“Ether”—Nas

This week, we’re breaking down the Nas vs. Jay-Z feud, and Rob has to argue, which makes him deeply uncomfortable. After he breaks down the basic contents of a diss track, he is joined by The Ringer’s Joel Anderson to discuss the history of rap beef and his thoughts on Nas’s career after 'Illmatic.' Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Joel Anderson Producers: Bobby Wagner, Jonathan Kermah, and Justin Sayles Additional Production Support: Olivia Crerie Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 3:03Speaker 06

  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

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  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 Richman song Couples Must Fight?

• 4:28Speaker 06

  Jonathan Richman, phenomenal singer songwriter, leader of the modern lovers back in the seventies, proud Bostonian, infectiously childlike, plays a nylon string acoustic guitar, fantastic dancer, one of the best live shows I've ever seen. Jonathan Richman, he's the guy singing in the tree at the beginning of There's Something About Mary. You know, this guy.

• 5:06Speaker 06

  That's Jonathan Richman. 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 Richman puts out a song in 2001 called Couples Must Fight.

• 5:50Speaker 06

  And I disagree. No, they mustn't. Please don't fight, couples. I'm sorry, Jonathan Richman. 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 are 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.

• 6:30Speaker 07

  You are not a man. You are a big fat joke.

• 6:33Speaker 08

  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.

• 6:44Speaker 06

  No, I don't even like it when Will Ferrell and Christina Applegate fight in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, the 2004 semi-rom-com where they're trading ridiculous insults for basically the whole movie. Wait, though. Christina's about to have what you might call her A minor moment.

• 7:04Speaker 08

  You are a smelly pirate hooker.

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  You look like a blueberry.

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  Why don't you go back to your home on Whore Island?

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  Well, you have bad hair.

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  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 did these two guys have to fight, man? It breaks my heart. They had so much in common. Okay, they had some stuff in common.

• 8:03Speaker 06

  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.

• 8:51Speaker 06

  But no, Everlast just had to mention Eminem's daughter. All right, this is a song called "Eardrums Pop", from the Los Angeles rap group Dilated Peoples. I just got the pun in that name, Dilated Peoples, just now. This is their "Eardrums 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, a more famous Los Angeles rap group best known for their 1992 smash crossover hit. Jump Around. Fun fact about me. Whenever I even hear the name House of Pain,

• 9:32Speaker 06

  I immediately go watch the scene from the 90s semi-rom-com Swingers, where the main characters, a bunch of mostly white dudes, they get into an argument in 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.

• 10:06Speaker 05

  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 'cause I had the balls to stand up to these fucking guys- My fucking House of Pain was gonna do anything?

• 10:19Speaker 06

  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."

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  In college, in the late 90s, I used to walk around campus, singing semi-rued alternate lyrics to this song to myself.

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  I have no idea why I did that. "Here's another song about a guy who's had a real crappy life. They shot his dog and spanked his kids and he 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 on this Dilated Peoples remix, and he says, "Cock my hammer, spit a comet like Haley, 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,

• 11:48Speaker 06

  who says super mean things about people for a living and also famously has a daughter named Haley. I'm sure Eminem will respond to this provocation magnanimously.

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  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 unpleasant trees. In May of 2024, 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

• 12:56Speaker 06

  is devoted to Eminem repeatedly pointing out that Everlast had a heart attack.

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  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. Uh, Everlast's biggest weakness is his heart. Eminem's like, hey, you had a heart attack.

• 13:35Speaker 06

  But so then Eminem rattles on for a little while about how backstage at 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 Haley, etc. And the rest is history, notably. Everlast says that he was unaware at the time that Eminem had a daughter named Haley. The Haley's Comet reference was coincidental and therefore, according to Everlast, he brought up Eminem's daughter on accident. That's a tough break, dude. Everlast talked about this in a 2020 episode of the rapper Talib Kweli's podcast,

• 14:20Speaker 06

  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.

• 15:00Speaker 06

  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.

• 15:23Speaker 06

  Eminem is talking about Limp Bizkit, the world historically uncouth new metal band Limp Bizkit, 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 Bizkit after House of Pain broke up. Eminem saying to Everlast, in essence, Limp Bizkit 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? What else?

• 16:21Speaker 06

  Gay stuff. That's what else. Diss my wife, but at least I got a 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 'Em Up beat. Hit 'Em Up, of course, being the 1997 Tupac diss track aimed at, most famously, the notorious B.I.G. According to The Ringer, Hit 'Em 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.

• 17:19Speaker 06

  Anyways, you ever see the video on YouTube of Hit 'Em 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 'Em Up, the best diss track ever, according to the website I work for, whereas Eminem only makes it as high as number 12.

