Recently, MC Serch spoke to DJ Cassidy and pointed out the moment Jay-Z and Nas squashed their issues with each other. Many saw Jay-Z and Nas when Jay brought Nas out during the ‘I Declare War’ tour in 2005, but Serch noted there was another moment where they truly showed they had no issues with each other.
DJ Cassidy told Serch, “At the time, I’m doing all of Jay’s parties, and Jay was the president of Def Jam and L.A. Reid was CEO. So, Jay and L.A. had already signed Nas to Def Jam and this was a big deal. I think Nas was coming from Columbia, so this was a huge deal because the JAY-Z and Nas battle had taken over the world. Several years later, Def Jam signs Nas while JAY-Z is the president of Def Jam, so this was an end of an era, the end of their beef, the two greats coming together — one as the label head, one as the artist.”
From there, Cassidy described how the two artists were at a Def Jam annual retreat party and started rapping each other’s lyrics at a casino restaurant. Cassidy said, “On one side of the room is Jay, on one side is Nas. I led myself into this epic 30-minute back-and-forth between Jay records and Nas records, and not just the hits. Like ‘Memory Lane,’ so on and so on. If my memory serves me correctly, the space between them started to get smaller and smaller. Before you knew it, I passed someone a mic — this is all very casual, there was nothing set up for a performance. This is like standing on a restaurant table. Next thing you know, they’re rapping each other’s lyrics. You could feel it in the room from L.A. Reid down, that everyone was like a little kid at Disney World witnessing their favorite superheroes come out of the castle. And they were doing their own but next to each other.” Watch above.
