are a smelly pirate hooker. You look like a blueberry. Why don't you go back to your home on Whore Island? Well, you have bad hair. You know what I mean? Then Will Ferrell freaks out and Christina Applegate throws a typewriter at his head. I'm not into it. Even in Will Ferrell movies, I hate it when people say mean things to each other. I do not enjoy conflict. I don't care for beef. You need to know this about me. You need to know upfront that this is going to hurt me way more than it hurts you because today we're dealing entirely with conflict, enmity, cruelty, discouraging words. Today, beef's the only thing on the menu. Why do these two guys have to fight, man? It breaks my heart. They had so much in common. Okay, they had some stuff in common. They had roughly the same job. They both loved and exemplified the same art form. They didn't come from exactly the same place. They didn't have exactly the same origin story. They didn't experience the same levels of violence and grittiness growing up. They perhaps had different stuff in their dressers. Yeah, and they didn't have exactly the same skill level. But nonetheless, why couldn't they just be friends? Come on, guys. Say something nice about each other. But no, Everlast just had to mention Eminem's daughter. All right, this is a song called Ear Drums Pop from the Los Angeles rap group, Dilated Peoples, and the song is called Ear Drums Pop. It's a song that's about the people who are in love with each other. It's about the people who are in love with each other. It's about the people who are in love with each other. And then there's the song called Ear Drums Pop from the Los Angeles rap group, Dilated Peoples. I just got the pun in that name, Dilated Peoples, just now. This is their Ear Drums Pop remix, which came out in the year 2000 and features a guest verse from a famous rapper and singer-songwriter named Everlast. Better known as the guy from House of Pain, best known for their 1992 smash crossover hit, Jump Around. Fun fact about me, whenever I even hear the name House of Pain, I immediately go watch the scene from the 90s semi-Romcom swingers with the main characters, a bunch of mostly white dudes. They get into an argument and a parking lot with a bunch of slightly tougher looking mostly white dudes. And then one of the main characters, a guy named Sue, he pulls a gun and the tougher looking guys all run away, and then all Sue's friends yell at him for pulling a gun. And then Vince Vaughn says, Oh, like, fucking House of Pain was gonna do anything? This is a conflict heavy scene, admittedly, but I love it anyway. People get carjacked. Oh man, who would ever carjack your fucking K car? He's right, Sue. You don't need to carry a gat. Listen, just because I had the balls to stand up to these fucking guys. Like fucking House of Pain was gonna do anything? You li- Yeah, so Everlast has been famous since Jump Around blew up, but now, by the year 2000, Everlast has reinvented himself as a gritty, dour, semi-melodic singer-songwriter thanks to a surprisingly big hit he had in 1998 called What It's Like. In college, in the late 90s, I used to walk around campus singing semi-rude alternate lyrics to this song to myself. I have no idea why I did that. Here's another song about a guy who's had a real crappy life. The shoddy is dog and spanked his kids and it screwed his wife. That's pretty rude. That is uncharacteristic of me. What It's Like is fine. I'm not trying to start beef with Everlast. Okay, so it's 2000 now, and Everlast is a weird rock star, rap star hybrid, and Everlast turns up in this dilated people's remix, and he says, cock my hammer, spit a comet like Hailey, I'll buck a 380 on ones that act shady. And I'm sure Eminem, aka Marshall Mathers, aka Slim Shady, aka the Detroit raised rap superstar and pop supernova, who says super mean things about people for a living and also famously has a daughter named Hailey, I'm sure Eminem will respond to this provocation magnanimously. Tooth just a quitter, you better cause I came alone, to the place I have some pain to go, talk about my little girl in a song again, I'ma kill you, I'ma kill you. Of course I'm just kidding. No, instead Eminem and Everlast start exchanging increasingly caustic diss tracks, culminating in Quitter, a nearly seven minute barrage of unpleasantries. In May of 2024, the ringer, back when Rap Beef was suddenly extremely newsworthy. You know what I mean? In May 2024, the ringer published a giant list of the 81 greatest diss tracks of all time. And for your reference, Eminem's Quitter, which also came out in 2000, Quitter is officially the 37th best diss track of all time. Also, and I can't decide if this song would be ranked higher or lower, if this weren't the case, also the vast majority of Quitter's nearly seven minute runtime is devoted to Eminem, repeatedly pointing out that Everlast had a heart attack. The fact that Everlast had a heart attack comes up frequently during this particular Rap feud. This is Eminem's primary weapon. In Anchorman, Will Ferrell's biggest weakness is his hair. Everlast's biggest weakness is his heart. Eminem's like, hey, you had a heart attack. But so then Eminem rattles on for a little while about how backstage, and one of his shows, Eminem walked by Everlast, and Eminem apparently ignored Everlast in Everlast's opinion. And so in retaliation, Everlast goes and jumps on a dilated people song and goes cock my hammer, spit a comet like Hailey, etc. And the rest is history, notably. Everlast says that he was unaware at the time that Eminem had a daughter named Hailey. The Hailey's comet reference was coincidental, and therefore, according to Everlast, he brought up Eminem's daughter on accidents. That's a tough break, dude. Everlast talked about this in a 2020 episode of the rapper Talib Kweli's podcast, People's Party with Talib Kweli. Furthermore, and I wouldn't tell you this if it were important, Everlast now looks like Michael McDonald. The dude from the Doobie Brothers, the super melodic yacht rock captain, what a fool believes and so forth. Everlast now has snow white hair and a substantial snow white beard. And at first I thought he looked like George Lucas, but no, he looks like Michael McDonald. That's a compliment. Michael McDonald is a handsome and dignified looking older gentleman. To repeat, I am not trying to start beef with Everlast. Meanwhile, Eminem is still talking wild shit on this quitter song. At one point, M starts talking about how he saw House of Pain live in the mid-90s, but he thought the opening band was better. Eminem is talking about Limp Biscuit, the world historically uncouth new metal band Limp Biscuit, who, according to Eminem, were better live than House of Pain back in 1994. And indeed, House of Pain's DJ, DJ Lethal, he went on to join Limp Biscuit after House of Pain broke up. Eminem saying to Everlast, in essence, Limp Biscuit murdered you on your own shit. That's interesting. And diss tracks are like this, right? They're a chaotic mix of playground insults, arcane personal grievances, Wikipedia dumps, rude musical analysis, serious health problems, and what else? First off, fuck your songs and they'll shit you say. This my wife, but at least I gotta beat you, gay. You claim to be a Muslim, but you Irish white. So fuck you, fat boy. Drop the mic, let's fight. Gay stuff. That's what else. Diss my wife, but at least I gotta bitch you, gay. Nobody's doing their best work, lyrically or morally, in this particular rap battle, or really in 98% of rap battles. Also, as you may have noticed, the song Quitter has gone on for so long that Eminem switched beats. He switched to the hit them up beat. Hit them up, of course, being the 1997 Tupac diss track aimed at, most famously, the notorious B.I.G. According to the ringer, hit them up is, in fact, the number one greatest diss track of all time, with, whether you like it or not, pretty objectively, the most famous opening lines in rap feud history. First, don't fuck your bitch and then click you claim. West Side, when we rock, come and quit with gang. You claim to be a player, but I fucked your wife. We bust some bad boys, niggas fuck for life. Anyways, you ever see the video on YouTube of hit them up playing over scenes from Barney and Friends, the popular children's show, Barney and Friends, Barney the Purple Dinosaur? It's good stuff. The first 10 seconds of the Tupac Barney video are really something. Anyways, that's Tupac's hit them up, the best diss track ever, according to the website I work for. Whereas Eminem only makes it as high as number 12. This is an Eminem song called Nail in the Coffin. It's from 2002, and it is the culmination of Eminem's even nastier and more personal feud with Benzino, the rapper and provocateur and then co-owner of The Source magazine. And the Eminem-Benzino feud is of rich text, right? And that it's both a rap feud and a media feud. The Source at the time is the most important hip-hop focused magazine. It's basically the rap bible. And The Source only gives Eminem's 2002 album with the Eminem show four mics out of five. The Source reviews records on a five mic scale as opposed to a five star scale. And Eminem gets pissed because getting five mics in The Source is genuinely one of the rarest and greatest honors in hip-hop. But Eminem says Benzino, who is black, will never give