Though Dame Dash and Jay-Z go way back, Dame still thinks Nas bodied Hov with his diss record “Ether.”
Dame looked back on the rappers' back-and-forth diss tracks in a new episode of the That’s Fucked Up Podcast. When asked about the feud, Dame said that Jay-Z’s response to “Ether” was “terrible,” at around the 3:05-minute mark.
He explained that Hov delivered the first blow with the song “Takeover,” performing it at Summer Jam in 2001. “That was kind of hard,” Dame added. “But then when [Nas] came with the ‘Ether,’ I was kinda hype because he said my name. … But the response, I wasn’t there for the response. I landed; Irv Gotti fucked that one up. Every time Irv got in our business, he fucked shit up.”
One of the hosts then asked if Nas won the battle, and Dame responded, “Yeah. … He threw that 'Ether' on them. He had them apologizing. The rap that [Jay-Z] did was wack. When I heard it, I was pissed. … I was coming from doing a Rocawear ad, landed in Arizona, and I’m listening to this shit on the radio like, ‘What the fuck is this?’ … I’m like, ‘What the fuck happened?’ And they in there high-fiving—it’s like what y’all high-fiving for? This shit is whack. This n***a talking about other n***a business and shit, we don’t do that."
Dame said he then called Gotti and told him, “‘Don’t ever get in my business again, bro. Like what you doing? You’re not about war.’ You see how his wars go with rap. He doesn’t win ‘em. He’s not a general like that. So I was like, ‘Stay out my business.’”
Following "Ether," which appeared on Nas' 2001 album, Stillmatic, Hov dropped off two diss records: "People Talkin'" and "Supa Ugly." The songs were so nasty that they reportedly prompted Jay’s mother to call him and ask him to say sorry to Nas. Hov apparently did so the following day, appearing on Hot 97 to say, “I apologize.” He added, "I felt like I didn't think about women's feelings or [Nas' former girlfriend's] feelings, or even my mom."
Dame has commented on Hov and Nas’ beef before. “Trust me we didn’t like it,” he reportedly told BET in 2014. “We did not like it over there. I couldn’t speak to Jay for like two weeks. I had to leave.”
He continued, “We were undefeated until then, so I got to give [Nas] props as a warrior. … That n***a went up against Jay-Z when Jay-Z was at the height. So [Nas is] a battle rap god.”
