The hip-hop world can get contentious, as it was for Jay-Z in the ’90s. After Tupac’s release from prison and signing to Death Row Records, the rapper went after Jay-Z. Now Irv Gotti has explained when and why that feud began.
Guesting on Fat Joe’s The Joprah Show, Gotti was talking about Jay’s involvement in Notorious B.I.G.’s “Brooklyn’s Finest,” naming the track as the reason why Tupac developed an animosity towards Jay-Z: “That’s why ‘Pac was sh*tting on Jay, because of ‘Brooklyn’s Finest.’ […] Jay’s on the record with him, so now he’s like, ‘F*ck you, ain’t no n**** like me, f*ck Jay-Z,’ and he starts bombing on Jay.”
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This mirrors what Napoleon, a member of Tupac’s Outlawz group, said in an interview earlier this year: “Biggie was on a Jay-Z album where Biggie was like, ‘If Faith [Evans] had twins she would have two ‘Pacs,’ get it, remember that? Like ‘Tu Pacs.’ So he was taking shots at ‘Pac on Jay-Z’s album. So, ‘Pac looking at it like, ‘I don’t give a heck, man. If you letting this dude on your album take shots at me, your my enemy now.'”
As for Jay, he didn’t just sit back and take it. In 2015, Jay-Z collaborator DJ Clark Kent confirmed the existence of a Tupac diss track from Jay, which was never released out of respect for Tupac’s death. Kent said, “It never came out, out of respect for the fact that he died. Jay did a record going at Pac, but right as it was about to come out, son died. We performed it, though, at the Apollo — the chip on Jay’s shoulder is so crazy that he had to perform it.”