an Eminem album five mics because Eminem is white. And Benzino gets pissed at Eminem and calls him 2003 Vanilla Ice, etc. Calamity ensues. And the subtext here. The enormous power that the rap media used to wield, and the enormous power that The Source especially used to wield, and the fraught racial dynamics swirling around the initial meteoric rise of Eminem, that's all legitimately fascinating and important. So to be absolutely clear, Eminem is like 800 times better at rapping than Benzino. And this particular beef is thus both especially repugnant and hopelessly lopsided. Eminem is like, dude, you suck so bad at rapping. Which raises the question. Among the countless rappers with whom Eminem has feuded, also including such luminaries as Insane Clown Posse, Machine Gun Kelly, Nick Cannon, Limp Biscuit in a separate incident, Cannabis, Royce de Five-Nine, and Ja Rule, who is historically Eminem's worthiest adversary? Who rose or sunk, as it were, to his level? None of them. Honestly, all of Eminem's rap battle adversaries are tied for last. Stylistically, compared to him. Royce de Five-Nine, despite being only Five-Nine, Royce is cool, and he and Eminem are friends again. But nonetheless, Eminem has never battled a true equal. Lyrically or culturally, which is too bad, culturally, but it's also a huge relief, like, for society. Eminem in an actually evenly matched rap battle is an extinction level event. But this in turn raises another question. Who is Eminem's worthiest adversary if by worthiest we mean the guy who most deserved it? You know who most deserved to get dissed by Eminem? Historically, this guy. Who the fuck is that guy right there? That fucking guy right there. What? Ray Romano's bothering here? Ray Romano, the guy from Everybody Loves Raymond? Who the fuck was Joey Zonoff? I fucked this motherfucker up, man. Hey. Ray Romano. Famous comedian, titular star of the late 90s, early 2000s, blockbuster sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, and my personal nemesis, Ray Romano. Oh, Ray Romano. I know I said I don't like conflict or beef, or people saying mean things, do we want another? But for both Swingers and Ray Romano, I will make an exception. I don't care for people talking shit unless they're talking shit about Ray Romano, in which case, proceed. If everybody loves Raymond, then I'm dead. Sorry. Sorry. That's a clip from the 2009 Judd Apatow comedy Funny People, starring Adam Sandler as a barely altered version of himself, Seth Rogen as a barely altered version of himself, and a ton of famous people as basically actually themselves, including Ray Romano and Eminem. In that scene, they're all in a crowded restaurant, and Eminem sitting at a table with Adam Sandler, and Em's complaining about how he gets hounded in public everywhere he goes, and Ray Romano sneaks a picture of him, and Em flips out. Eminem is a more compelling screen presence in Funny People than he is in Eight Mile. This fictional but not fictional because fuck him conflict with Ray Romano doesn't count as a rap battle, obviously, but there is, nonetheless, gay stuff. Hey Ray! Hello Marshall. Fucking problem here buddy? Would you like to fuck me? Is that what this is? I'll get it man, what's going on? Would you like me to fucking bend over for you right now? No. No man. Seth Rogen whispering, say no, that's the crowning touch. There. Ray deserves it. Ray has earned all the smoke. People say I look like Ray Romano. That's the entire basis of my beef with him. He has personally done nothing to me, and he is entirely unaware that I exist. Once a month on average, I'll be out somewhere, and a total stranger will come up to me and be like, hey you know who you look like, and I know what's coming, so I'll be like whooo. And they'll be like, you kind of look like Ray Romano, and I'll be like, ohhhh. I don't look that much like Ray Romano, in my opinion. We're both medium, shlubby, disheveled, beleaguered looking, rapidly graying white guys. The connection is tenuous. And it's not like he's the ugliest dude in town. He's not Michael McDonald, caliber or handsome, but he's inoffensive. He's a replacement level looking guy. It just bothers me. Alright, can we please compare me to somebody else? My grandmother thought I looked like Elvis. Presley, that's insane, but nonetheless, this is apparently my biggest weakness. My enemies are like, you look like Ray Romano. So, this is also bothering me. I strive on this show sincerely to avoid oblique references inside baseball, rock critic jargon, etc. Sincerely, I desire to be understood by everyone. I try to briefly and unobtrusively describe any person or song or concept that comes up. Jonathan Richmond, for example. And so, for those of you already up on this, which is most likely most of you, forgive me, but just in case, for example, my mother is still listening to this. Hello, mom. Once again, I apologize for all the swearing and also the phantom dick thing which you brought up two days ago. And also, in the spring of 2024, Kendrick Lamar and Drake had a lengthy and alarmingly personal superstar rapper feud, generating a delightful and terrifying barrage of diss tracks in a remarkably compressed amount of time. It got super ugly. Playground insults, arcane personal grievances, Wikipedia dumps, blunt accusations of domestic abuse and pedophilia, etc. And this feud culminated in the relentlessly Drake bashing Kendrick Lamar song Not Like Us. And in sharp contrast to the vast majority of diss tracks, Not Like Us became a freak smash pop hit. It hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100. It won record and song of the year at the Grammys. It defined the zeitgeist. Kendrick just did this song at the fucking Super Bowl halftime show. Sorry, mom. Kendrick Lamar just did this song at the fucking Super Bowl. Wop, wop, wop, wop, wop, that fucking muck. Wop, wop, wop, wop, wop, I'ma do my stuff. Why you trolling like a bitch, ain't you tired? Trying to strike a chord and it's probably a minor. Can I tell you honestly that my favorite line in Not Like Us is, I'ma do my stuff. I just like it when rappers do their stuff. But yeah, my personal primary takeaway from the cultural phenomenon of Not Like Us is that now, whenever anybody says anything truly devastating and out of pocket about somebody else, or whenever anyone commits a mortifying, self-devastating fuck-up, some random corner of my brain goes, We've decided to go back to the name HBO Max. This is my problem. But the whole point of this show is to turn my problems into everyone else's problems. In what remains of the hip hop media, the cultural media, the content industry, etc., not like us prompted a radical reassessment of the rap diss track. What makes a great diss track? And what a great diss track is capable of. Hence the ringer's list of the 81 best diss tracks of all time, where, for your reference, not like us rang in at number 8. Kendrick Lamar's Not Like Us is slightly better than Real Motherfucking G's by EZE, and it's slightly worse than The Bridges Over by KRS1's Boogie Down Productions. My long-suffering editor Justin Sales wants me to clarify that this list came out two days after Not Like Us first dropped, and he'd rank it higher now. Fair enough. Tupac's Hit Him Up is number 1. Ice Cube's No Vaseline is number 2. I'll look that one up, mom. And this is number 3. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 21st episode of 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, Cole and the 2000s, and this week we are discussing Ether by the deified New York City rapper Nas. From his 2001 album Stillmatic. By New York City I mean Queens, and by Queens I mean Queens Bridge. Yes, the relentlessly JZ bashing Nas song Ether. What is the boodoo boodoo boodoo moment on Ether? You want to knock that out real quick? Hell yeah. Here it is. You a fan, a phony, a fake, a pussy, a stan, I still whip your ass, you 36 in the karate class. There it is. This is where Ether peaks. Stan is an Eminem reference, obviously. Eminem is everywhere. You 36 in a karate class? I love it. I'll stop doing that now. Probably. I got to the ad break way quicker than usual. I'm pretty impressed with myself. I shouldn't be. I got to the ad break marginally quicker than last time, and last time was horrible. Whatever. Let's celebrate small victories. How should we celebrate? Oh, right. Fantastic. Whatever product or service was just advertised, get 20% off right now with the promo code. Like fucking House of Pain was going to do anything? That's not true, obviously. I'm just kidding. That's way too long a phrase for a promo code. That's too bad. All right, let's get this show in the road. I was going to talk about cannabis and LL Cool J for like 20 minutes, but now I'm not going to. True story. Time for the main event. Let's meet our combatants. NAS versus JZ. Queens, meaning the Queensbridge houses, versus Brooklyn, meaning the Marcy houses. Godson versus the business comma man. Cryptocurrency Scarface. NAS has been calling himself that recently. That's ridiculous. Versus Jehovah. JZ has been calling himself that pretty much the whole time. The subway track versus the heartbeat. Are you sitting at home doing this shit? That's the first seven seconds of the first NAS album, which is released in 1994 and is called Illmatic and is one of the most deified