I have written a lot about Jay Z and Nas and their feud, and with the advent of Jay-Z’s latest song which isn’t on MCHG in ‘Dead Presidents 3’, I thought I would write a little about the history of the track ‘Dead Presidents’ which is a term referring to money.
Before Jay Z changed the landscape of rap music with his seminal Reasonable Doubt, Shawn ‘Jay Z’ Carter released Dead Presidents, which can be heard below.The track is regarded as one of the best rap songs of all time but was merely a promotional record before the release of Reasonable Doubt.
On Reasonable Doubt, Jay Z wanted to include ‘Dead Presidents’ with fans voicing their mass appreciation of the track, but he felt that it would be cheating by just putting on the same track that he released months prior, so instead he keep the beat and the chorus and changed the verses, calling it ‘Dead Presidents II‘ which can be heard below.
What is interesting about Dead Presidents I and II is the use of the sample in the chrous which is clearly Nas from the track ‘The World Is Yours’ which can be heard below from Nas’s classic ‘Illmatic’. All of this pre-dated the Nas vs Jay Z beef but would become relevant with Jay Z’s diss track ‘The Takeover’.
Nas was invited by Jay Z to come and re-rap the ‘Dead fucking Presidents to represent me’ for Dead Presidents II, but declined and this is what many state started the feud. Just before ‘The Takeover’ Nas released a promotional freestyle for Stillmatic which dissed Jay Z involving the rhyme ‘You show off, I count dough off when you sample my voice’ in reference to the royalties Nas receives off the ‘Dead Presidents II’ sales.
Jay Z responded to Nas’s freestyle with ‘The Takeover’ the third best diss song ever made, behind ‘Hit em up’ by 2pac and Ether by Nas, but more on that in a bit. Jigga’s rap included the line ‘So yeah, I sampled your voice; you was usin’ it wrong: you made it a hot line, I made it a hot song’ in direct reference to Nas line in his Stillmatic freestyle, it can be heard below.
The diss track happened, and Nas ignored it for a while, he wasn’t going to make a rebuttal, until his brother interjected and told him that people on the streets of New York were saying that Nas career would be finished if he didn’t respond, so Nas went in to the studio and what followed was one of the most brutal diss tracks of all time in Ether which involved some classic lines such as ‘Gay-Z and Cockafella Records wanted beef’ and ‘First Bigge’s your man, Then you got the nerve to say that you better than Big, Dick suckin’ lips’ and also ‘What you think, you getting girls now cause of your looks’.
However following the beef, Nas and Jay Z have made up with Nas briefly joining Def Jam a record label that Jay Z has a lot of say in. The two came together during Jay Z’s ‘I Declare War’ concert and performed ‘Dead Presidents II’ and officially ending the feud, the video is a milestone in rap music and is a must see. A fan recorded video is below, and it is brilliant especially when Jay Z says ‘Come on Esco’. and that concludes the long history of one song ‘Dead Presidents’
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