Nas and 50 Cent have linked up on the same track for the first time in over two decades — listen to it below.
Taken from Nas’ new album Magic 2, “Office Hours” finds the Queens, New York rap legends serving up poignant bars over a soulful, lock-step instrumental from Hit-Boy.
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“A lot of fillings in this game like I just left the dentist/ Without a numbing needle, I feed the people ’cause I love the people/ Two series at once, yeah, let’s run the sequel,” Nas raps, referencing his Magic and King’s Disease franchises.
50 then dusts off the mic and delivers a rare verse filled with deadly bars and those violent intentions that fans know and love him for.
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“Ratpack ’em, jump ’em, gun butt ’em, rub ’em/ He fight back, snuff ’em/ This shit ain’t ’bout nothin’/ You saw it but you ain’t seen shit/ This is Queens shit/ No ifs, ands or buts in between shit/ It’s 50, n-gga,” he spits.
Nas also tips his hat to G-Unit boss with bars such as: “Multi-tasker, I don’t need a O.G. pass/ See, my trajectory is everlasting like Curtis Jackson.”
Towards the end of the track, he jokes: “Ayo, Fif. I might put my next album out on G-Unit!” Listen to “Office Hours” below:
The last time fans saw both men on the same record was on 50 Cent’s 2002 mixtape Guess Who’s Back? on the tracks “Too Hot” and “Who U Rep With.”
Their early collaborative relationship soon turned sour, though, with the two rappers trading shots in the mid 2000s.
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50 Cent took aim at Nas, Fat Joe, and Jadakiss on “Piggy Bank,” while the “One Mic” lyricist responded with “Don’t Body Ya Self a.k.a. The MC Burial” that same year.
In a 2005 interview with Sway Calloway on ” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>MTV, 50 spoke briefly about his intention behind creating, “Piggy Bank.”
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“I didn’t diss anybody,” he said at the time. “I made factual statements. I hear everything. Every little thing. The things that they would probably think didn’t count because it didn’t do anything for their career. I still heard what you said.”
He added: “That’s me saying, ‘You know what? That’s for you doing that, and you gonna accept that. If you keep responding, I’ll keep going until you don’t exist no more.'”
The pair eventually buried the hatchet in 2014 by sharing the stage at Hot 97 Summer Jam.
Since then, 50 has spoken highly of Nas, and in a recent interview with XXL reflected on witnessing the Illmatic rapper’s intellect when they toured together back in the day.
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“He was ahead of us,” Fif said. “What he had, and I was looking at it going, ‘You gotta be careful’ because he was smarter than the music he was releasing.
“He was smarter than things he was saying on the records because what he said on the records matched how things felt in the environment not who he was actually [in his head]. We’d be on the tour bus, and he’d be reading books and stuff.”
