Black Thought Talks Issues w/ Nas + Meeting ?uestlove on The Combat Jack Show
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:
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.
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.
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
