JAY-Z Page 8

  My dark fears of the war between JAY-Z and Nas lightened in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. The world of hip hop seemed smaller in the face of the destruction, terror, and loss of human life that 9/11 projected across our television screens and seared into our imaginations. Like 9/11, the war between JAY-Z and Nas was ignited by actions and paradigm shifts that we didn’t quite understand at that moment. When writers and thinkers return to the beef between JAY-Z and Nas now, they rarely fully engage the fear that cast a pall over the entire proceedings. Even for those who lauded the lyrical revival of Nas, or for those who eagerly chose their side in the bitter battle, it was fear of bloodshed that really underwrote hip hop’s greatest war. It was clear then, even if it isn’t now, that it wouldn’t take much for the beef to turn into bullets.

  What was ultimately at stake in this war of words was the lasting legacy of Notorious B.I.G., known even more colloquially as B.I.G. or Biggie Smalls. Biggie was murdered in a drive-by shooting in 1997 in Los Angeles on the eve of releasing his second and final album, Life After Death. Biggie and 2Pac had been caught in an ugly, tragic war of words. Their epic talent, and the hostilities encouraged by other figures, especially in Tupac’s camp, framed their beef as a war between the East and West coasts. Sadly, careless coverage of the so-called coastal beef by segments of the hip hop media exacerbated the tense climate in which both Biggie and Tupac were brutally murdered.

  Both Nas and Jay were close to Christopher Wallace. Biggie influenced and competed with them both. And when he was alive there was little question that Biggie was the king of New York rap. It was great sport for fans to debate who was better, supplying the name of whoever else may have been top of mind at the moment. But in the mid-nineties Wallace was so clearly the lyrical monarch of New York City rap that even Nas and Jay could agree on it. Vying for B.I.G.’s legacy was the natural trajectory for both men. Each had legitimate claim to it. Each had the requisite skills and borough bona fides to prosecute their claims effectively. After all, to be the king of New York rap is not only to inherit B.I.G.’s substantial crown, but to lay claim to ruling the broader cultural kingdom where hip hop began. At a certain point, things got ugly, super ugly in fact.

  It is neither necessary nor helpful to rehash the drama of the “Super Ugly” phase of the JAY-Z–Nas rap war. “Super Ugly” was the second, more personal, more lethal installment of Jay’s diss of Nas. It included the claim that Jay seduced Nas’s baby’s mother in their luxury car and left condoms on the infant seat. That fracas has sold enough magazines, funded enough radio ads, and generated enough clicks online for those who want to revisit that moment on their own. What makes “Super Ugly” the most important phase in this hip hop war was the singular intervention of JAY-Z’s mother, Gloria Carter. A maternal touch transformed the tone and tenor of it all. She scolded her son for going too far in a rap battle that could have taken a far uglier turn than it did. Her scolding, and Jay’s responsiveness to it, made hip hop better and, in fact, made JAY-Z a better man too. It didn’t end the battle, but it reduced it to a respectable scuffle that ultimately ended in resolution, reconciliation, and collaboration. People talk about restorative justice and don’t always know what it means. Gloria Carter restored justice to hip hop at one of its most critical junctures. And, most important, her son didn’t lose his life in a senseless act of violence like his dear friend Christopher Wallace.

  In “Moment of Clarity,” from 2003’s The Black Album, his first retirement record, Jay summarizes his legacy connection to the Notorious B.I.G. this way:

  I’m strong enough to carry Biggie Smalls on my back

  And the whole BK, nigga, holla back.

  I use the term legacy here as an adjective, referring to software or hardware that is outdated but stays in use because it is pervasive and valuable. This is one of the best ways to appreciate JAY-Z’s profound personal and professional ties to Biggie Smalls. But it is also a more effective way of wrestling with the notion that JAY-Z the artist, including his performances, music videos, books, tours, and lyrical acumen, is better than B.I.G. was. This is a tough pill to swallow for hip hop heads, and even for JAY-Z. You will never hear him in song or in an interview claim that he is better than his “brother” Biggie.

