Providing listeners with a new platform to get their fill of all things beef, behind-the-scenes and other types of hip-hop head gossip, Complex TV has taken the popular Combat Jack Show and turned it into a video series for their channel, and The Roots/Okayplayer's own Black Thought performed guest duties for the debut episode.
To cut to the chase, the generally mild-mannered (but beastly on the mic) frontman of The Legendary spoke to Combat Jack and his co-hosts about that one time he and Nas almost went to blows over a comment, but decided to handle it like adults instead:
Nas got in some interview and he made a comment about how wack it was for us to do the movie, Bamboozled, with Spike Lee, and how you gon’ call yourself The Roots and Black Thought and you’re portraying a group called The Alabama Porch Monkeys?I hadn’t really interacted with him at all up until that point. And then there was a show one night with Talib Kweli, and I think Kweli invited Nas and he invited me, and we were all there in the building together. I had a chance to meet Nas, and he explained to me that it wasn’t coming from a personal place, and he basically apologized.
I was ready for whatever. Yeah, I was gonna take Nas that night. When I heard he was gonna be there, I was like, “Should I just slap the shit outta Nas?”… But before any of that, he defused it, on some real, bigger man shit.
What Thought neglects to mention here was Nas' own motivation for the comment, well-remembered by some of us in-house here at Okayplayer--apparently Nasir caught feelings when The Roots not only backed Jay-Z on his Unplugged special during the time when there was still a lot of ether--literally--between Nas and Jay but even played a medley of Nas beats including "Oochie Wallie" and "NY State Of Mind" underneath a segment of Hov's performance dissing Nas, the kind of musical jokes only a band like The Roots can pull off. Their role in Bamboozled was apparently his first opportunity to slap back at the crew and the rest is history--just a little 'behind the scenes' information on the beef from the proud vegetarians here at OKP.
Although we're sure a lyrical feud between Nas and Thought would have resulted in some of the best battle verses the game has ever seen/heard, we're glad the two were able to settle things as a matter of differing opinions like grown-ass men. The brief interview also finds Tariq talking about his first impressions of a young ?uestlove, and the experiences of losing his parents to gun violence as a young man in Philly. Watch the full interview below and stay tuned for more episodes of The Combat Jack show on CTV.
shouts to CTV
