Head Honcho (EIC) over at Complex Noah Callahan-Bever has been putting some Hip-Hop journalism gold on his personal webspace as of late. And today the internets were blessed with some some real gems. Back in the golden days of rap mags when you would actually have to physically take your ass to the news stand to read features (or in my case my aunt’s magazine rack in her deli where I worked as a kid), NCB penned a XXL (’02) feature on Large Professor and got to the bottom of Jay’s infamous Nas diss line on “Takeover”:

“You scribbled in your notepad and created your life/I showed you your first tec on tour with Large Professor/(Me, that’s who!) Then I heard your album bout your tec on the dresser”

Some of you may already be aware of this story but in case you missed it, peep this excerpt:

Main Source soon set off on tour, along with the UMCs and Jaz. One particular night of that tour came up recently in the very public catfight between Jay-Z (then Jaz’s hypeman) and Nas (who rolled with Main Source). During a show in Washington D.C. the sound system cut out, forcing the artists to do the same. The angry crowd rushed the stage and chased the rappers back unto their tour bus.

“We were figuring we were gonna have to knuckle down,” explains LP of the incident, which Jay has used to attack Nas. “Jay came outta nowhere, reachin’ in his gym bag like, ‘Don’t even sweat these niggas. I got that.’ He didn’t show [Nas] the gun like, ‘I’m gonna shoot you,’ but we were all just like, ‘Whew!’”

(Read the full story here)