  Sure, he laments lyrically from time to time that his biggest competition is the unvanquished specter of two MCs whose legacies haunt him. In “Grammy Family Freestyle,” in 2006, and then later on “Most Kingz,” in 2010, Jay characterizes how he’s viewed as an MC in comparison to his late friend, and his friend’s rival, only to lament his own impossible dilemma.

  Hov got flow though he’s no Big and Pac, but he’s close

  How I’m ’posed to win? They got me fightin’ ghosts.

  The closest he has ever come to a claim of superiority is in a line from “Hola Hovito,” where he opines, “And if I ain’t better than Big, I’m the closest one.”

  That might have been the case at the time of The Blueprint’s release in 2001. But since then, Jay has expanded his lyrical and artistic corpus, adding eight more albums, including Watch the Throne with Kanye West. He has become a figure that in many ways transcends the culture of hip hop, amassing along the way a fan base and fortune that exponentially exceed that of his beloved brother from Brooklyn. Hip hop’s reverence for Biggie Smalls is well placed, but nostalgia often clouds proper judgment. It is a legacy assessment to place Biggie over Jay on your Top Five list. We should acknowledge B.I.G.’s enduring place in the history of hip hop culture, his tragic and premature death, and his exceptionally canny approach to storytelling and narrative, the one area where he remains unrivaled. But in almost any other aspect of rhyming, and in every other aspect of performance, artistry, and industry success, Jay simply and categorically tops one of his best friends.

  Twenty-two shots are fired on 1996’s “Brooklyn’s Finest,” Jay and Biggie’s first collaboration on record. The shots are blasted off before any lyrics are fired by these verbal impresarios from this storied borough of New York. There are at least a half dozen assaults with deadly weapons, retributive shootings, and robberies referenced in the song. Like JAY-Z’s more recent urge to aggressive action on 2009’s “D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune),” “Brooklyn’s Finest” indeed, as Jay says on the former, “get[s] violent.” The gunshots and the random referencing of clap backs, robberies, and kidnappings are more remarkable now than they were late in the last century. Gun violence on rap records in 1996 was more conventional than gun violence on rap records now. This is especially true for JAY-Z, who has evolved from his Reasonable Doubt days as a hungry MC with much to prove in an East Coast arena that still featured Nas, Wu-Tang Clan, and Biggie Smalls at their heights. You can hear hints of the competitive spirit between Biggie and Jay on “Brooklyn’s Finest.” They were both reformed hustlers, and the competition is about how ghoulish each MC can make their past seem in the rhetorical milieu.

  The lyrical blueprint that Biggie lays down in his verses is instructive. “Brooklyn’s Finest” isn’t Jay and Big’s only collaboration, but it is the most telling, because so much of what will happen to B.I.G., and how JAY-Z will eventually align himself as B.I.G.’s heir apparent, is built into these lyrics. Consider the following references in B.I.G.’s verses: “Frank White,” the character in the 1990 cult flick King of New York; the phrase “Cristal forever”; the line “who shot ya?”; the word “warning”; and the line, “If Fay had twins, she probably have two Pacs (uh!) / Get it? Tu … Pac’s.”

  The allusion to the film King of New York is the basis for the eventual contention that will erupt between Jay and Nas. Cristal definitely wasn’t forever for hip hop culture, and it was JAY-Z, emerging from the shadow of B.I.G.’s legacy, who led the charge against Cristal for their racism in 2006. Hip hop frequently mentioned the high-end champagne in its songs for years. It often featured its trademark gold-labeled bottles in its music videos. But hip hoppers got a rude awakening when Frédéric Rouzaud, the managing director of the company that
produces the bubbly, said that he viewed hip hop’s affection for his brand with “curiosity and serenity.” He said that while he couldn’t “forbid people from buying it,” he was “sure Dom Perignon or Krug would be delighted to have their business.” Jay led the boycott of the company and eventually bought the champagne company Armand de Brignac, dubbed “Ace of Spades.” Jay captured perfectly how social change often flows from personal experience on “Kingdom Come”:

  Fuck Cristal, so they ask me what we drinking

  I thought dude’s remark was rude okay

  So I moved on to Dom, Krug Rosé

  And it’s much bigger issues in the world, I know

  But I first had to take care of the world I know.

