The time Nas stopped his concert to announce Tupac Shakur’s death
Nas and 2Pac, following a short feud, managed to patch things up in 1996—but their restored relationship didn’t have much time to flourish. Pac was killed shortly after, and Nas was forced to pause a gig he was doing so that the crowd could be informed of the news.
After Nas released his second album, It Was Written, during the summer of ’96, things had gotten tense between him and Tupac. This was around the height of the East-West feud, so maybe it was always likely that he and Pac, leading representatives of their respective coasts, would come to blows. But, ultimately, their beef was predicated on a misunderstanding.
Tupac felt that one of the songs on It Was Written, ‘The Message,’ contained a diss against him, and, in turn, Nas then heard that Pac had been dissing him during gigs. This was a period in which these slinging matches had the potential to spiral out of control, as, ultimately, did happen between Pac and The Notorious BIG. The same thing might easily have happened between Nas and Pac, but, thankfully, they managed to address their issues before things got out of hand.
Speaking with Steve Stoute for an interview in 2012, Nas revealed that he and Pac had met at the 1996 MTV Video Music Awards, where they spoke about their dispute. Pac apparently told Nas, “Me and you are never supposed to go at it. It was just that things got misconstrued. Me and you are brothers. Me and you are never supposed to go at it, but I heard you was dissing me on mixtapes.” Nas responded by saying that he’d gotten word that Pac was planning to diss him on his as-yet unreleased Makaveli album.
It seems that both men had gotten it into their heads that the other was attacking them, but neither especially wanted their feud to carry on. Nas explained, “We both knew we were supposed to continue that conversation and probably just squash the whole thing. I was scheduled to meet him in Vegas.”
Unfortunately, that meeting never happened. Tupac was shot in Vegas on September 7, 1996. He was taken to hospital and remained on life support for six days. But on September 13 he died, aged 25.
Nas had managed to at least ease the tension between himself and Tupac before it was too late. They had squashed their beef before Pac died, but they had nonetheless managed to meet again soon to sort things out further. That never got to happen.
On the day that Pac died, Nas was doing a gig in New York. During the set, he paused the performance to allow the radio host Ed Lover to take to the stage to address the audience about the tragedy that had just occurred.
“This brother was good enough to stop his show,” Lover said. “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 stood silently behind Lover, letting him get the message across to the audience. Everyone observed a moment of silence, before Nas had the unenviable task of starting the gig up once again. It was one of hip-hop’s darkest days.