“I was brought out, and that was kind of the idea, you know — to bring the West Coast out,” Ras Kass explained. “So I stayed at State Street — at Jay’s house in downtown Brooklyn — so I came out for a summer and started recording with Jaz-O. […] I ended up going back to L.A. and just… time changed, you know what I’m saying?”

He went on: “I think I was picking the wrong production, to be honest, at the time. One time, me and Jay went to the club together. And I got too drunk — back then, I was drinking Hennessy — and I was like, yo, we might really get down.

“So I just kept drinking Hennessy [because I was nervous] and just waiting for the water to pop up, and then he got on the mic and rhymed, and killed it, and then he called me to the mic. And I was too drunk. I think I fumbled on that one, that n-gga is unforgiving. That was the one opportunity that, if I had gone back, would have changed everything.”