• 18:03Speaker 06

  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 And the source only gives Eminem's 2002 album 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

• 18:47Speaker 06

  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, et cetera. 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. Although, to be absolutely clear, Eminem is like 800 times better at rapping than Benzino.

• 19:31Speaker 06

  And this particular beef is thus both especially repugnant and hopelessly lopsided. Eminem is like, dude, you suck so bad at rapping.

• 19:41Speaker 06

  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 Bizkit in a separate incident, Cannabis, Royce to 5'9" 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 to 5'9", despite being only 5'9", Royce is cool and he and Eminem are friends again.

• 20:25Speaker 06

  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.

• 21:02Speaker 09

  Who the fuck is that guy right there? That fucking guy right there. What? Ray Romano's bothering you? Who? Ray, who? Ray Romano, the guy from Everybody Loves Raymond? Who the fuck with show he's on? I'll fuck this motherfucker up, man.

• 21:18Speaker 06

  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

• 22:02Speaker 06

  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's sitting at a table with Adam Sandler, and M's complaining about how he gets hounded in public everywhere he goes, and Ray Romano sneaks a picture of him, and M 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.

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  Hey, Ray!

• 22:46Speaker 08

  Hello, Marshall.

• 22:46Speaker 10

  Fucking problem here, buddy? Would you like to fuck me? Is that what this is?

• 22:52Speaker 08

  Forget it, man. What's going on?

• 22:53Speaker 10

  Would you like me to fucking bend over for you right now?

• 22:57Speaker 08

  No. No, man.

• 23:00Speaker 06

  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 it's coming. So I'll be like, whoo. And they'll be like, you kind of look like Ray Romano. And I'll be like, oh, I don't look that much like Ray Romano, in my opinion. We're both medium

• 23:39Speaker 06

  schlubby, 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 handsome, but he's inoffensive. He's a replacement level looking guy. It just bothers me. All right. 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

• 24:20Speaker 06

  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 Richman, 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

• 25:03Speaker 06

  barrage of diss tracks in a remarkably compressed amount of time. It got super ugly.

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  Arcane personal grievances, Wikipedia dumps, blunt accusations of domestic abuse and pedophilia, et cetera. And this feud culminated in the relentlessly Drake bashing Kendrick Lamar's 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.

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  Can I tell you honestly that my favorite line in Not Like Us is, I'mma 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,

• 26:36Speaker 06

  we've decided to go back to the name HBO Max.

• 26:41Speaker 06

  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, et cetera, 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 eight. Kendrick Lamar's Not Like Us is slightly better than Real Motherfucking Gs by Eazy-E, and it's slightly worse than The Bridge Is Over by KRS-One's Boogie Down Productions.

• 27:25Speaker 06

  My long suffering editor, Justin Sayles, 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 Em Up is number one. Ice cubes, no Vaseline is number two. Don't look that one up, mom. And this is number three.

• 27:53Speaker 06

  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 Queensbridge. Yes, the relentlessly Jay-Z bashing Nas song, Ether. What is the moment on Ether? You want to knock that out real quick? Hell, yeah. Here it is.

• 28:35Speaker 06

  There it is. This is where Ether peaks. Stan is an Eminem reference. Obviously Eminem is everywhere. You 36 in a karate class?

• 28:46Speaker 06

  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.

• 29:12Speaker 06

  Fantastic. Whatever product or service was just advertised, get 20% off right now with the promo code. Like fucking House of Pain was gonna 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 on the road. I was gonna talk about cannabis and LL Cool J for like 20 minutes, but now I'm not gonna. True story. Time for the main event. Let's meet our combatants. Nas versus Jay-Z. Queens, meaning the Queensbridge Houses, versus Brooklyn, meaning the Marcy Houses. Godson versus the business comma man.

• 29:54Speaker 06

  Cryptocurrency Scarface, Nas has been calling himself that recently. That's ridiculous. Versus Jehovah, Jay-Z has been calling himself that pretty much the whole time. The Subway Track versus the Heartbeat.

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  Are you sitting at home doing this shit?

• 30:20Speaker 06

  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' career and has arguably plagued Nas' 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 Jay-Z has got the heartbeat.

• 31:00Speaker 10

  Ah, see. Okay, okay. All right. Big man. You wanna make some big bucks, huh? Let's see how tough you are. You know something about cocaine?

• 31:08Speaker 06

  That's the first 10 seconds of the first Jay-Z record, released two years later, in 1996, on his own Rockefeller Records and called 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 Jay-Z's

• 31:49Speaker 06

  head. It is not the albatross to Jay-Z that Illmatic possibly is to Nas. But I do think the Jay-Z versus Nas feud starts right here, in the respective opening seconds of their respective bulletproof all-time classic debut albums. The Subway-

• 32:08Speaker 06

  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 due, shall we? And that requires going back a few years to the very first verse that made him famous.

