Jay-Z shares update on friendship with Nas after they ended rivalry

Jay-Z has shared an update on his friendship with fellow rapper Nas after the pair ended their rivalry.

Per PEOPLE, Jay-Z, 56, touched on his relationship with Nas, 53, on the seventh episode of the JAŸ-Z in 8 docuseries. That episode was released on Friday, October 8. Jay-Z spoke about him and Nas being set as rivals when they shot into the music industry in the 1990s.

Though the Dead Presidents rapper highlighted that their beef “fizzled out at the end,” he emphasized that it “was just like more of a competition.”

“From my lens. I came out with Reasonable Doubt and [Steve] Stoute was in both our ear, whose a friend of both ours. He’s a competitive chap that Stout. Nas comes out in ‘94. I come out in ‘96,” Jay-Z said, adding that he and Nas “had so much respect for one another.”

“It got personal, but it wasn’t really personal,” he explained.

But Jay-Z said he took issue with Nas after he failed to attend a studio appointment for them to work on a collaboration.

“He just never showed up to the studio. And I’m not really a guy like that, you just say you coming and don’t come. Can’t count on him, not gonna ask him ever again. That was that, never asking him again. But not a problem, we don’t have a problem,” he stated.

A “cold war” between Jay-Z and Nas ensued after the latter released his sophomore album, with the 56-year-old saying he felt Nas called him out on that project.

“It just escalated to a point where it was like a full-on battle. But no violence. Then we just moved on. And now we’re really good friends,” Jay-Z stated, per PEOPLE.

Jay-Z, however, acknowledged that their beef brought the best out of both of them.

“To his credit, he really rose to the occasion,” he said about Nas. “I’ll say that. I don’t know how interested he was in being a recording artist at that time. He would make an album or something and he was just gone, would disappear. And after that, he was making music on a regular basis.”

Jay-Z added: “I’m not saying I was the cause of it, but you’re asking the question, I’m sure it lit a fire under him. For me, I was rolling at the time. This is Blueprint, Vol. 2 era, I was selling five, six million records, going on tour, I was unstoppable. It definitely kept me sharp in that space.”