Nas has revealed that Eminem turned down a collaboration on his 2012 album ‘Life is Good’.
The rapper shared the story in a new interview with Joe Budden, where he said that he attempted to feature Eminem on his single ‘Daughters’, but the offer was declined.
“Every record I do is not a battle. I remember I sent the song ‘Daughters’ to Eminem and at the time he had spent so much time speaking on daughters, he was like, ‘Thank you, but I told my daughter I’m not gonna do anymore songs directly about daughters at the moment because it’s a sensitive issue with all the music I’ve put out,’” he said, alluding to songs like ‘Mockingbird’ and ‘Hailie’s Song’.
“I think [his] message was like, ‘Thank you ’cause most people want to do songs where they’re battling me on a record. It was refreshing to get a record where you’re not coming for me.’”
The pair have only worked together twice, the first on ‘The Cross’, which Eminem produced for Nas’s 2002 album ‘God’s Son’.
Then, in 2021, they linked up for ‘EPMD 2’, from Nas and Hit-Boy‘s ‘King’s Disease II’.
Through the years, they’ve both spoken about their admiration for each other. Most recently, Eminem opened up about the impact that Nas’s 1994 debut ‘Illmatic’ had on him, in an interview with The New York Times.
“I remember The Source gave ‘Illmatic’ five mics [a perfect score],” he told the publication. “I already knew I liked Nas from ‘Live at the Barbeque’ with Main Source because his verse on that is one of the most classic verses in hip hop of all time. But I was like, ‘Five mics, though? Let me see what this is.’
“And when I put it on, ‘And be prosperous, whough we live dangerous / Cops could just arrest me/Blamin’ us, we’re held like hostages.’ He was going in and outside of the rhyme scheme, internal rhymes. That album had me in a slump, too. I know the album front to back.”
Back in 2021, he also revealed that he once spent $600 (£431) on a sealed cassette tape of ‘Illmatic’.
In 2020, Nas caught up with NME and told us what he thought about hip-hop today. “Today’s game doesn’t faze me; it’s different. I’m in a different place. I have a different job when it comes to making music,” he told us.
“It’s strange because I’m the same me, but I’m older. So there’s different ways of going about things and different things that I care about. But the clout thing stands out because it’s show business.”