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  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.

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  "When I was 12, I went to hell for snuffing Jesus." Yeah, this guy's gonna be super famous. Nazir bin Oluwudara Jones was born in Brooklyn on September 14th, 1973. His mother, Anne, worked for the US Postal Service. His father, Oluwudara, was a jazz trumpeter. In 1985, Nas' parents divorce. In 2002, Nas' 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

• 34:29Speaker 06

  to the Juice Crew, Marley Marl, MC Shan, Roxanne Shante, Cool G Rap, etc. Queensbridge has already played a central role in various extremely famous rap feuds. "The Bridge Is 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.

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  "I never sleep 'cause sleep is the cousin of death." Yeah, this guy's gonna 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, 1994's "Ilmatic." It is legitimately very challenging to discuss "Ilmatic" reasonably. People really, really, really, really, really love "Ilmatic." "Ilmatic" is a sacred object, a sacred entity. "Ilmatic" is mounted on a towering pedestal that has arguably become, for Nas, sometimes quite literally, a cross to bear or to be crucified upon.

• 35:50Speaker 06

  "Ilmatic" got a perfect 5 mics rating in The Source back in 1994. Back in 2013, an "Ilmatic" 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.

• 36:12Speaker 06

  Okay, "People's Instinctive Travels" and "The Paths of Rhythm", the debut album by Tribe Called Quest, that also got five mics in The Source, and much later, a Pitchfork 10. I made some time. Kanye West's "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" also got five 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 De La Soul record got both, too. But it turns out De La Soul is Dead got five mics, and then, much later, Three Feet High and Rising got a Pitchfork 10. Honestly, I have lots of other things to do. Illmatic is 10 tracks, including the intro, in under 40 minutes, with production from such

• 36:55Speaker 06

  likewise absurdly deified figures as DJ Premier, Pete Rock, and Large Professor from Main Source. This record is perfect. It is the quintessential no-skip 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.

• 37:43Speaker 06

  "I set it off with my own rhyme, 'cause I'm as ill as a convict who kills for phone time." Unbelievable. This song is called "Half Time". It's track five out of 10 on Illmatic, and I always really appreciated the truth in 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.

• 38:24Speaker 06

  And by the fall of 94, 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 Dogg's 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' block. It puts you in Nas' shoes. It makes you see through Nas' eyes.

• 39:08Speaker 06

  And maybe sometimes, it makes you stare malevolently at out-of-towners through Nas' eyes.

• 39:32Speaker 06

  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 they're his friends, Prodigy and Havik from the duo Mob Deep are notably shorter than him, but they come across as a touch grimier, perhaps? Or anyway, when Prodigy raps about how he's gonna stab your brain with your nose bone on the Big 95 Mob Deep hit, Shook Once Part II, something in the iciness of Prodigy's

• 40:14Speaker 06

  tone suggests that he has real-world experience using someone's nose bone as a weapon. Whereas, I don't know if Nas has ever wielded somebody's nose bone as a weapon, but I am willing to consider the possibility.

• 40:44Speaker 06

  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?

• 41:18Speaker 06

  And 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 versus Jay-Z battle royale is already looming here on Ilmatic. 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.

• 42:04Speaker 06

  This song is called "The World Is Yours," produced by Pete Rock. A phenomenal loop of the jazz pianist Ama Jamal driving this one. Ama 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?

• 42:40Speaker 06

  Yeah. 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' voice on the "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 "Reasonable Doubt." I don't mean to offend you. It's fine if you like another song on "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. So, in most versions of this story, Jay-Z politely asks if Nas would like to recreate the "Dead Presidents" hook and maybe be

• 43:24Speaker 06

  in the video, and Nas, who was substantially more famous at the time, he politely declines. And so Jay-Z politely samples the hook instead. And thus, does a hot line 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.

• 43:57Speaker 11

  I seen some cold nights and bloody days. They grabbed me in bullet spray. They used me wrong, so I sing this song to this day. My body is cold steel, for real. I was made to kill. That's why they keep me concealed.

• 44:11Speaker 06

  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 Lauryn Hill and still Nas' most purely pleasurable pop song.

• 44:52Speaker 06

  And yeah, this is also the album with this song called "I Gave You Power," produced once again by DJ Premier, in which Nas raps the whole time from the perspective of a gun. "They used 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.

• 45:33Speaker 06

  But what strikes me here at a bare minimum is that Nas will always take the risk.

• 45:55Speaker 06

  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 ilmatic. 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 "Nostradamus", the two full albums Nas put out in 1999?

