People keep pulling up “lost files” of the Queensbridge king Nas and his 2001 interview during his promo run for Stillmatic may be the most talked-about thus far.
FELON Magazine, one of the premiere underground publications that surfaced during the turn of the century, conducted an interview with Nas in the midst of his epic beef on wax with Jay-Z. Nas, who was initially reluctant to speak on his beef with the Roc-A-Fella top dog, but decided to speak his mind, saying, “You know what? I want to talk about this s**t with Jay-Z—FELON is a street magazine, and I f**ks with the street magazines. It’s only right that I keep it real with the streets.”
While chilling with Jay at a party thrown by music exec Steve Stoute in 2000, Nas said that Jay said he was better than Biggie and that the only fans checking for 2Pac and DMX was the “starving street niggas.”
“We were kickin’ it and he told me that he’s better than Biggie now,” Nas said in the FELON interview. “I looked at him like he was crazy. Then, he started telling me Memphis Bleek was a fan and that I shouldn’t go at him. He predicted that Beanie Sigel would never sell more than 600,000 copies. He said that Sauce Money was to him what Nature was to me. Then, he really got crazy. He said that Tupac and DMX were not lyricists—they just had the hungry, starving street n***as coppin’ their shit—but me and him had all the money n***as buying ours. I told him that I disagreed with him—that Tupac was the greatest ever—period, and that DMX really brought that street sh** back into the game.”
Neither Jay-Z or Nas have yet to respond to the claims made pertaining to the comments in the interview.
