Brooklyn's George Westinghouse Career and Technical Education High School produced three of the most decorated rappers of all time: Notorious B.I.G., Jay Z, and Busta Rhymes. They all attended around the same time -- Busta and Biggie were born a day apart and Jay was two and half years older.
During his appearance on Jimmy Kimmel last night, Jay Z mentioned that he rap battled Busta one day in the lunch room. When Kimmel asked who won, Jay Z modestly shrugged and mouthed the word, "me."
Busta actually spoke on this a few years ago on MTV, and gave a more in-depth recap than Jay of how it went down. Here's what he said:
“One day, somebody came up to me and was like, ’Yo, Hov is in the cafeteria.' They weren’t calling him Hov at the time; they were calling him Jay. ’Do you want to step to him on some rhyme sh–?’ So I go. At the time, when we were rhyming, it was speed rap. That was the thing to do. I knew how to freak it, and he knew how to freak it. And at the time, he was so ill, ’cause of the people he was with at the time, Jaz-O and them, it was their thing [that style]. He kind of got the best of the situation. I got to give it up. He was so ill and his arsenal was so long that he had more than what I did. I spit my one rap, and my tank was empty real fast. He came with two or three after that, and I was like, ’Here we go.’ But I gave it my best.”
“That was probably the fist time that I lost a battle that mattered. Jay-Z] always exemplified greatness as an MC. He was a scientist with it."