Tupac and Nas Beef: Retro News

Back in 1996, Tupac’s first posthumous album was dropped after his death, and there was a track on there that he dissed a lot of east coast rappers, Nas inclusive. Before then, people only knew Tupac for dissing Biggie and the whole Bad Boy, as a click and as a goddamn record label- just as he said in his Hit Em Up song. So, people started wondering what was up with the thing with Nas. But, dead men don't talk, so there was a mystery surrounding the issue.

 Back then, Internet wasn't like it is now, so information didn't disseminate well. And the real truth behind the whole mistaken feud was never known. It was a couple of years later, when Death Row Records had made a lot of money from the whole controversy that surrounded that song, that people started talking. And if Nas wasn't the recluse he is, he would have cleared things himself, but he really kept silent about the issue. He definitely didn't diss Tupac back, cos Pac was already dead; and he didn't come forward to clear the issue either.

The real truth…let me just say, I now know why he didn't reply that diss…he didn't reply because it wasn't really what it seemed to be. What really happened was that Tupac heard one of Nas’s song off the “It Was Written Album” (1996), titled The Message, where Nas was referring to a fake thug that get no love, and Pac thought Nas was talking to him. As I said, it was a misunderstanding. You can read what Tupac said about the issue below-

“I swear to God. I see this nigga Nas at the House of Blues, I was deep with my niggas, I know he didn’t have no guns, we could have rushed him right there. I was like ‘what’s up yo? This east coast west coast thing is not about you, don’t get caught up in it. I swear to God, we love you, we got love for you”…This nigga went back home and started talking that fake thug shit in his album…and that’s wronggg…cos you should have said that to me when I was right there…that means you’re a punk…cos I wont hug a nigga I don’t love.”

But, weeks before Pac’s death, if not days, he was in New York for the MTV Awards and he saw Nas and walked up to approach him. Now, this is the part a lot of people don’t get to hear, because the people that were there that day with Pac (Snoop, Suge Knight…) didn’t talk about It till after several years. Okay, I want you to read what Snoop said about the whole issue. He was being interviewed about the whole Biggie and Tupac beef by some radio personalities, and he was telling them how he wasn’t really into it because he was friends with Biggie even before Tupac got signed to Death Row Records in 1995. Anyway, he got tired of telling that story, and he asked them if they wanted to hear another story…

“…there was a story even more gangsta than that…Him(Tupac) and Nas. It was so gangsta. This was prequel to me meeting Angie Martinez for an interview…MTV had the Award show at Central Park, so Tupac and all of us from Death Row, we mobbing…we see Nas…He (Tupac) walked  up to nas…nas had about a hundred goons with him that I see, that I know that they killers, but pac aint tripping and he just don’t care, so he walk up to nas…nas reached out to shake pac hand, and nas say ‘I got love for you pac’, and pac said, ‘well nigga, if you got love for me, I got a song coming out where I dissed you, Jay-Z, Biggie…’ He named like about 40 niggaz…he named a bunch of niggas, and he told nas, ‘if you got love for me, you aint gon say nothing after this record come out.' Nas shook the nigga hand and looked over his shoulder…he had about a hundred niggaz with him, all them niggaz had their hands on their shit (guns). He did them niggaz like this…like he winked his eye…like don’t do it. And he shook pac hand and he said I love you pac, and they separated. And then pac looked at me (on the way back) ‘I told you, nigga, we got these niggazs…we got this niggas punked out here’. But to me, nas was gangsta, cos he didn’t push the light…He could have pushed the green button, and we’d have been done, cos we didn’t have no artillery in New York and they did.”

Okay, that is Snoop shedding more light on the whole issue, but that still don’t explain some things, like why Nas kept quiet after Makaveli dropped, but Suge Knight cleared that up in an interview. Read what he said about that day…the same day Snoop narrated.

“Pac wouldn’t attack anybody that was real. Like I say, em…Pac was a man with a lot of respect. He had did the Makaveli album…he talked about nas sort of bad…so at the MTV Awards, he met nas, he went to him like “You got a problem with me?”…that was pac. Nas was like ‘wow! I got no problem. We can be cool.’ They had a conversation…they shook and hugged. And they said if we can do music together in the future, we can make a difference. So, on our way back home, pac said ‘when we get to the studio, all the negative stuff I said about nas, I’ma take him out and put someone else in there that deserve that. But I’m not going to say anything negative about nas, cos I broke bread with him, and I gave him my word cos we were friends.’ But, we can’t change things now because pac aint here.”

As I said earlier, Pac died a few days after this incidence, and didn't get a chance to make that change. Suge Knight had two options; he could either completely omit the entire track from the album, or he could live it as it was cos, he wouldn't know how Pac would have wanted to effect the changes; I guess he chose the latter option.