• 46:37Speaker 06

  One of them starts with a song called "New York State of Mind Part 2", and the other one is called "Nostradamus", and neither album is ilmatic. 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 rapping his ass off constantly, and Nas is grappling provocatively with the power vacuum at the highest echelon of hip-hop in the late 90s.

• 47:21Speaker 06

  This song is called "We Will Survive", off "I Am", one of Nas' 1999 albums, the one that's not called "Nostradamus". Does this song sample Kenny Loggins? Yes. Is that corny? Maybe. Is Kenny Loggins handsomer than Michael McDonald? As yacht rock heavyweights go? Possibly. 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 'Em Up" may in fact be the greatest diss track in history, but part of the terrible monumental weight of "Hit 'Em Up"

• 48:05Speaker 06

  is that three months after "Hit 'Em 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

• 48:50Speaker 06

  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.

• 49:22Speaker 06

  And they claim to be New York's king. Who could Nas be referring to here? You think?

• 49:47Speaker 06

  Excuse me, did Jay-Z get the hit R&B group Blackstreet to sing the hook to Glenn Frey's 1985 yacht rock classic, "You Belong to the City"?

• 50:00Speaker 12

  You belong to the city.

• 50:05Speaker 06

  Glenn Frey, the guy from the Eagles, is that corny? That's not the point here, but what if that is the point here? Actually, 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. Okay, okay, there's some other minor pre-game stuff. The Lexis references, Jay-Z's minor fracas with Mob Deep, Nas' minor fracas with Memphis Bleak, Memphis Bleak, Jay-Z's slightly less prominent rapper friend and henchman.

• 50:48Speaker 06

  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?

• 51:16Speaker 06

  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 Taste", 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' 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.

• 52:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, we'll see about that showdown. Uh, okay, Jay-Z is not exactly doing his best work here. Let's see if Nas is doing his best work here.

• 52:34Speaker 06

  Okay, Nas is not exactly doing his best work here. Am I greedy like Amin Ede? You just said Ede Amin's name backward. That's cheating. Is Shaquille O'Neal doing his best work here? Uh, rapping wise? I, 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.

• 53:33Speaker 06

  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. Uh, 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.

• 54:18Speaker 13

  Yeah.

• 54:19Speaker 06

  And right here on screen, on the four huge Nassau Coliseum Jumbotron's 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.

• 55:01Speaker 06

  So, quick sidebar, do you know who Tom Bryan is? The fantastic rap blogger, music critic, Stereogum columnist, author of the book The Number Ones, 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 a 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 onstage rapping, and then Jay-Z brought somebody out. Let's say Jay-Z brings out Michael Jackson onstage, and then Michael Jackson brings somebody out, and then that person brings somebody out, and then that person brings somebody out, et cetera.

• 55:43Speaker 06

  If each successive person who gets brought out brings out the next person, how many people are onstage 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.

• 56:21Speaker 06

  Don't worry about the Uchiwali 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-One, the Bridges Over guy. KRS-One is everywhere. The Doors. All these superstar

• 57:06Speaker 06

  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're just garbage. Okay, the nice way to put it is that Illmatic will always be Nas' best album. This is the not-nice way to put it.

• 57:47Speaker 06

  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 J. Cole dissed Kendrick Lamar? Right? When the Kendrick Drake war first started and J. 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." J. Cole trying to insult Kendrick Lamar by saying Kendrick had a too-hot album every 10-year average? That's one of my personal favorite moments of 2024. Okay, I'm reloaded.

• 58:40Speaker 06

  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 Livid."

• 59:15Speaker 11

  Career's come to an end, it's only so long faced us here for ten, nigga. You ain't livid, you witnessed it from your folks pad. You scribbled in your notepad and created your life. I showed you your first tech on tour at large professor. Then I heard your album bout your tech on the dresser.

• 59:32Speaker 06

  And we return here to the tech on Nas' dresser and to Nas' 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 Nas did. Cause 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 Nas scribble in his notepad and create his life more than any other rapper? Or did Nas just scribble in his notepad and create his life better than pretty much any other rapper? Anyway, I'm sure Nas will respond to this provocation magnanimously.

• 1:00:18Speaker 11

  I embrace y'all with napalm, blows up, no guts, left chest face gone. How can Nas be garbage? Send me autos at your college. Burner at the side of your dome, come out of my throne. I got this locked since 91. I am the truest, name a rapper that I ain't influenced.

• 1:00:37Speaker 06

  Ether appears on Nas' fifth solo album, released in 2001 and called Stillmatic. Yes, Stillmatic. Nas 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 versus Nas does not fit perfectly into any particular rap feud binary. Art versus commerce, fact versus fiction, pure charisma versus pure technical ability.