and canonized and lavishly praised hip hop records of all time. Illmatic has been praised so lavishly that it both made NAS's career and has arguably plagued NAS's career ever since. But so that subway rumble, that little snippet of dialogue, that's a sample from the 1983 film, Wild Style, which itself is a formative piece of hip hop culture. So NAS has got the train tracks and JZ has got the heartbeat. Okay, okay. All right, big man. You want to make some big bucks? That's the type of you are. You know something about cocaine? That's the first 10 seconds of the first JZ record released two years later in 1996 on his own Rockefeller records and called a reasonable doubt. You get a heartbeat and then you get a guy doing some lines from the 1983 film Scarface. The cocaine tornado Al Pacino ultra violent camp classic. Say hello to my little friend and so forth. Scarface is arguably an even more crucial and formative piece of hip hop culture than Wild Style. Reasonable doubt is a beloved all time classic debut album as well, but it's not quite as deified. The crown of reasonable doubt does not hang as heavily on JZ's head. It is not the albatross to JZ that Illmatic possibly is to NAS, but I do think that JZ versus Nod Feud starts right here in the respective opening seconds of their respective bullet proof all time classic debut albums, the subway versus the heartbeat, that physical harmony and that inherent conflict from this moment forward. This conflict is inevitable. Inevitably, one of these men will be a 36 year old man in a karate class and inevitably the other one of these men will point that out on record. But let's give NAS his full do, shall we? And that requires going back a few years to the very first verse that made him famous. This song is called Live at the Barbecue. It appears on Breaking Adams, the 1991 debut album from Main Source, the famed rap group split between New York City and Toronto. The dustiness of this simple but monumental drum loop, right? The tactile, the formative, the classic, the old school, the golden age aura of just those drums. Live at the Barbecue feels like a big deal before it even kicks off with a verse from a teenage rapper then known as Nasty Nas. This single Nas verse itself is famous and canonical and heavy with portent. And this is probably the best and most famous and nastiest part. When I was 12, I went to hell for snuffin' Jesus. Yeah, this guy's gonna be super famous. Nazir bin Oludara Jones was born in Brooklyn on September 14th, 1973. His mother, Anne, worked for the U.S. Postal Service. His father, Oludara, was a jazz trumpeter. In 1985, Nas's parents divorced. In 2002, Nas's mother, Anne, dies of breast cancer. She was 61. When Nas is very young, he moves to the Queensbridge Housing Projects in the Long Island City neighborhood in Queens, right across the East River from Manhattan. Queensbridge by 1991 is already a very famous location in rap music, thanks in large part to the Juice Crew, Marley Marl, MC Shan, Roxanne Chante, Cool G Rap, etc. Queensbridge has already played a central role in various extremely famous rap feuds. The Bridges Over by Boogie Down Productions is about Queensbridge, and that diss track is indeed ultra famous, but Queensbridge is nonetheless still thriving even before this record comes out. I Never Sleep Cause Sleep is the Cousin of Death. Yeah, this guy is going to be super, super, super famous. This song is called New York State of Mind. It is produced by the great DJ Premier, and it is the first full song on Nas's first album. In 1994's Illmatic, it is legitimately very challenging to discuss Illmatic reasonably. People really, really, really, really, really love Illmatic. Illmatic is a sacred object, a sacred entity. Illmatic is mounted on a towering pedestal that has arguably become, for Nas, sometimes quite literally, a cross to bear or to be crucified upon. Illmatic got a perfect 5 mics rating in the source back in 1994. Back in 2013, an Illmatic reissue got a perfect 10 score in Pitchfork. I don't think any other record in history has gotten both 5 mics in the source and a pitchfork 10, but I don't have time to confirm that right now. I'm very busy. Okay, People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, the debut album by a Tribe called Quest, that also got 5 mics in the source and much later a pitchfork 10. I made some time. Kanye West's My Beautiful, Dark Twisted Fantasy also got 5 mics and a pitchfork 10, both of those upon release. But the source was a very different magazine by then by 2010, so I don't know if that really counts. I don't have time for this. I can't stress to you enough how busy I am. I thought maybe a Dayloss Soul record got both too, but it turns out Dayloss Soul is dead, got 5 mics and then much later, 3 feet high and rising got a pitchfork 10. Honestly, I have lots of other things to do. The record is 10 tracks, including the intro, in under 40 minutes with production from such likewise absurdly deified figures as DJ Premier, Pete Rock and Large Professor from Main Source. This record is perfect. It is the quintessential no skips situation. It is a minefield of superlatives and ludicrously elevated expectations. It might be best for everyone, Nas included, if we didn't really even talk about this record anymore and just played it in full every day instead. It's such a relatively insignificant thing, but right now I'm really into the way Nas pronounces the word off here. I set it off with my own rhyme because I'm as ill as a convict who kills for phone time. I'm acts like a sex, a flex like sex in ya. Stereo sex Nas a catch wreck. I set it off with my own rhyme because I'm as ill as a convict who kills for phone time. Unbelievable. This song is called Half Time. It's track 5 out of 10 on Illmatic and I always really appreciated the truth and advertising of that song title. Look, it's not that Nas invented lyrical complexity, internal rhyme, high concept storytelling or the artful blurring between rapping about stuff he did versus rapping about stuff he saw other people do. But when Illmatic hits you just right, Nas feels like a quantum leap forward in all of that. This is 1994. New York City has the Wu Tang Clan and a tribe called Quest. And by the fall of 1994, New York City has the notorious B.I.G.'s ready to die. But New York is no longer the undisputed epicenter of rap. Dr. Dre's The Chronic from late 92 is still dominant. West Coast G Funk is still dominant. Snoop Doggy Dog solo debut, Doggy Style, out in late 93, that's still dominant to the point where virtually every major review of Illmatic mentions Doggy Style somewhere, often in the first sentence. But Illmatic, like all those other records, has an immaculate sense of place. It puts you on Nas's block. It puts you in Nas's shoes. It makes you see through Nas's eyes. And maybe sometimes it makes you stare malevolently at out of towners through Nas's eyes. This song is called Represent. It is produced once again by DJ Premier. The jovial bounce to represent only heightens the malevolence. Now Nas is maybe on an individual level, not the scariest, the most dangerous rapper to emerge from Queensbridge in the 90s. His friends, usually there is friends, Prodigy and Havoc from the duo Mob Deep are notably shorter than him, but they come across as a touch grimeer perhaps. Or anyway, when Prodigy raps about how he's going to stab your brain with your nose bone on the big 95 Mob Deep hit Shook 1's Part 2, something in the iciness of Prodigy's tone suggests that he has real world experience using someone's nose bone as a weapon. I don't know if Nas has ever wielded someone's nose bone as a weapon, but I am willing to consider the possibility. Because when Nas is rapping about anything with this level of vividness and intricacy, I am willing to consider really any possibility about the world Nas lives in and the stuff Nas does in it. If Nas says he's pulling a tech 9 semi-automatic out of his dresser, then who am I to dispute this? In that mentality, my conflict averse who am I to dispute this mentality? That's one big reason why I personally have never started a rap battle with anybody. But at least in retrospect, at least now, the Nas vs. Jay-Z battle royale is already looming here on Elmatic. There are, as you might imagine, different accounts of where this feud starts exactly. But one popular theory is that all the trouble starts with a hotline. This song is called The World Is Yours, produced by Pete Rock, a phenomenal loop of the jazz pianist Amma Jamal driving this one. Amma Jamal is from Pittsburgh. I didn't know that. I don't have time for this. I'm out for dead presidents to represent me. That is indeed a hotline. How hot? Precisely, you ask. Rock of the Year. I'm a president to represent me. I'm a president to represent me. Well, I was fit that Wonder I'm a shit. Me and my conglomerate shall remain anonymous. Hot enough that a young world historically brazen Brooklyn rapper named Jay-Z builds his first big single, Dead Presidents, off a loop of Nas's voice on The World Is Yours remix. A reworked version of this Jay-Z song, called Dead Presidents 2, is the finest moment on Jay-Z's own deified and zeitgeist-defining debut album, released in 1996 and called a reasonable doubt. I don't mean to offend you. It's fine if you like another song on a reasonable doubt