-- Shaheem Reid, with additional reporting by Rahman Dukes, Elon D. Johnson and Jermaine Linton

Last month New York radio station Hot 97 set up a battle-of-the-beats showdown between Nasir "Nas" Jones and Shawn Carter, a.k.a. Jay-Z. In one corner was Jay, boasting of an affair with Nas' baby's mother and threatening to come to Queens to hem up his adversary over the musical backdrops of Nas' "Got Ur Self A ..." and Dr. Dre's "Bad Intentions" on a freestyle he calls "Super Ugly."

In the other corner was "Ether," Nas' reply to another Jay dis, called "Takeover." On "Ether," Nas interjects, among other things, innuendo about who is really behind Jigga's stabbing of Lance "Un" Rivera and what he calls a striking resemblance between Hova and "Good Times" character J.J. Evans.

Even before Nas' 52 to 48 percent victory, which was decided by listeners calling up and faxing in their choice for the most scathing barb record, it was apparent that the streets were leaning toward the former Mr. Escobar.

"How does it fit?" a smiling male fan recently asked Nas as Queensbridge's General tried to make his way to his car in midtown Manhattan.

Visibly perplexed, Nas hollered back, "How does what fit?"

"The crown, man," the fan answered, garnering chuckles from the rapper and his small entourage.

"Nah, I'm not trying to be the king."

Nas doesn't want the pressure.

"The animosity thing has always been about somebody wanting to be the king of New York," he explained later that day, referring to the origins of his and Jay's war of words. "Me, myself, I never wanted that crown. That crown's a big responsibility. Ask [former New York Mayor Rudolph] Giuliani."

And ask Jay-Z, who to many people's surprise seems to be the loser in the back-and-forth with Nas.

"Nas is wearing the street battle crown," said New York hip-hop DJ Funkmaster Flex. "And that crown gets decided on mixtapes and radio shows and night clubs, and Nas did definitely win that battle lyrically."

"It's just a plain simple attack," mixtape king DJ Kay Slay said. "I was a Mike Tyson fan. Buster Douglas got in the ring, [and] Buster Douglas beat Tyson. Buster Douglas was the champion. Right now, as it stands, it doesn't matter how much you've done and how much you've progressed, if you get into a battle and you lose, the next person is the reigning champ. At this present time, Nas is the champ.

"Anyone that disputes that, they are taking sides, because Nas has the last hottest record going at his nemesis. So Nas is on top right now. Until Jay-Z does a record better than 'Ether' it will remain that way."

"I don't consider it a loss," Jay's longtime business partner Damon Dash said. "It was a freestyle against a song. I feel if we're gonna battle we should keep it in the street. Don't put it on radio. It commercializes it. Then you have too many people judging it. ... When you're on top for a long period of time, they're probably gonna go with the person who hasn't been on top for a long period of time. 'Super Ugly' was just a freestyle that was meant for mixtapes, but it got put on such a bigger venue, it was considered a song."

The Roc-A-Fella mogul implied that Jay may be cooking up another comeback on either his upcoming Best of Both Worlds duet album with R. Kelly or the sequel to The Blueprint.

"If anybody knows Jay-Z, they know what he's gonna do," Dash said. "He'll never leave any questions unanswered. That's all I could say."

Jay himself hasn't had too much to say since "Super Ugly" hit the air. He declined to comment on the latest round of verbal jabs. In August, however, he was very talkative about the ensuing battle.

"Nas is definitely going to bring out the best of me," Jay said. "He's gonna put me at the top of my game. I hope I do the same for him. It's like playing basketball with a guy. It's just verbal sparring — no one's fighting, it's just records."

Hold your position. That was the unanimous mantra in the hip-hop community last year. It seemed like every MC had something to say about the other, whether it was direct name-calling or no-brainer indirect references. Beanie Sigel and his group State Property are still going at it with the LOX, DMX spit venom on an unknown foe, and Jay-Z and Mobb Deep went back and forth. But no beef stood out more than the rivalry between Nas and Jay-Z.

For years the two have been heralded as being the most on point with their lyrics, and when Notorious B.I.G. passed away in 1997, everyone placed them as the heirs to the throne ("Who's the best MCs? Biggie, Jay-Z and Nas," Jigga rhymed in 1997's "Where I'm From").

In 2001, Jay found himself on top of rap's hierarchy. His LP The Blueprint, which came on the heels of the double-platinum The Dynasty: Roc La Familia, became an instant classic when it was released on September 11.

Meanwhile, Nas was slowly finding himself being cast out of the kingdom. With the exception of "Oochie Wally," his QB Finest compilation, released in late 2000, received little acclaim, and he wasn't exactly doing too well before then. Nastradamaus (1999) was panned as his worst ever. He found himself falling out of favor with fans and critics and was equally unpopular with the Roc-A-Fella camp.

He had been dissed on Memphis Bleek's "My Mind Right" and by State Property on Funkmaster Flex's Hot 97 radio show. The final dirt was supposed to be kicked on his grave after Jay-Z boasted at Hot 97's Summer Jam concert in June, "Nas don't want it with Hov," previewing The Blueprint's "Takeover."

"It was a thing, you know, when Jay did the Summer Jam, everybody in the streets was like, 'I know you gonna get at him,' " Nas said. "So I got at him with the freestyle joint ['Stillmatic.']"

His retaliation, which came at the entire Roc-A-Fella camp and called Jay a homosexual, among other things, received some airplay on Hot 97 and then was taken off the playlist.

"Hot 97 backed off of it," Nas lamented. "I heard that Jay had somebody ... call the radio [station] ... so that my record wouldn't be played. Now, that I don't understand. If we come to fight, we come to fight. That's like calling the cops, you know.

"And so Hot 97, after my freestyle, they banned all dis records," he continued. "And I can't knock them, because they don't wanna be responsible for another crazy, violent loss in the hip-hop community. They had to do their job. But I felt like he had his shot at me, so I just needed a fair shot back."

By the time "Ether" hit the streets, Hot 97 had already lifted its ban (the Jadakiss-Beanie Sigel battle on wax had many listeners tuning in) and Nas had the perfect opportunity to re-establish himself.

"Oh, definitely, I was surprised," DJ Kay Slay said. "I'm not going to lie. I really thought that Jay-Z had finished Nas. It was really terrible because a lot of people really slept on Nas. Nas came back and shocked the world. It's a whole other look for him, and he's looking big right now."

It didn't seem like a big deal at the time — the lines "You wanna ball 'til you fall?/ I can help you with that/ You want beef?/ I could let a slug melt in your hat" on the title track of Nastradamus. Memphis Bleek took the lines to heart, though, saying that Nas was spewing venom at him (allegations the Queens rapper denies).

Still, that wasn't enough to raise Jay's ire. For years, people have inferred that he and Nas had been going at it with each other on wax, but since neither one said names or publicly denounced the other (with the exception of The Blueprint, Jay has found a way to give Nas props on every one of his albums, whether it be by sampling his voice or direct reference), it was all speculation. That is, until "Takeover," which Jay says was revenge for his foe's "reckless talk" on a California radio station.

"When I first heard it, it was like an eruption: 'