related: The Story of DJ Kay Slay & Alpo Martinez Creating the Biggest Mixtape in the History of New York City
We keep traveling back to 2001 after the infamous Jay-Z Summer Jam 2001 performance video leaked a few weeks back. That event was held exactly 21 years ago in May of the same year, as Jay-Z made an official challenge to Nasir Jones for the right to call themselves the King of New York.
Now, while those two were fighting over the crown, the real winner of the entire situation was DJ Kay Slay. In previous years, both Escobar and the Jiggaman had thrown shade at each other through several guest appearances. However, Jay made it evident that he was up for the challenge, making a response to Esco’s “Come Get Me” with his “Come & Get Me.” Following Summer Jam, Nas was ready for the rap battle and issued his Stillmatic freestyle.
This song was soon blacklisted from Hot 97 and saw minimal attention. So, you had to be in the streets or Napster to really come across this song like that. Now, when Jay-Z performed The Takeover at Summer Jam, the final song featured a bonus verse that wasn’t originally heard during his listening sessions.
Shockingly, Jay and Nas had a meeting just months before to influence others not to follow their path, after witnessing friends 2pac and Biggie just passing. Unfortunately, Jigga didn’t keep his word and knew how big the Blueprint would be if he had controversy surrounding it.
This led to him feeling like he won the rap championship, with no competitors in sight. However, Nas waited all the way until December 4th to respond back with Ether, which was also the birthday of Jay-Z. Before the song was premiered, many felt DJ Clue would be getting the response, since the two are affiliates from Queens.
As expected, Nas felt DJ Clue’s business relationship with Jay and being a member of the Roc-a-Fella team was a conflict of interest he didn’t want to chance. This led to him reaching out to DJ Kay Slay, who was bubbling in the streets after his Alpo Martinez interview mixtape to debut the song.
With Kay Slay premiering the song on his mixtape, Funk Flex reached out to him and helped him get the job at Hot 97 for exposure. For that move by Flex, DJ Kay Slay always honored him any chance he got. So, the talk of the town was Takeover vs. Ether, but the masses outside of New York didn’t know about DJ Kay Slay until this happened.
That led to Slay reaching out to artists from the South, midwest and west coast to help them through his platforms for the culture of hip-hop. Take a look at classic media footage below.
Nas on funk flex after debuting “ether”
jay-z reacting to nas dropping ‘ether’ on his birthday
Skip to 1:07:00 for Kay Slay revealing jay called him on New Years Eve yelling
nas performing ehter live with dj kay slay
Nas ‘Stillmatic’ Freestyle & Jay-z Diss that was blackballed
jay-z original ‘Mind right’ freestyle dissing nas that started it
jay-z ‘super ugly’ response to ‘ether’
Nas – Come Get Me
Jay-Z – Come & Get Me
root of the issues, lowkey