Biggie refused to respond to Tupac’s “Hit Em Up” diss track for this reason
Lil Cease of Junior M.A.F.I.A. spoke to Fatman Scoop about the infamous diss track. Here’s what he had to say.
In 1996, amid Tupac and Biggie’s beef, the “Dear Mama” emcee released the “Hit Em Up” diss track in which he vehemently expressed his hate for The Notorious B.I.G.
“First off, fuck your bitch and the click you claim,” Pac raps on the song. “Westside when we ride come equipped with game/You claim to be a player, but I fucked your wife/We bust on Bad Boy niggaz fucked for life/Plus Puffy tryin’ ta see me weak hearts I rip/Biggie Smalls and Junior M.A.F.I.A. Some mark-ass bitches.”
Understandably, Big’s group took issue with the jabs and wanted to counter back, but according to Lil Cease, the “Juicy” rapper impeded on their plans.
“At the very beginning, Big didn’t rush in and make a diss track. He was like, ‘Nah,’” he told Fatman Scoop during an Instagram Live session. “He told everybody, ‘If you make a record, I’m not fuckin’ with you. Don’t call me, don’t fuck with me. If you respond to anything, you will be cut off.’”
“So none of us could do it — Junior M.A.F.I.A. was ready to respond, Kim was ready to respond. But Big was like, ‘Nah, we not doing that,’” Cease continued before revealing his belief that Big really wanted to bury the hatchet with the California rapper. “I just think Big was tryin’ to leave it open, so he could really just, ‘Yo, what’s up dawg? Like come on nigga, you talkin’ to me. What’s up?’”
Later that year, Pac’s demise came when he was shot and killed at a Las Vegas intersection. Snoop Dogg previously told Scoop that he could tell Big was hurt “behind Tupac being dead,” and it’s partially because the rappers never got the chance to make amends.
“They never got in touch with each other, he never ran into him,” Cease continued. “They never had those type of situations where that opportunity could present itself. I think that’s why Big never really spoke on it, never really made records about it because I always felt like he knew there was room to fix it — and he wanted to fix it. I know that was his sign he wanted to fix it by not escalating it.”