During his recent GQ interview, Nas reflected on how his beef with Jay-Z impacted his career, and perhaps the hip-hop landscape as a whole. While they squashed said issues eventually, their spat is the stuff of legend in the rap community. Elsewhere in the interview, he spoke on a few other topics, including his Madison Square Garden show, his run with Hit-Boy, and his idea of success. However, his reflections on his Hov battles led to some interesting reflections on collaborations in the game. At the time of that beef, he remarked, hip-hop still existed on a coastal binary for many.
“That’s just being reminded of what rap is, being shocked, taking it places you didn’t think you were going to go with it as an artist,” he explained about the shock behind the Jay feud and how it marked a second phase of his career in the early 2000s. “[Like] me on ‘One Mic,’ making a song slow, low-key, raising an octave higher. ‘Got Yourself A Gun’ was a Dr. Dre-sounding track, and I had worked with Dre on music before that.
Nas Speaks On Beef With Jay-Z To GQ
“So I kind of had a pass to do a Dre-kind of sound because Dre cosigned our friendship and our collabs,” he continued. “I feel like that collab [with Dre] brought in the idea, maybe, for things like Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and Biggie together. I didn’t invent it, but it made it more of a thing, like, ‘Hey guys, we’re always so standoffish. You come into my market, I come into your market, and let’s have fun. It’s all a family thing.’”
Meanwhile, the hip-hop legend chases a very different idea of success to what many might believe or expect from one of the game’s greatest. “All records sell,” the 49-year-old stated. “If they don’t sell at all, then get out of the music business. Or if you love your art, don’t let that determine anything. If you need them to sell too quickly, you gotta watch that. lllmatic wasn’t the huge seller the first week, but now you look at how well it did. You just have to worry about the music.” Check out the full interview in the link below and stick around on HNHH for the latest greatness from Nas.