  “Who Shot Ya?” and “Warning” are both breakout tracks on Biggie’s 1994 classic debut, Ready to Die. But the phrase and word, along with the acerbically ironic reference to Tupac, are also eerily intermingled with the intangible yet volatile exchanges that fueled the so-called bicoastal rap feud. It is tragic and telling that both men’s murders, one on a Las Vegas strip after a Mike Tyson fight, and the other on a popular Los Angeles nightlife strip after a Vibe magazine party, remain unsolved.

  And yet for all the gunshots and threats that ring through this energetic collaboration between Jay and B.I.G., the lines that ultimately carry the most weight, the words that have the most potential to haunt listeners even now, are the lyrics directed at Biggie’s wife, the R&B singer Faith Evans. Tupac claimed on record that he had a sexual encounter with Faith, a claim she vehemently denied. Given the tensions of the time, I believe Faith without question; I did then, I do now. But the fact that Faith became the instrument through which the beef between Biggie and Tupac was deepened is one of the saddest and most misogynistic moments of this dark phase in hip hop’s short history. The most vicious exchanges between these two men came at the expense of an innocent woman. Referencing rumors of a relationship between his wife and Tupac, Biggie let loose on “Brooklyn’s Finest”: “If Fay had twins, she’d probably have two Pacs (uh!) / Get it? Tu … Pac’s?” Two weeks later, Pac responded with a vile onslaught on his song “Hit ’Em Up,” saying in the spoken intro to the song: “I ain’t got no motherfuckin’ friends / That’s why I fucked yo’ bitch, you fat motherfucker!” Then he spoke venom in verse:

  First off, fuck yo’ bitch and the clique you claim

  Westside when we ride, come equipped with game

  You claim to be a player, but I fucked your wife

  We bust on Bad Boys, niggas fucked for life.

  The words ring shamefully in our ears now even if they did not do so then. It is especially tragic that Christopher Wallace and Tupac Shakur didn’t get the opportunity to mature as men and find their way past the abhorrent visions of masculinity that imprisoned them both as young men. Thank God that Shawn Carter was given more time and space to work through his own views of women and relationships in a way denied these other two lyrical legends. Jay also would have many more beefs, mostly inconsequential skirmishes, but they were instructive both for their lack of violence and for showing how one can disagree, and be quite disagreeable, at first, before finding one’s way to peace.

  * * *

  In a 2002 interview with radio personality Angie Martinez, while still embroiled in a very public war of words with Nas, JAY-Z explained the rationale behind most benign rap beefs. “People clash at the top,” Jay said, echoing Nas’s line on his 1999 song “We Will Survive,” where, speaking directly to the late 2Pac, Nas confessed they “had words ’cause the best supposed to clash at the top.” Jay continued: “I’m number one, you wanna be number one. You feel you number one, I wanna be number one. Let’s do it.” Jay implored the audience not to “believe these guys when they be talking tough.” Jay summed up hip hop conflict in two words. “It’s wrestling.”

  He drew on his own experience for an example. In 1999, then unsigned rapper 50 Cent had a radio hit, “How to Rob,” where he boasted he would perpetrate thievery on Jay. Jay retorted with a caustic couplet on “It’s Hot (Some Like It Hot)” in 1999 at that year’s Summer Jam.

  Go against Jigga your ass is dense

  I’m about a dollar, what the fuck is 50 Cents?

  Jay told Martinez that before his performance, backstage, he said to 50 that “I respect the record, yeah I liked that record, it was hot. But you know I gotta spank you dog.” “No doubt, do your thing,” 50 told Jay. “Then it was peace,” Jay says. “History.” Although they’ve traded barbs since, their minor conflict never threatened to bleed into the streets. WWE for certain.

  Jay referenced the tiff on 2009’s “A Star Is Born,” a song at once praising gifted newcomers and applauding those who left their mark on the rap game since Jay started, many of whom had fallen off, proving Jay’s staying power as he bragged,

  I am one of one

  Can’t you see just how long my run?

