In 2001, Jay-Z took his beef with Nas to another level when he released the track “Takeover,” in which he insulted his capabilities to create quality music. Per Genius, the lyrics read, “That’s a one hot album every ten year average / And that’s so (lame).” He also ridiculed Nas’ rapping style, singing, “Switch up your flow, your s*** is garbage / What, you tryna kick knowledge?” He even sampled one of Nas’ tracks, and bragged about making it better. “I sampled your voice, you was using it wrong / You made it a hot line, I made it a hot song.”
Not one to back down, Nas responded with a diss track of his own, “Ether,” which was released in the same year. He challenged Jay-Z’s claims in the lines, rapping how he had dominated the industry first: “I got this, locked since ’91 / I am the truest, name a rapper that I ain’t influenced.” He even alluded to how Jay-Z supposedly copied his style, and ridiculed how the Roc Nation founder traded his principles for money.
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The two rappers dissed one another on subsequent tracks, but for his song “Supa Ugly,” Jay-Z apparently went so below the belt that his mother asked him to apologize. He told Hot 97 (via Hiphop DX), “Mom put in a call and said, ‘That went too far.’ And she’s never, ever called me about music. So I was like ‘Okay, okay, okay. I’ll go shut it down.”
