On August 6, Nas released King’s Disease II, the follow-up to the Grammy Award-winning original. The album’s 15 tracks included the album’s highlight, “Death Row East,” which saw the Queensbridge-bred superstar reminiscing about his spat with Tupac Shakur.
Nasir Jones uploaded two flashback photographs of himself and 2Pac on Instagram on Thursday (August 12), revealing that they were both taken on the night that inspired the song.
“The night of DEATH ROW EAST,” he wrote. “When you got a story real as mine you can’t leave nothin out. King’s Disease II Out Now. RIP KING 2PAC. Love To The Outlawz. @hitboy KD2.”
Nas raps about bumping with former Death Row Records CEO Suge Knight, what occurred when his brother Jungle bumped into 2Pac, and debunks a story concerning 2Pac’s 1994 Quad Studios shoot, saying, “There’s a myth that circulated I’d want to address/Pac was never set up by Stretch (Let it rest).”
In another part of the song, he raps about travelling to Las Vegas in 1996 to film the “Street Dreams” video and meet up with ‘Pac in an attempt to put an end to the East Coast/West Coast feud that was raging at the time. However, it was too late: 2Pac died on September 13, 1996.
“We didn’t talk, but he was still alive in the hospital,” he spits. “And it rained that day in Vegas. Rest In Power.”
Former Yo! MTV Raps co-host Ed Lover announces 2Pac’s death at the end of the song.
“This brother was good enough to stop his show,” he says. “And I want everybody in here, everybody stand up on their feet. First and foremost, please. At 7:03 p.m. New York time; 4:03 p.m. Las Vegas time, Tupac Shakur passed away, y’all. Give me a moment of silence.”
Nas’ unreleased diss track about 2Pac, titled “Real N-ggas,” emerged online in July. At the moment, he rapped, “From tube-socks in Timbs to blue rocks and Benz/Who got the ends, the type of n-gga 2Pac pretends/To all n-ggas who shine, guess who got revenge.”
It was preceded by a sample of Nas’ opening words from 1996’s “The Message,” the It Was Written tune that sparked the whole thing in the first place. But it turned out to be a mistake, and they were able to patch things up backstage at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1996.
“We had a great convo, man,” he told Beats 1 about the run-in. “He explained he thought I was dissing him on the song ‘The Message.’ He thought I was dissing him and I heard he was dissing me at clubs. [‘Pac was the] last person I was even thinking about when I wrote that record. I was just going at everybody. So, he thought that.
“He was like, ‘Yo Nas, we brothers, man. We not supposed to go through this’ and I was like, ‘That’s what I’m saying.’ We had a plan to squash it in Vegas, so I was out there when he was in the hospital and praying for him to come through. Rest in peace to ‘Pac.”
