Speaking during TIDAL’s “A Toast To Biggie” Twitter Spaces conversation, Jay-Z recalled the day he first heard the Notorious B.I.G.’s hit song, “Who Shot Ya.” Jay says that the quality of the track pushed him to write four songs later that same night.
“Biggs gave me the ‘Who Shot Ya’ CD — he called me like it was like we had some kind of beef or something,” the legendary rapper explained. “He was like, ‘yo meet me on 120th right now.’ I jump in my car, I’m heavy. I’m like, ‘what’s going on with Biggs?’ I mean, I fly up there. And I get out my car and get in his car and he plays the song and he was like, ‘yeah, you keep the uh,’ it was a cassette tape actually. He was like, ‘yeah you keep that.’”
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Jay continued: “I wrote like four songs that night. None of them was as good as ‘Who Shot Ya’ but it was still like four songs. It was just, again it was that friendly competition like just trying to push each other to be the best.”
The Twitter Space was hosted by Elliott Wilson. Later in the conversation, Diddy spoke up to remark that Jay-Z “filled” the shoes left behind after Biggie’s death in 1997.
“You came in and we definitely give thanks. You definitely came, and I just know how much Big really looked up to Jay,” he said. “They looked up to each other. That is crazy you had to step into the shoes of two people. That’s all it was was those two people. They had things on lock.”
Check out Jay’s comments below.
[Via]