better than Dead Presidents 2. You like The Evils better? That's a great choice. You have great taste. I don't want any trouble. In most versions of this story, Jay-Z politely asks if Nas would like to recreate the Dead Presidents hook and maybe be in the video. Nas, who is substantially more famous at the time, he politely declines. Jay-Z politely samples the hook instead. And thus, does a hotline from 1994 become a hot song in 1996. And Nas and Jay-Z proceed with the early phases of their generation-defining blockbuster careers. For Nas, this means trying desperately to live up to the promise of Illmatic and incredibly, often succeeding. The second Nas album, released in 1996 and called It Was Written, yes, this is the album that samples Sting. This is the album where Nas personally sings a slightly reworded version of the chorus to Sweet Dreams by the Eurythmics as a pop crossover play. This is the album where Nas dials up the mafioso tough guy talk. This is the album where the songs with the mob deep guys are way better than the song with Dr. Dre. But It Was Written is also the album with If I Ruled the World, imagine that, featuring Lauren Hill and still Nas's most purely pleasurable pop song. And yeah, this is also the album with this song called I Gave You Power, produced once again by DJ Premier, in which Nas wraps the whole time from the perspective of a gun. They use me wrong so I sing this song to this day. This is a high-risk maneuver, this rapping like you're a gun business. I don't know how you do this and avoid sounding corny, sounding melodramatic, sounding pedantic. Maybe Nas doesn't avoid sounding corny, melodramatic and pedantic. The intro to I Gave You Power, in which Nas is like, check it out guys, I'm about to pretend I'm a gun. Just to clarify, I'm a gun right now. Me equals gun. Okay, that's pretty corny. But what strikes me here at a bare minimum is that Nas will always take the risk. And that's how on one album, Nas went from rapping about the tech in his dresser to rapping about being a gun in the dresser next to the tech. He's got range. What's the worst thing you can say about this album? It was written. It's not Elmatic. What's the worst thing you can say about the firm, the extra tough guy, Mafioso supergroup of Nas, Foxy Brown, AZ and Nature that put out one album called The Album in 1997? I'm very busy. I don't have time to talk about the firm. What's the worst thing you can say about I Am and Nas D'Amis, the two full albums Nas put out in 1999? One of them starts with a song called New York State of Mind Part Two and the other one is called Nas D'Amis and neither album is Elmatic. Maybe that's not the worst thing you can say about any of that, but that's the worst thing I can say because I hate conflict. Nas is doing great generally. Nas is wrapping his ass off constantly and Nas is grappling provocatively with the power vacuum at the highest echelon of hip hop in the late 90s. This song is called We Will Survive off I Am, one of Nas's 1999 albums, the one that's not called Nas D'Amis. Does this song sample Kenny Loggins? Yes. Is that corny? Maybe. Is Kenny Loggins handsomer than Michael McDonald as Yacht Rock heavyweights go? Yes. Nas is talking directly to the notorious B.I.G. He's talking to Biggie in the first verse. Nas is talking directly to Tupac in the second verse and both Biggie and Tupac are gone. Tupac's Hit Him Up may in fact be the greatest diss track in history, but part of the terrible monumental weight of Hit Him Up is that three months after Hit Him Up comes out Tupac is shot and killed and less than seven months after that, Biggie is shot and killed and the hip hop universe is devastated. There's a period of profound mourning. There's a period of recalibration. Some of us briefly lose our taste for vicious diss tracks and for violent East Coast versus West Coast sensationalism. Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan calls a truce. Cooler heads relatively prevail briefly. In the next few years, many of us will quickly regain our taste for vicious diss tracks, for various reasons, one of whom is named 50 Cent, but there's another major issue. Both in hip hop at large and in New York City specifically, who's on top now? There's a power vacuum. There is a vacant throne. Nas, for his part, finds such talk distasteful. And on this song, We Will Survive, he tells Biggie as much. And they claim to be New York's King. Who could Nas be referring to here, you think? Excuse me. Did Jay-Z gets the hit R&B group Black Street to sing the hook to Glenn Fry's 1985 Yacht Rock classic, You Belong to the City? You belong to the city. Glenn Fry, the guy from the Eagles, is that corny? That's not the point here. But what if that is the point here? Actually, the point is that the point is that the point is the point is the point is This song from Jay-Z's 1997 album In My Lifetime, volume one is called The City Is Mine. And on it, Jay-Z raps directly to Biggie. And also Jay-Z raps explicitly about how he's taking Biggie's place. OK. OK. There's some other minor pregame stuff. The Lexus references. Jay-Z's minor fracas with Mob Deep. Nas's minor fracas with Memphis Bleak. Memphis Bleak, Jay-Z's slightly less prominent rapper friend and henchman. Me, I just like saying the word fracas, etc. We don't have time for any of that. On the other hand, yo, did you know Jay-Z and Nas did a song together with this guy? We may in fact have time for this. Shaquille O'Neal? The guy from the Lakers? Did Shaq just say, I'm not just taco, I'm the whole enchilado? This is now my second favorite Shaq rap song. After Tell Me How My Ass Tastes, this song is called No Love Lost off Shaq's 1996 album You Can't Stop the Rain. And both Jay-Z and Nas were supposed to be on it, but Nas's verse didn't get cleared. So the version of this song with both Jay-Z and Nas and Lord Tariq didn't come out until 2024. Nonetheless, this happened. This is history. Yeah, we'll see about that showdown. Okay, Jay-Z is not exactly doing his best work here. Let's see if Nas is doing his best work here. Okay, Nas is not exactly doing his best work here. Am I greedy like I mean Edie? You just said Edie, I mean his name backward. That's cheating. Is Shaquille O'Neal doing his best work here? Wrapping wise, I don't have time to talk about Shaq on June 28th, 2001 at Summer Jam. The annual rap superstar blowout festival held that year at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island and hosted by fabled New York City radio station Hot 97, which to this day is one of the things I miss most about living in New York, Hot 97. At the 2001 Hot 97 Summer Jam, Jay-Z debuts a new song. This song is called Takeover. This is the recorded version of Takeover. There is video footage of Jay-Z at the 2001 Summer Jam, but that footage was uploaded by a YouTube account called Hip Hop VCR. Thank you for that, but there are audio fidelity issues. This song is called Takeover. It is really tremendously rude. One could argue that the absolute rudest part of Jay-Z's Summer Jam premiere of Takeover happens immediately. I don't care if you mob deep, my whole trick is to cruise. You little fuck, I got money stacks bigger than you. When I was pushing weight back in 88, you was the ballerina. I got your pictures, I seen you. And right here on screen on the four huge Nassau Coliseum Jumbotrons or whatever, a crowd of 15,000 people gets to see photos of prodigy from mob deep. At 13 or 14 years old, dressed up, for example, as Michael Jackson, for a performance at his grandmother's dance studio. Just to give this moment a little extra pizzazz, Jay-Z also brings out actual literal Michael Jackson at 2001 Summer Jam. Michael Jackson doesn't sing or dance or really do anything, but nonetheless, I'm about to play you a ton of clips from these last two songs in quick succession. So quick sidebar, do you know who Tom Bryan is? The fantastic rap blogger and music critic, stereo gum columnist, author of the book The Number One's, one of my favorite writers ever. I worked with Tom Bryan at The Village Voice when I lived in New York and I miss him too. But while I was there, I developed a sort of logic problem that I called the Tom Bryan theorem. And here it is, if you were at a Jay-Z concert and it was just Jay-Z alone on stage rapping, and then Jay-Z brought somebody out. Let's say Jay-Z brings out Michael Jackson on stage and then Michael Jackson brings somebody out. And then that person brings somebody out and then that person brings somebody out, etc. If each successive person who gets brought out brings out the next person, how many people are on stage before somebody brings Tom Bryan out? That's the Tom Bryan theorem. Just think about it. Okay, this verse of Jay-Z's takeover is about Nas. Go ask, when from nasty Nas to escows trash had a spark when you started but now you just got Bitch you fell from top ten and not mention at all to your bodyguards, QQ Wally's verse better than yours. Don't worry about the Uchiwally bodyguard thing, I'm too busy. I've always liked takeover better than ether. I should say that at some point. Right, I just said it. It's 80% the baseline that makes me love this one more. Takeover appears on the 2001 blockbuster Jay-Z album, The Blueprint, released on Tuesday, September 11th, along with albums by Slayer, Bob Dylan, and they might be