The early 00s feud between Jay-Z and Nas is one of Hip-Hop's most famous beefs and still one of it's most talked about. Ras Kass recently shared a story involving his history with both men and their bad blood. Speaking to The Art Of Dialogue, the West Coast emcee shared how he heard the song the day that it dropped when he was in a studio with DJ Premier.

“It had to be 10 a.m., 11 a.m. when Nas bops in,” he recalls. “He’s usually very chill. Every time I’ve encountered him, he’s humble and nice. Not to say he wasn’t humble then, but he walked in, boppin’. I remember for like an hour, me him and Premier talking, like an overview of the record […] At the time, Jay was crushin’ everything.

“It was interesting watching the changing of the guards […] I knew some of the things that Nas was sayin’. I didn’t even know all of it, as far as the personal jabs on that record. I lived with JAY-Z for a summer, so I just knew it was clinically  written deadly. It was a deadly written, personal record. ”

“The ironic part is I saw [Nas] during the day at the studio, then at night, I went out to the club,” he continues. “We went out and saw Jay and Dame at the club […] They played ‘Ether’ in the club and Jay was heated, and I remember that. I remember him saying, ‘Dame, tell that nigga to turn that shit off.’

“But the club was going up, and that’s when I knew it was over. The DJ was like, ‘Fuck that,’ and played that shit. And the club went up. That’s when I knew Nas won. The streets had spoken. The DJ played it and Jay was in the building […] Nas beat Jay.”

Jay and Nas officially ended the feud in 2004 and have collaborated numerous times since, most recently on DJ Khaled's 2021 track "Sorry Not Sorry."