The Roots are not generally the types to be involved in beef. The Philly group have been working in the hip hop scene for two decades and have been able to steer clear of the feuds that many rappers end up engaging in. Black Thought revealed in a recent interview, however, that there was some bad blood between him and Queensbridge emcee, Nas, early on.
The rapper explained that the beef sparked from comments Nas made about The Roots' appearance in a Spike Lee film, in which they appeared in black face. “In some interview he made a comment about how wack it was for us to do the movie "Bamboozled" with Spike Lee and ‘how you gonna call yourself The Roots and Black Thought or something and you’re portraying a group called The Alabama Porch Monkeys in Spike Lee’s movie with the ball and chain and all,’” he said. “Nas was spazzing out on a lot of people during that point in time because he was losing his mom. He had actual beef during that time and this was just a comment he made about The Roots.”
Thought then spoke of his first time meeting Nasir. “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 he 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," the rapper revealed. "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."
Thought explained that he quickly realized the root of the issue lay elsewhere, and related to Nas' situation. “He told me he was going through it. He lost his mom. I totally relate to that, I lost my mom when I was 17. She’s a murder victim. Both my parents are murder victims, got killed in Philly.”
[via HHDX]