Damon Dash claimed that the beef between Jay-Z and Nas was never close to spilling over into violence, despite many fans thinking otherwise.
In a conversation with the Moguls in the Making podcast, Dame reflected on the battle between Drake and Kendrick Lamar and how hip-hop warfare is different now than it was back in the day. According to Dame, rap controls more of pop culture, and the internet playing a big role made Drizzy and K.Dot's feud more entertaining.
Dame added that he's never seen two rappers go at each other as hard as Drake and Kendrick did this year, declaring it the biggest hip-hop beef ever. Due to how vicious Drake and Kendrick got with each other, many hoped the beef wouldn't result in violence, as fans have seen in the past.
One of the show hosts asked Dame if the fear of violence in the beef between Jay and Nas made it more legendary, as those two were also trading extremely disrespectful shots. According to Dame, that wasn't the case.
"There was no fear of us getting hurt when it came to Nas, not at all—or anybody else we were battling," said 53-year-old Dame near the 1:06:45 mark below. "I'm telling you right now that there was no fear of any violence when it came to that. There was no fear when it came to us of any battle that we had. When it came to violence, we were never worried about that."
The beef between Jay-Z and Nas featured several subliminal jabs and two iconic diss tracks, "Takeover" and "Ether," which saw both MCs go for the jugular. Things got to the point where Nas wanted to hang a Jay-Z doll with a noose onstage at Hot 97's Summer Jam, while Jay's mom forced her son to apologize for the scathing diss track "Super Ugly."
Jay wasn't the only Roc-A-Fella artist to go to war with another MC. Beanie Sigel was engaged in a volatile beef with Jadakiss in the early 2000s that many also believed could have ended in violence, given the hate both men were spewing at each other.
