In 2001 Nas and Jay-Z where at the height of their famous feud - perhaps the last interesting hip-hop beef - and each released an album to receive the rare 5 mics review in The Source. The only emcee to have both artists as featured guests on his album was Scarface for his incredible "The Fix" LP, which incidentally also received 5 mics. "In Between Us" is one of my favorite joints on that album as both Nas and Scarface turns in absolute monster performances.. However, reading 'Face's autobiography (an excellent read) he revealed that Nas originally submitted a different verse for the song - one in which 'Face felt he had some thinly veiled disses aimed towards Jigga which led to him asking Nas to submit a different verse. So yesterday I stumbled across this little gem that you hear above. It's been out for years but since I'm not a big fan of blend mixtapes and the like I never checked it out. This appeared on Mick Boogie and Joey Fingaz "God's Gift" mix but you'll hear a different Nas verse that was obviously written in 2001 as parts of the lyrics would be re-used for "One Never Knows" and "Ether", respectively. My best guess is that this is the original verse that Nas submitted for "The Fix" album and as such it's pretty damn crazy to hear this... You can cut it off after the first verse and hook though as there's no need to hear Jay-Z strangely blended into this in my opinion.
Puffy had them both on his 2nd album Forever FYI.
ReplyDeletethanks.. that was before the beef really took hold though, i was impressed by the fact that he had them on the same year around the time of "Ether" and "Takeover"
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