• 1:01:20Speaker 06

  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 Nas' 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, Nas 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,

• 1:02:03Speaker 06

  what we've got here are two worthy frickin' adversaries, which does not, unfortunately, make every single line of Ether a world historical bulletproof classic.

• 1:02:18Speaker 11

  That this Gazy and Cockafella records wanted beef, started cocking up my weapon, slowly loading up this ammo to explode it on a camel and his soldiers. I can handle this Fadolo and his manuscript.

• 1:02:36Speaker 06

  Yes, alas, even in this arguably still the greatest of rap feuds, there is copious gay stuff. Specifically, there is Gay Z and Cockafella Records. Nas 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. Alas, I am swerving around some woman stuff as well, most notably regarding the mother of Nas'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. Twas ever thus. Alas, I'm compartmentalizing.

• 1:03:19Speaker 06

  Yes, I am trying my best to sequester the gay stuff, etc., away from the fact that Nas also just insinuated that Jay-Z looks like a camel. And Nas just pointed out that KRS-One put out an album in 1989 called Ghetto Music: The Blueprint of Hip-Hop. KRS-One is everywhere. Biggie is everywhere too.

• 1:03:53Speaker 06

  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.

• 1:04:29Speaker 11

  ...

• 1:04:31Speaker 06

  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?

• 1:05:12Speaker 06

  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.

• 1:05:52Speaker 06

  The Ether people feel vindicated and the Takeover people feel vindicated. I'm running along again.

• 1:06:02Speaker 06

  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 U36 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.

• 1:06:45Speaker 06

  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.

• 1:07:29Speaker 05

  This episode is brought to you by The Home Depot. The Home Depot has everything you need to launch your holiday season in style. Upgrade your yard with this year's hottest holiday decor, including the showstopping towering Santa. Oh, I like that one. And his impressive reindeer, both 8.5 feet and both designed with incredible detail that stands out day or night. When you want decor that delivers impact, The Home Depot has it. Make your home Santa's favorite stop with the holiday decor you want, all waiting for you at The Home Depot. This episode is brought to you by Panda Express. Telling someone you love them, it isn't always easy, but showing them through food, sometimes that's better than words, especially when that food's walk cooked at Panda Express, a Joe House favorite.

• 1:08:12Speaker 05

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• 1:08:31Speaker 05

  This episode is brought to you by NOS Energy. Every ounce of dirt, sweat and gears, every checkered flag and trophy raised, every lap, every race, every hard fought place. They're all jammed inside every can of NOS Energy. High performance energy for burning the midnight oil in the garage and pedal to the metal human horsepower for the streets. Go ahead, crack open a can of NOS Energy and get after it.

• 1:08:56Speaker 06

  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.

• 1:09:12Speaker 14

  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.

• 1:09:20Speaker 06

  That's right. This is a big moment for you. I have to ask, to start off, Ether Takeover, who you got?

• 1:09:27Speaker 14

  Okay, so it's kind of complicated.

• 1:09:31Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 1:09:31Speaker 14

  So, kind of like how last year, you know, like Not Like Us is the more acclaimed song, you know what I mean? But I kind of like to listen to Euphoria and 616 in L.A. 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.

• 1:09:54Speaker 06

  Okay, all right.

• 1:09:55Speaker 14

  Yeah, does that make sense?

• 1:09:57Speaker 06

  It makes total sense, because I was gonna 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.

• 1:10:14Speaker 14

  Yeah, so mean is really an interesting way of thinking about it, because 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 Adedon and like, Meet the Grounds, right? Because they're really mean songs. Like, when you think about it, like, they really get, yeah, 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 up, of course. I want some facts. You don't have to all be facts. Like you can lie a little bit. That's fine.

• 1:10:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's part of the deal.

• 1:10:59Speaker 14

  Some of my favorite rappers are liars. Rick Ross, like a prodigy liar.

• 1:11:03Speaker 06

  Rick Ross is a huge liar. Yeah.

• 1:11:04Speaker 14

  Huge liar. Doesn't matter. I want some research, so maybe a surprise or two. Like it didn't have to be like Pusha T revealing that Drake has a child or something.

• 1:11:14Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:11:15Speaker 14

  Yeah, right. But I want, you know, I want, 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 him up necessarily. Cause I just thought it was incendiary, but Tupac sounds out of control.

• 1:11:32Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. That's not really a research based song as such.

• 1:11:36Speaker 14

  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?

• 1:11:45Speaker 06

  Okay, yeah, me too, me too.

• 1:11:47Speaker 14

  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 bitch in you. Common response to Ice Cube. Dollars and cents, DJ Quick against MCA. Like, you know, you left out the G because 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 by Lauryn Hill. I think that gets kind of overlooked. That was really like.

