Cause ima be honest man, I’m tired of the hiphop community holding this shit up like it’s up there in the echelon of great diss songs.
But maybe I’m ignorant to Nas and Jay history and I just don’t get what was said. But the beat wack, the chorus is wack, and he didn’t even say nothing crazy.
Canibus said he gonna take something from a nigga in front of his wife, and his kids
Pac said I fucked yo wife
Cube said dudes was being raped by Jews , physically and metaphorically.
Shock of it—always assumed from things I had seen before that Nas didn’t like Jay and vice versa
The directness of it—he said obvious stuff that everyone saw but just ignored so i didn’t see it as being direct. Being direct is, you use your label to over inflate luke warm songs into marketed to be generational music. Thats direct, and not obvious to people.
Who it was coming from—once again, it made sense
Who it was directed to—I always thought JayZ’s status was inflated. It makes no sense for Lance Stephenson to go at Lebron so the fact that he did stood out. But for Paul Pierce to go at Lebron, it doesn’t stand out because that’s his peer at that echelon
So, thank you for laying out why it moved people, but I guess I just saw everything outside of the song as valid, so I didn’t get it. But if the feeling was beyond the music
Shock of it—always assumed from things I had seen before that Nas didn’t like Jay and vice versa
The directness of it—he said obvious stuff that everyone saw but just ignored so i didn’t see it as being direct. Being direct is, you use your label to over inflate luke warm songs into marketed to be generational music. Thats direct, and not obvious to people.
Who it was coming from—once again, it made sense
Who it was directed to—I always thought JayZ’s status was inflated. It makes no sense for Lance Stephenson to go at Lebron so the fact that he did stood out. But for Paul Pierce to go at Lebron, it doesn’t stand out because that’s his peer at that echelon
So, thank you for laying out why it moved people, but I guess I just saw everything outside of the song as valid, so I didn’t get it. But if the feeling was beyond the music
Ether is overrated. Always has been. It’s a track that amounts to a man calling another man ugly and gay and a biter of biggie. It was a response. People gassed it for god knows what reason. I’m a big Nas fan. I was excited for this whole shit. Stillmatic Fresstyle already covered the gay angle that Nas was trying to push so hearing him double back on it in Ether was a let down.
Super ugly was wayyyy harder of a response. Someone in another thread said “fucking someone else’s baby mom is low hanging fruit”. Nigga on what planet.
I prefer what Nas did on Last Real Nigga Alive over what he did on Ether any day.
And I don’t know who needs to read/hear/see this but just because you add a word to the lexicon of the culture, it doesn’t mean the song that it refers to is the end all be all of disses.
TLDR: Nas calling Hov gay & ugly a bunch of times doesn’t move me when the “gay and ugly” nigga was fuckin his daughters mom.
Starts with Pac dissing Jay. Snipes Jay for biting Big. Details how Jay is Nas' biggest fan. = You don't belong in this class.
It's a systematic deconstruction of Jay's whole image from Hawaiian Sophie to Dame trying to be Puff. When you are viewed as untouchable people gonna take notice when you get touched. A note that seems oddly prescient considering current events.
Takeover wasn't more truthful. We found out recently that one of the best insults from the record (you ain't get a corn, you were getting fucked and I know who I paid god, Serchlite publishing) wasn't even true. Serch confirmed the line as a lie. Serchlite Publishing didn't exist and Nas did and still does get paid for Dead Presidents.
"I made sure Nas got 25%. So Jay can say whatever he wants. Jay doesn't own any Nas publishing. But Nas owns Jay publishing. So he can say whatever he wants on the ether record to get on under Nas skin but even Nas knows the truth."
(0:45-2:00)
As far as the Ether insults being whatever you boiled them down to, that's just a rewrite of history.
"Hawaiian Sophie fame, kept my name in his music" is true, Jay's first notable foray into hip hop was Hawaiian Sophie (which he tries to scrub from memory when he acts like his career started in 1996).
And up to this point, Jay had either sampled Nas, recited Nas rhymes, or mentioned Nas in glowing terms on every one of his albums.
"KRS already made an album called Blueprint" is true. By itself, this wouldn't be all that scathing since hip hop borrows, remixes and samples all of the time, but the reoccurring theme on Ether is that Jay takes it to obnoxious, dickriding levels. The Blueprint album opens with "The Rulers Back", which is Slick Rick lite, and a year later, Jay would go on to remake Tupacs gritty metaphor track Me and My Girlfriend, into a pop duet with Beyonce. Cam would base an entire diss around this idea that Nas dropped on Ether - your man Jay is flagrant with his dickriding and swagger jacking.