  Jay said of the newest rap phenom, “Drake’s up next, see what he do with it.” Jay realizes that rap is “a young man’s sport,” as he told New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet, that the “white hot space” of artistic creativity belongs to those who are hungry to exult in clever cadence and mesmerizing meter, a spot he occupied for a long spell. But Jay knows that there is something greater, something deeper than immense popularity: staying power that trumps musical trends. He is enormously wealthy and influential today because he has been for a long time a cultural giant who divines the zeitgeist through a microphone. Several decades later he remains in utter command of his craft.

  Yet, at times, he has been willing to acknowledge gifted heirs to the throne. His generosity, it must be noted, grew from supreme confidence. Jay’s unquenchable competitive fire is matched only by his unshakable belief that he holds the most revered spot in the pantheon of hip hop greats. If you’re the G.O.A.T., no need to be worried about the B.U.C.K., Best Undisputed Current King. Jay put in a stirring guest appearance on New Orleans–bred rapper Lil Wayne’s “Mr. Carter,” playing on both their surnames, on the younger rapper’s most celebrated album, 2008’s Tha Carter III. Lil Wayne was then in the white hot space of acclaim as the next greatest rapper alive, and Jay encouraged him to take, without apology, his rightful place at the top, which he had earned through electrifying elocution. The point, after all, is to be the best.

  I’m right here in my chair with my crown and my dear

  Queen B, as I share, mic time with my heir

  Young Carter, go farther, go further, go harder

  Is that not why we came? And if not, then why bother?

  Lil Wayne was a verbal savant whose eccentric intellection and idiosyncratic Weltanschauung burned brightly in mixtapes and albums, but then flamed out a bit, or at least got doused, in an extended battle with his record label.

  In the meantime, Wayne’s protégé Drake dominated the marketplace and proved to have epic cultural reach, in large measure because he reinvigorated the emotional register of rap. Jay’s relationship with Drake has been more complicated than that with Wayne. That is partly because Drake rose higher and has stayed longer than Wayne. It is also because Drake, despite calling Jay on Hot 97 in 2013 “an incredible mentor,” has taken louder shots at the throne than Wayne, mostly about Jay (and Kanye) falling off, or Jay’s increasing reference to art in his lyrics. “It’s like Hov can’t drop bars these days without at least four art references! I would love to collect at some point, but I think the whole rap/art world thing is getting kind of corny,” Drake told Rolling Stone in February 2014. Jay fired back a month later on rapper Jay Electronica’s remix to “We Made It”:

  Sorry Mrs. Drizzy for so much art talk

  Silly me rappin’ ’bout shit that I really bought

  While these rappers rap about guns they ain’t shot

  And a bunch of other silly shit that they ain’t got.

  Drake hit back a week later on the song “Draft Day”: “I’m focused on making records and gettin’ bigger / Just hits, no misses, that
’s for the married folk,” cleverly parrying Jay’s feminization of him, a classic dozens, and sexist, gesture in hip hop. Not to be outdone, Jay fired back on DJ Khaled’s “They Don’t Love You No More”:

  Niggas talking down on the crown

  Watch them niggas you ’round got you wound

  Haters wanna ball, let me tighten up my drawstring

  Wrong sport, boy, you know you as soft as a lacrosse team.

  Back and forth they went a few more times, never producing anything vicious, never anything that appeared to be more than sparring between two heavyweights, and along the way Jay even recorded two more songs with Drake, including one on Drake’s 2018 album, Scorpion.

  Jay retained his respect and admiration for Drake despite their benign conflicts. But Jay’s crack on Drake’s “softness” reflected a charge made since the start of the younger artist’s career. Ironically, Drake, a figure known for his emotional intensity—and for his fearlessness in embracing his “female” energy while avoiding the relentless misogyny that plagues the genre—has also drawn derision and scorn, including from female fans of hip hop. It’s no surprise that Drake has been tagged as “soft” by zealots of hardcore hip hop. The genre is famously combative and thrives on Oedipal conflicts and stylish fratricide. Drake “hate”—of course not all criticism is hate, but a lot of the grousing about Drake certainly qualifies—is stoked by flawed ideas of ghetto authenticity and manhood. The prisoners of racial claustrophobia see Drake as a goofy black man who isn’t “real” because he’s a biracial ex–teen television star from Toronto. But those who entertain a broader view of blackness welcome Drake as a fellow traveler.