• 1:12:13Speaker 06

  I agree.

• 1:12:14Speaker 14

  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 is really reading him for filth.

• 1:12:21Speaker 06

  It's devastating. Absolutely as 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?

• 1:12:40Speaker 14

  That's a great question. So I think, and I have a friend, Bemani 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.

• 1:12:54Speaker 06

  Sure, likewise.

• 1:12:55Speaker 14

  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, 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.

• 1:13:15Speaker 06

  Yeah, he does mention the camel thing, right?

• 1:13:18Speaker 14

  Remember the camel thing, right? Embarrassing him, just like, yo, like, why do you keep talking about Biggie? You have your own career, you know? How many Biggie signs are going to come out your fat lips? Right? I mean, that is, 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 is kind of goofy.

• 1:13:48Speaker 06

  Pretty rough. He parachutes into that video, if I remember correctly.

• 1:13:52Speaker 14

  Yeah, you know what I'm saying? Very Dossifex, Foo Schnickens. And 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. You know?

• 1:14:08Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:14:08Speaker 14

  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 in the 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.

• 1:14:30Speaker 06

  Right, right, right.

• 1:14:31Speaker 14

  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.

• 1:14:39Speaker 06

  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 in all likelihood, probably had way more real world experience selling drugs or whatever? Like, do you care about authenticity in that sense?

• 1:15:02Speaker 14

  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 in the projects. I mean, if you're gonna 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, where he's like the mafioso type stuff or whatever.

• 1:15:38Speaker 06

  The firm, right.

• 1:15:40Speaker 14

  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, I'm like, what kind of fool would I look like? I'm a middle-aged 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.

• 1:16:20Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:16:21Speaker 14

  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 a hustler. I mean, he describes himself that way. He's like, okay, like, how can I make, you know, 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?

• 1:16:54Speaker 06

  Yes, it's been a while, but yes.

• 1:16:56Speaker 14

  It's, it's okay. So Nas plays his character sincere.

• 1:16:59Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:17:00Speaker 14

  Right. And at the end of it, like, he really 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.

• 1:17:07Speaker 06

  You gotta narrow it down eventually.

• 1:17:09Speaker 14

  You gotta narrow it down a little bit, yeah, like Sierra Leone, South Africa, wherever. 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. This is probably for later. So after they had done black presidents and there's this, you know, in 2007 and they had this reconciliation or whatever, and they interviewed, they're 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, whatever? And Jay-Z says, well, it ain't like, we're gonna hang out or anything, we're gonna, you know, I'm gonna call him up and you my buddy now. And I was like, that kind of sped it for me, like, they're not the same kind of guy. They're just different dudes, you know?

• 1:17:54Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:17:55Speaker 14

  Yeah, so it makes sense that like, they would not get along or that there would be some sort of rift somewhere down the line, because they just fundamentally are different people and look at the world differently.

• 1:18:04Speaker 06

  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 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 see Biggie 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?

• 1:18:36Speaker 14

  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. Uh, 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.

• 1:19:19Speaker 14

  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 Pac died. And but like, you know, the, the opportunity to be movies, to be, uh, you know, cheap, uh, titans of the industry, to do all these other things.

• 1:19:36Speaker 06

  Billionaires.

• 1:19:37Speaker 14

  To do billionaires. Yeah, man. They're getting to pursue lives that don't necessarily depend on the music industry. So I think they were cognizant of the fact that there was a lot to lose, but also they're like, yo, like Biggie was, you know, even though he only had two albums that, you know, at the time of his death, I mean, they looked at that and they say, 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 underestimated 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? It wasn't, 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 not how rap works.

• 1:20:21Speaker 14

  So, um, I, 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.

• 1:20:33Speaker 06

  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?

• 1:20:43Speaker 14

  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, you know, I'm graduated from high school in 96. So that's like in the middle of the death row Tupac 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 too.

• 1:21:08Speaker 06

  Right, right.

• 1:21:09Speaker 14

  Like nobody. Like bass was a big deal and I really liked bass. 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, but if I have to choose, Rob, I was a day one Nas guy. And um,

• 1:21:23Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:21:23Speaker 14

  I remember, this had to been 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 in the characters and the way that like his community is built. And I was, you know, I was a rappy rap backpack type of rap lover, you know?

• 1:22:05Speaker 14

  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.

• 1:22:24Speaker 06

  He appreciates that, yeah.

• 1:22:25Speaker 14

  Yeah, I'm sure he, 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, um, 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.

• 1:22:44Speaker 06

  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 gonna 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?

• 1:23:20Speaker 14

  Yeah, you know, I, 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?

