Nas was never the type to get into a lot of beef. Outside the infamous Jay-Z feud in the early 2000s that spawned the historic “Takeover” and “Ether”, it was rare for him to go back and forth. Even when Cam’ron and the rest of Dipset invoked his family in different freestyles and mixtapes, he largely shrugged them off.
That’s what makes his random stray shot at Doja Cat all the more random. In 2020, Nas released “Ultra Black” from his Grammy Award-winning album with Hit-Boy, King’s Disease. There, he rapped, “Sometimes I’m over-black, even my clothes are black/Cash Money with the white tee and the soldier rag/We going ultra Black, unapologetically Black/The opposite of Doja Cat, Michael Blackson Black.”
This was in reference to Doja Cat finding herself in hot water after she was accused of engaging with racists in different chat rooms. Additionally, she released a song in 2015 titled “Dindu Nuffin”, a callous phrase used to blame victims of police brutality. In a since-deleted post on Instagram, she insisted that she never took part in the conversations personally.
“I’ve used public chat rooms to socialize since I was a child. I shouldn’t have been on some of those chat room sites, but I personally have never been involved in any racist conversations. I’m sorry to everyone that I offended,” she shared at the time.
Nas Throws a Random Stray Shot at Doja Cat in 2020
As for the Queens MC and his criticism, it was a mixed bag. Some people thought it was fine for him to diss her, while others referenced past abuse allegations with his ex-wife Kelis. But Doja largely didn’t bat an eye at it. In an interview with Fat Joe, she said she had no interest in engaging in a war of words with Nas. Instead, she was just glad she was on his radar at all.
Meanwhile, the New York legend insisted that it wasn’t meant to be a diss in the first place. In a pretty unconvincing argument, he told Power 105 he was just looking for the right words for his rhyme scheme.
“I was really just saying a rhyme that rhymed with ‘ultra Black,’” Nas said. “I didn’t even think of it, you know what I’m saying? It’s all love. It was just like ‘Michael Blackson Black.’ They’re bars. Just lines. We play with words, man.”
(Photo by Arnold Turner/Getty Images for BMI)
The post Why Nas Randomly Dissed One of the Biggest Pop Stars in the World in 2020 appeared first on VICE.
