New York, NY – During his time on a recent episode of Drink Champs, Memphis Bleek described his part in the infamous Nas and JAY-Z beef and recalled feeling like he could take on Nas in the booth.
“I was on fire at that time! Feeling myself, nuts hangin’ in the hood,” he recalled.
Besides being JAY-Z’s protégé, Bleek explained what brought him into the beef in the first place.
“N*gga hit me like, ‘Yo, n*ggas dissed you! The whole hood talking about it,’” he remembered. “Nas said, ‘I’ll let a slug melt in your hat’ — or some silly shit. [But] he wasn’t talking about me. Come on! No, it wasn’t about me.”
Joining the fight, Bleek took aim at Nas with his 2000 single “My Mind Right,” with lyrics alluding to Nas’ 1996 It Was Written album.
“And only a few fit in, your lifestyle’s written/ So who you supposed to be, play your position,” he rapped.
At the time, Bleek recalled truly believing he could take on Nas, bar-for-bar. Unsurprisingly, this part of the story made the whole room erupt into laughter, with Bleek himself joining in.
“And in your mind, you thought you could take Nas?” Drink Champs Co-host N.O.R.E. tried to clarify.
“Yeah! What you mean!?” Bleek laughed.
Bleek also recalled JAY-Z stepping back in after Nas responded with “Stillmatic.”
“Then, when he shot back, that’s when Hov was like ‘Yo Bleek, chill, I got this,’” he said. “And I was like, ‘Alright big homie, hold it down!’”
However, Nas‘ “Ether” shook the Roc-A-Fella crew, Bleek reflected.
“It was like a body dropped,” he said.
Despite being one of the most notorious rap beefs in history, Bleek definitely enjoys laughing about it now.
See his full episode above.