3 weeks ago
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Despite Kendrick Lamar and Drake offering some heated bars to each other earlier this year, RZA thinks that the pair can reconcile like Nas and JAY-Z did after their own feud.
Speaking to Complex, the Wu-Tang Clan leader was asked if he thought Kendrick and Drake could make up after having this year’s biggest rap battle.
Starting off his response with nuanced praise to both artists, he then addressed the question of reconciliation by bringing up another very well-known rap feud.
“Nas and JAY-Z, that's another good example, but it was tough. It took years for them to swallow that pill and then come and shake hands on it,” RZA said. “So hopefully it is not the same. Hopefully, this generation can take it as fun like how the beginning generation took it more for fun."
As most of us know, there was a time when the two NYC MCs had quite the beef with each other, which came to a high point with the release of Nas’ “Ether,” a 2001 diss track to JAY after he released “Takeover,” his own diss track toward Nas and the late Prodigy that dropped that same year.
Although the jabs at each other continued on for a few more years, the pair buried the hatchet in October 2005, when Nas appeared onstage during a Power 105.1 Power House concert in New Jersey that JAY was headlining.
“All that beef s**t is done, we had our fun. Let's get this money,” JAY declared, with the two performing “Dead Presidents” and “The World Is Yours.”
Sure, if Nas and JAY could come together and squash their beef, anything is possible. But considering the weight of some of what was said between Kendrick and Drake, as well as how ubiquitous one of those rapper’s songs became this year (and how it will go down in history as one of the most important diss tracks of all time), it’s hard to see it for the two MCs.
In his Complex interview, RZA also seemed to crown Kendrick as the winner.
“First of all, Kendrick is the natural lyricist, and Drake is a trained lyricist," he said. "You could train a fighter and he could be good, then you got those natural fighters who also then go through training. So that's a different chamber there. And while Drake got bars forever, Kendrick’s bars’ potency was stronger."
“The battle bar-for-bar was something that was just not good advising on Drake's camp in the sense of just getting in that fight without really taking some more training for that,” he added. "When Kendrick wrote the letter to his son or his daughter and to his [mother], Kendrick is going to come like that. Nas, Kendrick, Eminem, Raekwon, certain people are going to break your shit down to the element."
English (US) · 