giants. I'm incredibly busy. Takeover is produced by One Kanye West. And Takeover samples, prodigiously, The Doors. The Doors song, five to one. Takeover also samples KRS-1, The Bridges Over Guy, KRS-1 is everywhere. The Doors. All these superstar tough guy rappers constantly rapping over Yacht Rock and Classic Rock and Dad Rock and whatnot. I love it. You know what Jay-Z was also maybe occasionally doing when he was pushing weight in 88? Listening to the Doors and the Eagles. You had a spark when you started but now you just garbage. Okay, the nice way to put it is that Illmatic will always be Nas's best album. This is the not nice way to put it. For your reference, in Jay-Z's estimation, I am and Nostradamus are due. It was written as Nah and Illmatic is Illmatic. Even people actively insulting Nas won't talk shit about Illmatic. Remember when Jay Cole dissed Kendrick Lamar, right? When the Kendrick Drake War first started and Jay Cole was like, your first shit was classic, your last shit was tragic, your second shit put people to sleep but they gassed it, your third shit was massive and that was your prime. Jay Cole trying to insult Kendrick Lamar by saying Kendrick had a two-hot album every 10-year average. That's one of my personal favorite moments of 2024. Okay, I'm reloaded. I'm jumping around this verse a little bit to serve my own arbitrary purposes but here we have perhaps the definitive word on the dead president's situation. If there is a single one-liner from TakeOver that still rattles around my brain constantly, it's you made it a hotline, I made it a hot song. But there's another slightly less snappy one-liner that's way up there for me. But first, dig the extra disrespectful way Jay-Z's voice almost cracks on You Ain't Live It. ["Lay Me In"] And we return here to the tack on Naz's dresser and to Naz's artful blurring between rapping about stuff he did versus rapping about stuff he saw other people do. And Jay-Z's contention that he did way more of the stuff he raps about than Naz did. Because see, now I'm stuck on the line, you scribbled in your notepad and created your life. Don't all rappers do that, ultimately. Did Naz scribble in his notepad and create his life more than any other rapper? Or did Naz just scribble in his notepad and create his life better than pretty much any other rapper? Anyway, I'm sure Naz will respond to this provocation magnanimously. ["Bright Shaw"] Ether appears on Naz's fifth solo album, released in 2001, and called Stillmatic. Yes, Stillmatic. Naz and Jay-Z agree that Illmatic looms over everything. Stillmatic came out in December 2001, so Ether premiered like six months after Summer Jam when TakeOver premiered. It used to take half a year for rappers to respond to diss tracks. We all used to just wait around. It's like how people used to play chess through the mail. Jay-Z vs. Naz does not fit perfectly into any particular rap feud binary. Art vs. commerce, fact vs. fiction, pure charisma vs. pure technical ability, everything is blurred. Everything is negotiable. They switch places arbitrarily. But I will say that it's Jay-Z's swaggering vocal tone. You ain't livid that really pops for me on TakeOver. And it's Naz's barrage of ultra-violent internal rhymes. I embrace y'all with napalm, blows up, no guts left, chest face gone, that really pops for me on Ether. The fact that, obviously, Naz also has world historical swagger, and Jay-Z also has world historical technical ability. Well, that's why we're still talking about any of this. To paraphrase John Goodman talking about the Viet Cong in the Big Lebowski, what we've got here are two worthy fricking adversaries. Which does not, unfortunately, make every single line of Ether a world historical bulletproof classic. Yes, Alas. Even in this, arguably still the greatest of rat feuds, there is copious gay stuff. Specifically, there is gay-Z and coca-fella records. Naz is not doing his best work here, necessarily. Alas, I am swerving around even more incendiary homophobic slurs that appear in both Ether and TakeOver. I am swerving around some woman stuff as well, most notably regarding the mother of Naz's child. You may recall that woman stuff, family stuff, mother of your children stuff, played a dismaying role in the Kendrick Lamar and Drake feud. Tois ever thus. Alas, I'm compartmentalizing. Yes, I am trying my best to sequester the gay stuff, etc. Away from the fact that Naz also just insinuated that Jay-Z looks like a camel. And Naz just pointed out that KRS-1 put out an album in 1989 called Ghetto Music, colon the blueprint of hip-hop. KRS-1 is everywhere. Biggie is everywhere too. Biggie's your man, then you got the nerve to say that you better than Big. Dick-sucking lips, won't you let the late great veteran live? We're arguing about Biggie here. We're arguing about legacy. We're arguing about the power vacuum in hip-hop writ large. We're talking about who runs New York. And yes, also, we're still doing gay stuff. We're also still talking about who was doing what in 1988. I still like TakeOver Better. What does that mean? What does it mean to prefer TakeOver to Ether or vice versa? Is this an aesthetic judgment? Is it simply which song is better? Is it which song is meaner? Is it which song is truer? Kendrick Lamar likes TakeOver Better because it's truer. In 2011, Kendrick told Vibe Magazine, quote, I was riding with Jay because he was saying more facts, end quote. Is it which song did more damage to the target's career? But that's the quote, unquote, happy ending here because did either song do damage in the Kendrick Lamar sense? It is nearly impossible to reconstruct this particular feeling now that we know how everything turned out. But in 2001, as Jay-Z and Nas is transpiring, Biggie versus Tupac looms over everything. And the devastating ultra-tragic end of Biggie versus Tupac looms over everything. What if this all ends in more terrible violence? But it doesn't. And here in 2025, with nearly 25 years of hindsight, both Jay-Z and Nas win. Their respective blockbuster careers continue. Jay-Z's career is substantially more blockbuster-y, but never mind that now. The ether people feel vindicated and the takeover people feel vindicated. I'm running along again. These two gentlemen will collaborate down the road, most notably on a 2006 song called Black Republicans, but I wouldn't say that song feels victorious. The victory here for everyone is that the story basically ends here with ether, with you 36 in a karate class, which is still my favorite ether line. Maybe ether is better. Jay-Z responds to ether very quickly with a song called Super Ugly, a diss track that is, in fact, so super ugly that Jay-Z's mom calls him and yells at him and makes him apologize and Jay-Z does, and that's the end of this feud, basically. And I'm sorry, but no punchline in either takeover or ether, and for that matter, no punchline in any other diss track in rap history is funnier to me than Jay-Z's mom telling Jay-Z to knock it off and Jay-Z actually knocks it off. She wins. Gloria Carter wins, and therefore everyone wins. There you go. Because who is the real hero? Is the real hero the person who wins the fight or the person who stops the fight? Myself, I'm voting for whoever stops the fight, but maybe that's just me, and maybe that's because I don't like conflict. We are thrilled to welcome the great Joel Anderson, senior staff writer at the Ringer, co-host of our podcast, The Press Box. He's a former host of Slate's fantastic Slow Burn podcast. He is slumming it here today with us, and we are very grateful. Joel, welcome. Oh, man, Rob. No, thanks for having me, man. I'm honored. I feel like I've been elevated. You know, I'm a music pundit now, so. That's right. This is a big moment for you. I have to ask to start off, ether or takeover, who you got? Okay, so it's kind of complicated. Sure. So kind of like how last year, you know, like not like us as the more acclaimed song, you know what I mean? But I kind of like to listen to Euphoria and 616 in LA. I think takeover is the more enjoyable song for me to listen to. Like I like listening to it more, but like if you're asking me, which song landed the more devastating blow, then I'm an ether guy. Okay. All right. Yeah. Does that make sense? It makes total sense, because I was going to ask you what your criteria is for a great diss track. If it's like something that's enjoyable to listen to, if it works as a standalone song, or is it the meanest, the most devastating, you know, within the battle? And so I, splitting those into, I totally see that. Yeah. So mean is really an interesting way of thinking about it. Cause like I have a, this is not about, I mean, I'm not a Drake fan per se, but like I had a real strong affinity for the story of Adidan and like meet the grand war. Sure. Right. Cause they're really mean songs. Like when you think about it, like they really get, they really get to the psychology of that dude. And I didn't mind seeing Drake humbled, but on the whole, like I think I'm looking for something, and I was, I was thinking about this. I was, I'm looking for something that's akin to like a closing statement, like in a case. So it's like, I want some bars, you know what I'm saying? I want you to wrap your ass off of course. I want some facts. You don't have to all be facts. Like you can lie a little