One of the most notable historical ‘beefs’ in hip-hop, now resolved, was between Nas and Jay-Z. The beef heated up over the early 2000s, officially concluding in 2006. It spawned a number of classic diss tracks, most notably including Ether, Takeover, Got Ur Self A, and Supa Ugly.
Context
When Biggie died in 1997, New York needed a new king. The primary contenders were Nas and Jay-Z.
Through the 90s, Nas was a darling of the NYC Hip Hop scene. He achieved huge commercial and critical success, beginning with his standout debut album, Illmatic. However, by the late 90s, the quality of his output had started to fade, and 1999’s Nastradamus was pretty terrible, especially in comparison to his earlier work.
Jay was a relative newcomer: he made his debut in 1996 with Reasonable Doubt, to this day his strongest album, but by 1999 he had surpassed Nas’ sales, and his label, Roc-A-Fella, dominated urban contemporary radio. Both he and Nas were formidable rappers, well positioned to take the throne.
The tension started to heat up, when Prodigy, a member of Mobb Deep and a good friend of Nas’, perceived that Jay-Z was disrespecting his Queensbridge compatriot. Wikipedia quotes Prodigy as saying,
So when I heard that, I was like, “Who is Jay talking about who is talking about hanging in Marcy in they line?” Then I thought about “Trife Life” in my verse I said “jetted through Marcy ‘cause D’s[detectives] ain’t baggin’ me” because I was out there…Then “Shook Ones” came out, then Jay came with the plastic cups, football jerseys in the projects, taking jabs at us. I was like Nas, what we need to do is go at these niggas because number one, his lil’ man is trying to shit on you; talking about your life is written and all this shit.
While Nas kept quiet, Prodigy slowly escalated the beef, repeatedly taking shots in interviews at Jay-Z and the Roc-A-Fella roster. Eventually, in 2001, Jay-Z kicked things up a notch and debuted Takeover, the debut single off of his acclaimed 6th album, The Blueprint, at Hot 97’s 2001 Summer Jam, where his historical performance even included an appearance by Michael Jackson. The track is a direct diss track, targeting both Prodigy and Nas, and the first album track to come out of the feud.
Not to be outdone, Nas came back with Ether, an even harder-hitting diss. The track was so fierce, that in the words of Son Raw, whom Wikipedia deems credible enough to quote, “To ‘ether’ someone means to completely dismantle them in a rap battle with no regard for petty concerns such as ‘logic’ or ‘cleverness’ – it’s a giant shock-n-awe display of machismo meant to scar the victim for life and leave an unmistakable blemish on his career.” The track revived Nas’ career, and and he headlined Hot 97’s Summer Jam in 2002 and 2003.
Takeover
The earliest-dated Kanye West production in my iTunes library, Takeover came out on September 11, 2001. Lauded by Complex as the Best Diss Track Of All Time. The track features an almost Dilla-level-prominent bassline sampled from The Doors’ Five To One, slowed down a bit and with some crazy saturator/limiter action to heat it up.
The beat is notable for Kanye’s extremely pointed use of vocal samples. The third verse makes especially creative use of David Bowie’s Fame as a foreground element: the sampled word ‘fame,’ edited to sound like ‘lame,’ is interspersed through Jay’s lyrics, for example, “That’s why your [“LAAAAAAME” sample] career’s come to an end.”
Lyrically, the verses divide the song into thematic sections. Jay spends the first verse signifying, with bombastic lines like, “God MC - me - Jay-hova // Hey lil soldier, you ain’t ready for war // R.O.C. too strong for y’all.” I see this as a pump-up verse, getting ready for the divisive verses to follow.
The second verse focuses on Mobb Deep, and feels to me like another warm-up to the Nas part. Not to say Jay didn’t go in: it effectively ended the meaningful phase in Mobb Deep’s career. Their next album, Infamy, prominently featured two Jay-Z disses, attempted to replace their grimy sound with a poppier aesthetic, and generally wasn’t good.
The fresh use of the aforementioned Fame samples draw attention to the third verse, the song’s longest and most interesting. Jay spends the verse dissecting Nas. Interestingly, in lines like, “Had a spark when you started but now you’re just garbage,” Jay several times acknowledges the greatness of Illmatic. This makes his argument stronger: Illmatic really is a classic, and to dispute that would make Jay’s other claims less credible; by bringing attention to Nas’ early greatness, Jay makes his diss all the more poignant.
You said you've been in this 10, I've been in it 5 - smarten up, Nas // 4 albums in 10 years, nigga? I could divide // That's one every...let's say 2 // 2 of them shits was due // 1 was "nah," the other was Illmatic // That's a one-hot-album-every-10-year average
Ether
Ether was produced by Ron Browz. The beat employs a digital production aesthetic, using programmed drums and synthesizers and no samples after the opening. It opens with some gunshots, directly from Who Shot Ya, and a sample of the line “Fuck Jay-Z” from Tupac’s not-even-a-diss-song, Fuck Friendz.
Like Takeover, Ether starts slow. The first verse is about how Nas is cool, and the second verse is about how Jay-Z is lame, and neither contains much more specific content than that.
In the 32-bar third verse, however, Nas goes into specifics. If Takeover stuck to one main argument (‘you used to be good and now you are bad’), Ether does the opposite, using a shotgun-approach to bombard the Jay-Z and the Roc family with specific targeted callouts:
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Jay Z hangs out with commercially successful artists to capitalize on their success
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Foxy Brown only featured on “Ain’t No Nigga” because of a secret affair between her and Jay (which she later confirmed)
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“[Jay Z] traded [his] soul for riches”
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Jay Z steals rhymes from the late, great, Biggie Smalls
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Jay Z hates women
Much like Jay’s argument in Takeover, these callouts are all pretty correct. Ether and Takeover both have gone on to be recognized as some of the best diss tracks in hip hop. While both rappers have continued on to have successful and long-lasting careers, Jay-Z is still a corporate shill, and Nas still hasn’t had an album better than Illmatic.
Conclusion
I think the most interesting thing that came out of these two songs is the semi-beef between Kanye West and Ron Brows. In an interview with XXL, Ron re-contextualized the beef as sampling-vs-synthesis, amusingly attempting to de-legitimize sampling and discredit a huge part of Hip-Hop’s history:
Come on. I did that from scratch. Kanye sampled it. Come on. My mother can go in the house and listen to a record, chop that, chop that and make that. You know I heard Kanye when he was saying that, “How can people compare them?” I did that from scratch, the keyboard, a drum machine, my drum patterns. That’s me playing the keyboard with the strings and all the additional percussion. And it was hard. That’s a sample. Come on, anybody can do that. Is y’all playing? “Yo, it’s better.” Nah. I mean, I don’t know who produced [“Takeover”]. Kanye know, man. He know deep in his heart what beat is harder. And you can just do a survey.
I think Kanye West and Ron Brows’ respective careers settle issue pretty conclusively.