• 1:23:35Speaker 06

  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 movies is what the kids care about.

• 1:23:44Speaker 14

  We are talking about a time before their time, right?

• 1:23:45Speaker 06

  Leave it. Right. Several times before their time at this point, unfortunately, yes, yes.

• 1:23:50Speaker 14

  Oh, my God. Really?

• 1:23:52Speaker 06

  It matters.

• 1:23:53Speaker 14

  It does matter, 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.

• 1:24:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:24:06Speaker 14

  But as I explained recently to a room of people that booed me recently.

• 1:24:13Speaker 14

  That 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 listening to it transports me to that time. But I also think he's made really good, sometimes better music since then. And I wondered if he'd, like, other folks, acknowledged 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.

• 1:24:54Speaker 14

  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? And 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 just like, it's gonna 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.

• 1:25:30Speaker 06

  Doesn't seem very fair. Who booed you? Who booed you for saying that, Joel?

• 1:25:34Speaker 14

  So, yo, I was at a, so, again, I was talking about my friend, Bimani Jones. I was in New York a couple of weeks ago, and he had, 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 Sade 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.

• 1:25:57Speaker 14

  Listening to represent, you know, I don't even think New York State of Mind is the best New York State of Mind that Nas has released. Like, I think the part two that he puts on I Am is better than the original, right?

• 1:26:10Speaker 06

  Huh, alright.

• 1:26:11Speaker 14

  But again, I'm not trying, I'm not trying to shit on the original, and that's just the way I feel.

• 1:26:15Speaker 06

  No, I get you. Sure.

• 1:26:16Speaker 14

  But I said that in a room full, in, in New York, and from a room full of New Yorkers.

• 1:26:20Speaker 06

  That's tough. That's a tough room.

• 1:26:22Speaker 14

  It was a tough crowd.

• 1:26:22Speaker 06

  Alright, well, I'm relieved you survived that experience. Okay, so what do you get out of New York's?

• 1:26:30Speaker 06

  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?

• 1:26:40Speaker 14

  It sounds a little bit more contemporary. It's the, the production, I mean, this is gonna 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, going through all his homeboys as they die, and go to prison or whatever, and I'm the last one standing, and, and the production on that one just hits me a little bit more. It's, it's, it sounds a little bit more of today's time. It sounds a little bit more contemporary than the original one did. It was written, man. I mean, it had shootouts on it, it had live nigga rap, it 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.

• 1:27:23Speaker 06

  Of course.

• 1:27:24Speaker 14

  Illmatic just seems a little, then for you, doesn't it feel a little more roasts? Or like, a little like, kinda, alright, it's good for a cloudy, dreary day?

• 1:27:34Speaker 06

  There's no If I Ruled the World on Illmatic, you know?

• 1:27:38Speaker 14

  There's not.

• 1:27:39Speaker 06

  There's no I Gave You Power on Illmatic.

• 1:27:41Speaker 14

  Oh, my God.

• 1:27:42Speaker 06

  You know?

• 1:27:42Speaker 14

  I Gave You Power is a great song, dude. Yeah.

• 1:27:45Speaker 06

  Yeah. Okay. No, I get you.

• 1:27:47Speaker 14

  Yeah. So, again, like, I mean, I, 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.

• 1:27:56Speaker 06

  Alright. 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.

• 1:28:05Speaker 14

  That's a little fair.

• 1:28:07Speaker 06

  And so I was wondering, to the best of your memory, like, as this Jay-Z Nas thing 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?

• 1:28:28Speaker 14

  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 have, 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, when Drake released Family Matters, I was like, damn, he 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?

• 1:29:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:04Speaker 14

  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 defending himself against Drake. Yeah, right. Like, he just, yeah, he's 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, so I 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, surefire Hall of Famers, right? Like, you could have argued at the time that,

• 1:29:49Speaker 14

  like, DMX or Eminem were as big as hip hop stars as them, right?

• 1:29:53Speaker 06

  This is 2001. You know, this is the Marshall Mathers LP. Absolutely.

• 1:29:58Speaker 14

  We're, we're very early, like, Jay-Z has been a rapper with albums out there, like, for five years at this point.

• 1:30:04Speaker 06

  Five years, right.

• 1:30:06Speaker 14

  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 hype, you know, like, well, man, are they ever actually gonna 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 gonna make, like- Jay-Z and Beyonce aren't even a thing yet, right?

• 1:30:34Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:30:35Speaker 14

  Like, just think about how big a deal Jay-Z goes on 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 the Super Bowl halftime show as a result of Ether? I don't think so.

• 1:31:01Speaker 06

  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, that's, that's completely. I got it. I, I, I hope I'm not overlooking, but that seems pretty unprecedented to me, you know?

