Jay-Z and Nas’ earliest collaboration has finally gotten an official release on the reissue of — seriously — Shaquille O’Neal’s 1996 album, You Can’t Stop the Reign.
The song is called “No Love Lost,” and it features Shaq alongside Jay, Nas, and fellow New York City MC Lord Tariq. But when the track was first released in the mid-90s, only Jay-Z and Lord Tariq appeared alongside the NBA star. Nas had written and recorded a verse for the song, but as O’Neal explained during a 2022 appearance on Drink Champs, “You know how it is with clearances and publishing and all that… People didn’t clear it.”
Despite never getting an official release, the version of the song with Jay, Nas, and Lord Tariq eventually (and perhaps inevitably) leaked. One version appeared on a 1996 DJ Clue mixtape called The Fall, Pt. 1, and by the early 2000s, the track was all over Mp3 file-sharing platforms like Limewire and Napster, where it was often known as “Analyze This.” By that point, too, the song had taken on extra significance in the thick of the infamous Jay-Z/Nas feud.
In his Drink Champs interview, O’Neal suggested there was no love lost (sorry) over the original Nas version getting scrapped because of clearance issues. “I didn’t take it personal,” Shaq said. “Because again, me being in the studio with Nas? I’m happy! I get to call my boy and be like, ‘Hey, come over, Nas over.’ I get to call my boy and say, ‘Hey, Jay in here.’ I get to call my boy and say, ‘Yo Biggie at the house, we bout to jump on the Sea-Doos.’ That’s what it’s all about.”
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(To further stress his point, O’Neal offered a blunt assessment of the financial benefits — or lack thereof — of his dalliances in the music industry. “I went platinum,” he quipped, “they showed me the check, and I was like, ‘This some bullshit!’ Then I learned a valuable word: ‘Recoup.’”)
As for Jay-Z and Nas, the two officially buried the hatchet in the mid-2000s and have since appeared on several tracks together. The first, “Black Republican,” dropped in 2006 on Nas’ Hip Hop Is Dead, while one year later, they appeared together on “Success” from Jay’s American Gangster. Most recently, in 2021, they appeared on “Sorry Not Sorry” from DJ Khaled’s Khaled Khaled album.