bit. That's fine. Yeah. Right. Some of my favorite rappers are large, Rick Ross, like a prodigy. A huge liar. Yeah. Absolutely. Doesn't matter. I want some research. So maybe a surprise or two. Like it doesn't have to be like push a T revealing that Drake has a child or something. You're hiring a child. Yeah. Yeah. Right. But I want, you know, I want to, I want some, some background information. Like where did you go? And so like really, I want some really focused and controlled character assassination. So it's like, that's why I didn't like hit them up necessarily. Cause I just thought it was incendiary, but Tooth Park sounds out of control. Yeah. Yeah. That's not really a research based song as such. No. Right. And I mean, it includes some, potentially some lies. I mean, we don't know, you know, I choose to believe, I choose to believe faith Evans. Right. Okay. Yeah. Me too. Me too. So if you're asking me like the history of, of rap beef and the songs that kind of fit that like No Vaseline by ice cube is sort of that. Like I see the picture in you. Common response to ice cube dollars and cents DJ quick against MCA. Like, you know, you left out the G cause the G ain't in you. You know, that's a line that I'll remember for the rest of my life. South Bronx, you know, boogie down productions, lost ones about Lauryn Hill. I think that gets kind of overlooked. That was really like, I agree. You know, I don't think people kind of understood at the time that that was about Wyclef, but it was like, man, whoever she's talking about, she's really reading him for filth. It's devastating. Absolutely. It's devastating as any diss track you can think of. So what is it about ether? You know, what are the facts? What are the lines? Why is ether, you know, to this day, you know, slang for you totally destroyed somebody. What is it about this song that makes it so devastating? That's a great question. So I think, and I have a friend, Bermany Jones, who says that it's clear that ether was intended for an audience of one. Right. And so he really talks about, you know, I'm looking at the lyrics right here now because I'm going to help myself. I'm an old man. Sure. Likewise. You're talking about, yo, were you abused a child, scared to smile? They called you ugly. Like you think you're getting girls because of your looks. I mean, I can only imagine it. And I'm not saying that Jay-Z is not an unattractive guy, but I do think that that probably was a sore spot. I mean, people used to do caricatures of him as like Joe Camel, but for kids that don't remember Joe Camel. Yeah. He does mention the Camel thing. Right. Right. Embarrassing him. Just like, yo, like why do you keep talking about Biggie? You have your own career. Right. You know, how many Biggie signs are going to come out your fat lips? Right. I mean, that is a, first of all, it again gets back to the way that he looks. And it's like, you should be able to stand on your own. Why do you have to stand behind Biggie even now? And the thing is, is like, not a lot of people remember this because Jay-Z is an old guy now and he has a very long career. But if you go back and look at like the Hawaiian Sophie era, like I mean, it was kind of goofy. Yeah. Pretty rough. He parachutes into that video if I remember correctly. Yeah. It's not a great moment. You know what I'm saying? Very Dost-affects-foo-snickering. So it's like clear that like Jay-Z was one guy when he came into the business and he's a different guy a few years later. So it sort of speaks to the authenticity. Like Nas has basically been the same rapper his entire career. Yes. You know? And he can speak to, I mean, that speaks to something. It speaks to his authenticity, like a comfort with himself. Like Jay-Z clearly was trying whatever it took to get on into industry. So yeah, I think those are the things is like, it seems like it's a very personal song and it really hurts him. And it's not like, he didn't have to say anything about girlfriends, mothers, any of that stuff. Right. Right. Right. You know, it wasn't like, it wasn't gratuitously mean, but it was like very like, you've got problems with yourself. That's why you've got a problem with me. That's interesting. You talk about authenticity because of course Jay-Z's argument, like just the line from takeover that always jumps out to me. You ain't live it. You witnessed it from your folks pad. You scribbled it in your notepad and created your life. Like how, how much does it matter to you that, you know, Jay-Z and all likelihood probably had way more real world experience selling drugs or whatever. Like do you care about authenticity in that sense? Not really. I mean, I just told you that I liked Rick Ross earlier. So authenticity is only going to matter, but so much. But I mean, here's the thing, both of these dudes grew up in 1980s and 1990s New York and the projects. I mean, if you're going to ask me about like, which sort of authenticity these guys have, I'm like, yo, they moved through a world that not a lot of people understand and look very difficult. So it doesn't really matter to me. And like, it's not like Nas ever pretended. I mean, you know, sometimes he does the, you know, especially during the, it was written era, we saw the Mafioso type stuff or whatever. The firm kind of stuff. But like, I think everybody sort of knew that that was like character acting. Like that was not, that was not Nas, like trying to adopt the persona that Jay-Z had. So I think that they both are authentic enough. And I mean, look, man, I am a, at the time when this song came out, I was a middle class kid from the suburbs. Today I'm a middle class father who lives in the suburbs. Like, I mean, if I'm going to give you the edge based on you selling drugs and what kind of food would I look like? I'm a middle age man. Like obviously I know that like that's, that's one way to get through the world, but it doesn't mean that you're the toughest guy or the most authentic guy just because you sold drugs. I think what they clashed over is very small. It's just guys who don't get along. They're just very different in a lot of ways. They're from different boroughs, different backgrounds, different orientations to the world. Jay-Z, the way I was thinking about it, Jay-Z learns about the world so he can learn how to make money from it. You know, like he's looking for an angle. You know, he's like, I mean, he describes himself that way. He's hustling. Okay. Like how can I make, you know, how, how can I take advantage of the situation for myself? How can I enrich myself? It may sound goofy, but did you ever see the movie belly? Yes. It's been a while, but yes. It's, it's okay. So it would not as a character sincere. Yeah. Right. He wants to go to Africa. He doesn't say what country. He doesn't say what he wants to do there, but he wants to go to Africa. You got to narrow it down eventually. Yeah. A little bit. Yeah. Like Sierra Leone, South Africa, whatever. But anyway, I think Nas learns about the world because he's a learner and I could just see both of these guys being in a room and just being like, I don't really like that guy. I remember, this is probably for later. So after they had done black presidents and there's this, you know, in 2007 and they have this, you know, reconciliation or whatever and they interviewed them sitting next to each other and I remember they looked kind of awkward and they were like, so the interviewer was like, so you guys like, you know, are you friends now or whatever? And Jay-Z says, well, it ain't like we're going to hang out or anything. We're going to, you know, I'm going to call them up and you my buddy now. And I was like, that kind of spread it for me. Like they're not the same kind of guy. They're just different dudes, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So it makes sense that like they would not get along or that there would be some sort of riff somewhere down the line because they just fundamentally are different people and look at the world differently. Yeah. And you mentioned Biggie who I think is a huge part of that. Like they're arguing in part over, you know, there's a power vacuum like both in hip hop at large and certainly in New York city, you know, in 2001 and then they're both, I guess Jay-Z is very, very explicitly trying to claim, you know, the throne now, the city is mine. You know, I just, do you, do you see Biggie as, as looming large over this battle, both in terms of replacing him and both in terms of still sort of processing the tragedy of having lost him, you know, less than five years ago. Yeah. No, I absolutely think that because like, well, first of all, they're still really young. Like I mean, I can say that now as a guy in my mid-40s, Nas is 28, Jay is 32, which is old for then, but you know, is a rapper, but it's still young to me now. And so that is really fresh news. Like that is the loss of one of their peers, one of their colleagues, and they both openly mourned him in their own ways. And it's hard, I'm sure, for all these guys, like Biggie basically died, broke, like he never really got a chance to cash in on all of his success. And so I'm sure these guys are looking at the lost opportunities there, an opportunity to take care of their mothers, to make some real money, like enjoy the lives and opportunities that are opening up. You know, hip