Big mentioned to Kane that he wanted to get on stage. Halfway through the show, Kane called him up.
"I'm an MC," Kane says. "So at the moment, only thing on my mind was, 'Okay, what verse am I'm going to say to tear they ass up?' That was really the only thing that was on my mind at the moment. But afterwards, I thought, 'Hey man, it was beautiful.' I knew that Big was a dope MC, a good dude, and always showed Mister Cee love, so I wanted the best for him. And Pac was my man. When I saw him winning and now he's doing movies, I was so proud of him. I feel like I was blessed to have them two brothers on the stage with me."
Fat Joe, who had released his debut album, Represent, only months earlier, was in attendance, and hungry to be a part of history.
"I was in the front row … and all of a sudden, you see the whole crowd turn back looking at the entrance, like the tunnel, and it was ‘Pac and Big — and this was Juice ‘Pac,” Joe later told Angie Martinez in 2023.
Joe recalled being invited on stage, but due to time constraints, he never got to spit a verse.
"Big Daddy Kane might have saved me ’cause I would’ve did some bullshit," he said.
Without Mister Cee's decision to record the performance, the cypher would have surely become something of a folktale amongst Hip-Hop heads — especially when the souring of Biggie and 2Pac's friendship played out so publicly.
"I recorded that on cassette, then it eventually got transferred to vinyl and became probably one of the illest live Hip-Hop performances of all time," Mister Cee later recalled.