Nasir Jones, born September 14, 1973, in Brooklyn and raised in the Queensbridge Houses in Queens, released one of the most acclaimed rap albums ever, Illmatic, in 1994. His birth is sometimes placed on Long Island; it was Brooklyn. His conflict with Tupac was brief, one-sided, and, unlike most of the feuds of 1996, it ended in reconciliation.
The trigger
In July 1996 Nas released his second album, It Was Written. Tupac took the opening verse of the single The Message, with its line about a “fake thug,” as a shot at himself; Nas later said the verse was aimed at The Notorious B.I.G. Two productions on the album also came from Live Squad, the group of Tupac’s former friend Stretch, with whom he had fallen out.
Tupac responded on The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory, recorded in the summer of 1996: on Against All Odds and the intro Bomb First (My Second Reply) he attacked Nas, accusing him of copying his style and his life. Nas later said he cried when he heard Against All Odds, because he looked up to Tupac.
Further accusations are sometimes made. There is no evidence that Nas’ Sweet Dreams sounded like Tupac’s All Eyez on Me. The claim that Nas had also been shot five times goes back to Tupac’s own lines on Against All Odds, where he accused Nas of pretending in his lyrics to have survived five bullets just like Tupac. There is no evidence that Nas was ever actually shot.
Reconciliation
On September 4, 1996, on the sidelines of the MTV Video Music Awards, Tupac and Nas met in New York’s Bryant Park. Both camps squared up, but the two talked and settled their differences. Tupac reportedly promised to remove the attacks on Nas before the Makaveli album came out, and the two arranged to meet in Las Vegas. Three days later Tupac was shot; according to Death Row associate Kurt “Kobane” Couthon, he had been listening to It Was Written on the drive to Las Vegas. The album was released unchanged.
After Tupac’s death
In 1999 Nas dedicated We Will Survive on his album I Am… to Tupac and Biggie. In 2002 Thugz Mansion appeared in two versions, one featuring Nas, both on Tupac’s posthumous Better Dayz and on Nas’ God’s Son. Nas has repeatedly said in interviews that he admired Tupac from his very first songs. More background on the East vs. West page.