hop was still a very new thing when Biggie and Pock died. And but like, you know, the opportunity to be movies, to be, you know, cheap, tight into the industry, to do all these other things they want to do. Billionaires, yeah, man, they're getting to pursue lives that don't necessarily depend on the music industry. So I think they will cognize another fact that there was a lot to lose. But also they're like, you know, like Biggie was, you know, even though he only had two albums at, you know, at the time of his death, I mean, they looked at that and they said, well, that guy's universally regarded as the guy here in New York. There's a spot open at the top. We're kind of the guys that are up next. And I sort of underestimate it like what a competitive spirit might might lead to in that regard, right? There's like, they look at each other like, why can't I be that guy? They're not going to collaborate and be like, you know what, man, maybe we could be the king together, you know? Like that's just how rap works. So I definitely think that like that part of it, like it was like, they see the missed opportunities, but then they also see the opportunity to be like, maybe I could be that guy, maybe I could be Biggie and take advantage of the stuff that Biggie got to miss out on. Yeah. Were you a day one Jay-Z guy and a day one Nas guy? Did you like both of them? Did you see them in essence in competition with each other, like just yourself? Yeah. You know, I didn't even really think of them as being in competition with each other, especially like with the West Coast. So ascendant at that time, like, I'm graduated from high school in 96. So that's like in the middle of the death row to Park era, right? And then like shortly after that, it's kind of weird to say this, especially in light of the trial and everything that's going on. But like Mace was like a big deal. Right. You know what I'm saying? Like nobody like this was a big deal. And I really liked Mace. And so I'm just like, well, there's a lot of guys that could feel this void and could be in this hierarchy. But if I have to choose, Rob, I was a day one Nas guy. And I remember this had to be 94. I'm walking through the living room in my house and the world is yours. The video for it comes on RAP city. And I was just captivated. Like I really remember just being like, I was getting ready to walk past the TV to my bedroom and I heard this song and I looked at the video and I was like, wow, this dude is great. Like this is it just the song just hit me. Some songs just do that to you. Right. And I think Nas is like at one point described himself as sort of like a journalist. So of course that really hooked me. Like, and he, you know, describing the world around him and taking an interest into characters and the way that like his community is built. And I was, you know, I was a rapid rap backpack type of rap lover. You know. And so he was insightful and introspective in a way that really appealed to me. There was a humanity to his rhymes and songs that I didn't necessarily see in Jay-Z. It doesn't mean I didn't like Jay-Z. I bought all of Jay-Z's albums too. Like I think I actually think I bought every single Jay-Z album, every CD he ever released. I bought it. He appreciates that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure I spent money on him. You know what I'm saying? Bought him music. But I was a day one Nas guy because he just appealed to me in a way in a way that Jay-Z just just didn't and still doesn't to this day, which, which doesn't mean that I can't appreciate his greatness, but like Nas felt like somebody that I could actually know. He felt accessible. Yeah. It feels like everyone has an illmatic or illmatic era story like that. Right. And I did want to ask you about this idea that like illmatic is so great, so deified, just grabs you so immediately that it's like, it's something Nas is struggling to overcome for the rest of his career. Every album he makes, no matter how good, is going to get compared to illmatic. You know, ether is on an album called Stillmatic. Like it's, it's with him in real time. He's doing sequels to the songs on illmatic. You know, do you, do you buy into this idea that the record, his first record is so great that it turns into sort of an albatross in a sense? Yeah. You know, I do think that at least at first, because like illmatic is clearly a monster. And I'm, I don't, does this even matter to kids anymore? When people say that it was one of the very few albums that got five mics from the source magazine. It matters to us. And that's what's important. I just, I don't want to deal with what the kids care about right now. I just, the Minecraft. We are talking about a time before their time, right? Leave it. Right. Several times before their time at this point, unfortunately. Oh my God. Really. It matters. It does matter. It did, and it did matter at the time. And it was influential in so many ways. Like, I mean, you could have Pete Rock and DJ Premier on the same album, like a lot of people weren't doing that at the time. Yeah. But as I explained recently to a room of people that booed me recently, that it literally happened. People booed me for saying this. I don't go back to illmatic like I do. Even it was written or I am or the lost tapes or even life is good. It's just not like illmatic at the time sounded years ahead of its time. And it's listening to it, transports me to that time, but also think he's made really good, sometimes better music since then. And I wondered if he like other folks to acknowledge that, you know what it makes me think of Rob? So I remember Buzz Bissinger, the writer, talking about the pressure that came with trying to live up to Friday Night Lights. And Friday Night Lights is, you know, maybe one of my two or three favorite books of all time. And he says something like, I reached a point that I hated hearing about Friday Night Lights. I hear about it all the time and I still hear about it. And he's like, I've written other books. Right. Right. I just wonder if for Nas, like it was kind of an Albatross, like you suggested. It was just like, yo, like I still did a lot of other good music. I'm still a working artist. I've done things since illmatic, but it's just the shadow of that and how great it was and the way that it hit everybody at the time. It's like it's going to hold a place in the history of the genre. But I don't know if it's fair. I don't know if it's fair to him put it that way. Doesn't seem very fair. Who booed you? Who booed you for saying that? So, yo, I was at a, so again, I was talking about a friend by Mighty Jones. I was in New York a couple of weeks ago and he did like a live show. So there's a bunch of people in the room or whatever. And I use illmatic as an example for why I thought Shade was boring. I was like, I can appreciate how good the music it is, but you don't see me sitting around on a Thursday afternoon listening to represent. You know, I don't even think New York State of Mind is the best New York State of Mind that NASA's released. Like I think the part two that he puts on I am is better than the original, right? But again, I'm not trying. I'm not trying to shit on the original. And that's just the way I know I get you. Sure. But I said that in a room full in New York and from room full of New Yorkers. So that's tough. You know, that's a tough. It was tough crowd. All right. Well, I'm relieved you survived that experience. OK, so what do you got out of New York? You lived to podcast again. What do you get out of New York State of Mind part two, you know, that you don't from the original? What do you get out of it was written that you don't get from illmatic? It sounds a little bit more contemporary. It's the production. I mean, this is going to sound crazy, given all the legends that were on the first one. But the storytelling I thought in part two was really cool. You know, it was just like he talks about going through all this homeboys as they die or go to prison or whatever. And I'm the last one standing in and the production on that one just hits me a little bit more. It sounds it sounds a little bit more of today's time. It sounds a little bit more contemporary than the original one did. Yeah, it was written, man. I mean, it had shootouts on it. It had live nigga, rapid had, you know, I mean, there was some duds on there. But I really I thought it was a much more upbeat song to have in your at the time CD player than illmatic. Of course, it seems a little then for you, then it feel a little more roasts or like a little like kind of, all right, it's good for a cloudy, dreary day. There's no if I rule the world on illmatic, you know, there's not. There's no I gave you power on illmatic. Oh my God, you know, I gave you power. It's a great song, dude. Yeah. Yeah. OK, no, I get you. So again, like, I mean, I like I don't want people to take from this. I don't like illmatic. I just like it less relative to the other music he's released. That's all. All right. Something I thought about when Kendrick and Drake were going at it, it sounds like you came into that with maybe an anti Drake, you know, vibe. That's a little fair. And so I was wondering to the best of your memory, like as this Jay-Z Nosting is happening, like, are you on the fence at all ever in a rap battle? Are you sort