"First Biggie's your man then you got the nerve to say that you're better than Big" is true. Jay has been on a mission to angle himself favorably in every greatest emcee discussion, starting off in 97 when he said Brooklyn cats would "argue who's the best emcee, biggie, jay-z, or nas". But as time went on Jay started crafting arguments for himself and dropping them on albums. And he wanted to be enshrined so much that he started making arguments for why he is better than Biggie, his man, who was dead. It would sort of be like if Cam'ron or Mase were making records about how they are better than Big L, using longevity as a point for themselves.
"You only concerned with dissing women" is true. Jay, up to that point, had made a career off a long list of misogynistic singles about his pimpish ways (Big Pimpin, Hey Papi, Is That Your Bitch, Can I Get A, Ain't No Nigga, Give it To Me, Best of Me, Girls, Girls, Girls, Parking Lot Pimpin, etc) . Jay himself has admitted that he got on his pimp game as a defense mechanism because of insecurities. Nas just points this out.
Nas is not clean when it comes to misogynistic records - most 90s rappers aren't - but again the breadth of these records is on another level with Jay. He got so used to remaking that type of record that if you turned on the radio in 2001, there was a good chance you'd hear a Jay-Z "hit em and quit em" record within 30 minutes. Ironically, Jay stopped releasing those kind of records after Ether dropped, though it can be argued that he evolved because he started dating Beyonce, which happened around the same time.
"Is he Dame Diddy - Oh I get it you Biggie and He's Puffy" is a true sentiment, and again points to the idea of Jay following the blueprints that other artists laid down. Jay absolutely tried to be the new Biggie, so much that his second album was produced by Diddy, and the in-house Bad Boy team, featured a sex song with Lil Kim and tried replicate the sound that Mase and Biggie were successful with. Jay was even wearing shiny suits with background dancers, with Dame all up in the video, which made that era of his career indistinguishable from what Mase was doing (much better).
After the diddy produced Vol 1 flopped, Jay moved on to Swizzy, but everyone could still peep that Dame and Jay were trying to be the new Big and Puff.
"Went from Jaz to hanging with Kane, to Irv, to Big" is true. Jay tries to whitewash his 80's and early 90's career, but it was filled with him hopping from one crew to another in search of making it big. He was in rap groups he never mentions and a hype man for several rappers, including Big Daddy Kane, who took Jay on tour. This sentiment continued after Jay started rocking with Kanye even though Dame was the one that supported Kanye's solo rap career while Jay wanted him to stick to making beats. But as soon as Kanye got hot, Jay became his "big brother." Jay attaches himself to people that are hotter than he is.
"You pop shit and then apologize" is true and it happened in this very beef as Jay popped shit about Carmen, and then went on the radio to apologize for it.
"How much of biggies rhymes is gon come out your fat lips?" see Swagger Jacker.
"Eminem murdered you on your own shit" is true. Nuff said.
"Foxy got you hot" is true. Jay's first top 50 hit (and top 5 on the rap charts) after nearly ten years in the rap industry was" Aint No Nigga" a song he did with teenage Foxy Brown, where they talked about fucking each other.
"In 88, you was getting chased through your buildings" is true, at least according to Dehaven. (depends on how much stock you put into the words of disgruntled former friends).
"Calling my crib and I ain't even give you my numbers" is true, according to E-Money Bags.
From Prodigy's book
This is why Nas calls Jay a "stan" in the song. Stan wanted Eminem's attention and a autograph/hat signed, and Jay wanted Nas's attention, video appearance, verses, etc, and got mad at Nas when he didn't get it.
"Wanted to be on every last one of my classics" is true. Jay was a legit fan of Nas and wanted to do songs with Nas prior to the beef. Jay wanted Nas on his debut album RD, and he wanted Nas in his two of his videos for RD (one of them AZ came in for).
"Traded your soul for riches" is true, then and now.
Jay's "you didn't get a corn for Dead Presidents" isn't true, according to Serch himself, and his "you been in this ten, I been in this five" line isn't true, because Jay's rap career started before Nas.
There was a reason Jay was on the radio about to cry and the whole Rocafealla team admitted they were walking around the office as if there was a funeral going on the day Ether dropped. There was a reason Jay went from the bully of the battle, to the one on the defensive, which is clearly heard in Blueprint 2, as Jay starts begging for sympathy and talking up his good deeds. Ether was a scathing critique of Jay's career and humbled him for the first time. And it wasn't because he got called gay.
I didn't write this but those are the real facts and one of the reasons Nas really won
Cause ima be honest man, I’m tired of the hiphop community holding this shit up like it’s up there in the echelon of great diss songs.
But maybe I’m ignorant to Nas and Jay history and I just don’t get what was said. But the beat wack, the chorus is wack, and he didn’t even say nothing crazy.
Canibus said he gonna take something from a nigga in front of his wife, and his kids
Pac said I fucked yo wife
Cube said dudes was being raped by Jews , physically and metaphorically.
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