Eminem turned down a collaboration with Nas on his 2012 album Life Is Good.
The Lose Yourself rapper, 53, allegedly didn’t want to feature on the track Daughters because it was a sensitive subject after releasing raw tracks like Mockingbird, When I’m Gone, and Hailie’s Song about his relationship with his own daughter, Hailie Jade, 29, who he is protective of.
In conversation with Joe Budden, Nas said: “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.’
“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.’”
Eminem has huge respect for his fellow rapper. They previously worked together on The Cross on Nas’ 2002 LP God’s Son, and years later, they reunited on 2021’s EPMD 2.
He loves Nas’ 1994 debut Illmatic so much, he spent an eye-watering $600 on a cassette copy of it.
Fan-boying over Nas in an interview with The New York Times, he said of the record: “I remember The Source gave ‘Illmatic’ five mics [a perfect score].
“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.”