of an undecided voter and like you can be swayed to one side or to the other? Or do you ordinarily go into it with an idea of who you're rooting for and you're not going to veer off that? It would have been really tough for me to go against Kendrick because Kendrick is maybe my favorite rapper of all time. So I was I was already sort of poised to be like, all right, whenever Kendrick drops, you know, I think I could. I think I could have been honest about if I thought it was a dud. Like, I thought family matters was a good song. Like I would would drink with these family matters. I was like, damn, right, you got some shots off on him. But yeah, I think it's definitely possible to be sort of a neutral party. Oh, for instance, I felt bad for Meek Mill. You know, like when Drake went after Meek Mill, yeah, yeah. That seems great. And I really liked Meek Mill at the time. And I was just like, oh, he's just not he's just not capable of he doesn't have the memes, man. Yeah, right. Yeah, like he just out of his depth here. Yeah, this is he's just not capable and it made me feel bad for him. And I would I would have been inclined to have thought that Meek Mill would have a done better, but also I would have been more inclined to prefer his music. But that's just not what happened. But the Jay-Z and Nas thing, it's weird because Kendrick and Drake is inarguably a battle between like one and one a like they're the biggest, most enduring stars in hip hop right now. Whereas Jay and Nas was like more unsettled, even though they were like sure for Hall of Famers, right? Like you could have argued at the time that like DMX or Eminem were as big as pop stars as them. Right. This is 2001. You know, this is the Marshall Mathers LP. Absolutely. We're very early. Like Jay-Z has been a rapper with albums out like for five years at this point. Five years, right. By comparison, Kendrick and Drake have like got 15 years of raps. You know, it's like a Mayweather Pacquiao that lived up to the height. You know, like, well, man, are they actually going to get in the ring? Oh, they did. And this shit was incredible. Nas and Jay-Z are like Sugar Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns. Like it's still a great fight, but it's like they still had more to accomplish in their careers and they moved on. They had made all the money they were going to make. Like Jay-Z and Beyonce aren't even a thing yet. Right. No. Like just think about how big a deal Jay-Z goes under the come after all this. Right. So yeah, man, it felt big, but it didn't feel big in the way that Kendrick and Drake did at all. I don't think. Like, do you think a lot of people even knew who Nas was in 2001? Like if you, if you're a rap fan, yeah, but I mean, is it the kind of thing that would be the subject of talk shows? And, you know, could Nas have gotten to Super Bowl halftime show as a result of ether? I don't think so. Right. No, absolutely not. I mean, that's what makes not like us so astounding, you know, the Super Bowl. You know, it's an Oscar joke. Like it just crosses over, you know, both in like the pop chart sense, but just in the mainstream sense, you know, of your parents having some idea that a rap beef is occurring. Like just that's completely, I got it. I hope I'm not overlooking, but that seems pretty unprecedented to me, you know. I think so too. I mean, you talk about parents, my mom and dad still know. They know about the Kendrick Drake thing. You know what I mean? Like they, they are at least somewhat aware of what happened and how it was the Kendrick came to perform at the Super Bowl this past year. I don't think, I don't think my mom knows what ether means. And she keeps, she keeps up with pop culture pretty good, but I just, I don't think it penetrated quite the same way. Yeah. OK, I guess we're a little early to see, you know, what the fallout from not like us, like the long term damage to Drake's career. But do you see any, you know, if it's ether, if it's takeover, it's anything like, did this beef hurt Jay-Z or Nas in any significant way? I mean, I think it bears at one of those things where it helps both of them ultimately. Oh man. I mean, don't you think they both came out of it better for it? Like, especially Jay-Z, the guy that lost. Like, so during the beef, he made the blueprint, an album that seems to be like a real inflection point for him. He becomes the rapper that he'd been claiming to be for years on the blueprint. After the beef, he makes the black album, which I think is his best album. I agree with that. Yes. Some people really liked American gangster 444s, like this real cultural moment. Right. And then like as a cultural figure, I mean, just shit. I mean, Jay-Z won, dude. I mean, there's nobody bigger. There's not a bigger rapper than Jay-Z. You know, he married Beyonce. He's a billionaire. Like he programs the Super Bowl halftime show, the first rapper to be an adult into the Sunrise Hall of Fame. Like he's the standard by which all other great rappers will be measured for. He's Jordan. Like he compares himself to Jordan all the time. Yes. It doesn't matter if you really believe he's the greatest or not. He's the standard. People will measure themselves by that. Nas is kind of different because even though he won the beef, like his career is a lot more uneven, right? Like, yeah. Right. Like God Son was a good album, I guess. Like The Street Disciple. All right. Hip hop is dead. Hip hop is dead. He has some stuff on it. Untitled. Does he have an untitled album? Like he did have the untitled. They had fried chicken on there. That was the song. Oh, good. Is that the one? Or is that? Yeah. And then like he did that album with Damien Marley. Right. I forgot about that one. The thing that I think that's cool about Nas, though, is that like it seemed like it freed him up to be an artist. And like just do stuff. You know what I mean? Like he's like he releases albums every year now. Still. Like he's still a working musician. King's Disease. Volume 9. King's Disease. Now in stores. Magic. Magic 2. Magic 3. Yeah. Like he's still doing. And then I mean, he made a shitload of money, man. But I don't know if the beef had anything to do with that. But it certainly seemed to reorient his career. Like it just put him on a different path. He was never as big a rapper as he was after Ether. But he still like figured out a way to like maintain his credibility as artists. Still make a lot of music and make a lot of money. Not necessarily through music, but he made a lot of money. So yeah, I think that the beef elevated them in a way. It didn't end in anybody's career. I mean, in the in the thing about it too, is it like only a few people's careers get in about beef like Jarl Meek Mill. I was thinking of Jarl and I feel bad, but I'd say sad. Well, not really. I mean, he did the firefests. That's on him. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. 50 Cent had hit on something there. Little Flip is a Houstonian. I'm a Houstonian. Little Flip, his career. Never going to recover from TI. Maybe EZE. I mean, you know, it's tough to say because he never really got a chance to like, yeah, you know, he didn't live much longer after all of that. But in the moment, it seemed like, damn, how do you recover from that? You know, so. But yeah, they're both so good, so great that clearly the beef elevated them. I don't think it did anything to hurt their careers. It only helped. Yeah. Just to wrap up, I meant to talk way more about this, but like the line on ether, like Eminem murdered you on your own shit, you know, and he ignizes, of course, talking about Renegade, which is on the blueprint, you know, there's a really fantastic Eminem verse on it. And so I let's settle this right here, Joel. Like, did Eminem in fact murder JZ on JZ's own shit? You can decide. So no, but I do think Eminem pushed off. Like, like listen to that song and the storytelling and it like, I'm awkward. I box left me and often my pops left me and often my mama wasn't home. You're like, it was a JZ drops some shit in there, man. Yeah, he can't. He came hard. Like, I don't like it. At a minimum, it was a tie. And if Eminem beats him, it's like he barely edges him out. But I think people that say that he got murdered, they kind of. It's like when I was talking about like, not all this is have to be true, you know, that all the songs in it can have a few lies in there. Sure. The line from ether that actually had real heft to me was compare it to beams, your whack. Because I thought Beanie Segal was really good. I was like, man, be be wrapping his ass off. He's good as J right now, you know? So, yeah. But that seemed true to me, then Eminem murdered him on his own shit. OK. Eminem tied you on your own shit just doesn't have the same. I guess you have to quite the same way. No, you have to lie sometimes. That's that's what we've learned here today. Joel, this has been fantastic. Oh, man, look, man, my pleasure, man, any time, have me back any time, dude. We will, we will. Thank you so much, dude. Thanks very much to our guests this week, Joel Anderson. Thanks as always to our producers, Jonathan Kerma, Bobby Wagner and Justin Sales. Thanks to Olivia Creary for additional production help. And thanks very much to you for listening. And now, sure, let's all go listen to ether by Nas. We'll see you next week.