• 1:31:29Speaker 14

  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.

• 1:31:51Speaker 14

  And she keeps, she keeps up with pop culture pretty good, but I just, I don't think it penetrated in quite the same way. Yeah.

• 1:31:56Speaker 06

  Okay. 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? Or is it one of those things where it helped both of them ultimately?

• 1:32:16Speaker 14

  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.

• 1:32:34Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:32:35Speaker 14

  After the beef, he makes The Black Album, which I think is his best album.

• 1:32:38Speaker 06

  I agree with that, yes.

• 1:32:40Speaker 14

  Some people really liked American Gangster. 444 is like this real cultural moment. 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. He married Beyonce, he's a billionaire. Like, he programs the Super Bowl halftime show, the first rapper to be built into the songwriter's 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.

• 1:33:07Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:33:08Speaker 14

  It doesn't matter if he's, 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?

• 1:33:19Speaker 06

  Like, yeah.

• 1:33:21Speaker 14

  Right, like, God's Son was a good album, I guess, like, The Street Disciple, alright. Hip-hop is dead.

• 1:33:29Speaker 06

  Hip-hop is dead. Untitled, does he have an untitled album, like?

• 1:33:33Speaker 14

  He did have the Untitled, it had Fried Chicken on there, that was the song.

• 1:33:36Speaker 06

  Oh, good, yeah.

• 1:33:38Speaker 14

  Is that the one, is that, yeah. And then, like, he did that album with Damian Marley.

• 1:33:43Speaker 06

  Right, right, I forgot about that one.

• 1:33:45Speaker 14

  The thing that I think that, uh, 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.

• 1:33:58Speaker 06

  King's Disease, Volume Nine.

• 1:34:00Speaker 14

  King's Disease.

• 1:34:01Speaker 06

  Now in stores.

• 1:34:02Speaker 14

  Magic, Magic, Magic Two, Magic Three. 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. Uh, he was never as big a rapper as he was after Ether, but, um, he still, like, figured out a way to, like, maintain his credibility as an artist, still make a lot of music, and make a lot of money, not necessarily through music, but he made a lot of money, so.

• 1:34:32Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:34:32Speaker 14

  Yeah, I think that the, the beef elevated them in a way. It didn't end anybody's career. I mean, and, and the thing about it, too, is that, like, only a few people's careers get ended by beef, like Ja Rule, Meat Mill.

• 1:34:45Speaker 06

  I was thinking of Ja Rule, and I feel bad, but.

• 1:34:49Speaker 14

  I'd say sad, well, not really, I mean, he did the Fire Fest, that's on him, you know what I mean?

• 1:34:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's right, yeah.

• 1:34:55Speaker 14

  Fifty Cent had hit on something there. Lil Flip is a Houstonian. I'm a Houstonian. Lil Flip, his career never really recovered from TI.

• 1:35:04Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:35:05Speaker 14

  Maybe Eazy-E. I mean, you know, it's tough to say because he never really got a chance to like.

• 1:35:09Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:35:10Speaker 14

  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.

• 1:35:25Speaker 06

  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 Nas is 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 Jay-Z on Jay-Z's own shit? You can decide.

• 1:35:52Speaker 14

  So, no. But I do think Eminem pushed Hov? Like, like, listen to that song and the storytelling in it. Like, I'm awkward, I'm box lefty and often my pops left me and often my mama wasn't home. Like, it was, Jay-Z dropped some shit in there, man. Yeah, he came, he came hard. Like, I don't, like, 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, it's like what I was talking about, like, not all disses have to be true. You know, that all the songs, you can have a few lies in there.

• 1:36:33Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 1:36:34Speaker 14

  The line from Ether that actually had real heft to me was, compared to Beans, you're whack. Because I thought Beanie Siegel was really good. I was like, man, Beanie Siegel be rapping his ass off. He's good as Jay right now, isn't he? You know? But that seemed truer to me than Eminem murdered him on his own shit.

• 1:36:53Speaker 06

  Okay. Eminem tied you on your own shit just doesn't have the same ring to it, I guess.

• 1:36:59Speaker 14

  It doesn't hit in quite the same way.

• 1:37:00Speaker 06

  No, you have to lie sometimes. That's, that's what we've learned here today. Joel, this has been fantastic.

• 1:37:06Speaker 14

  Oh, man. Look, man, my pleasure, man. Anytime. Have me back anytime, dude.

• 1:37:10Speaker 06

  We will, we will. Thank you so much, dude.

• 1:37:19Speaker 06

  Thanks very much to our guest this week, Joel Anderson. Thanks, as always, to our producers Jonathan Kerma, Bobby Wagner, and Justin Sayles. 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.

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