Jay Z's producer, DJ Clark Kent, revealed in a new interview that the rapper recorded a Tupac diss track that was never released.
The track was scheduled to come out around the time that Tupac Shakur was assassinated in a drive-by shooting. Out of respect for the "California Love" rapper, the song was never released, according to Billboard.
"It never came out, out of respect for the fact that he died," Kent said in the interview. "Jay did a record going at Pac, but right as it was about to come out, son died. We performed it, though, at the Apollo. The chip on Jay's shoulder is so crazy that he had to perform it."
Revolt reported that Jay Z confirmed this performance himself in a 2006 interview with XXL. No video footage exists.
"They usually tape the Apollo shows, but they just stopped taping for some reason," he said of the 1996 performance. "We tried to find the tape. It's 2,000 people that know about it. I did two verses."
Kent added, "To me, it probably was one of the hardest diss records I've ever heard."
Listen to DJ Clark Kent's interview on A Waste of Time with ItsTheReal below. The Jay Z/Tupac conversation starts around the 54 minute mark.
Image via Micelotta/MPI/INFevents.com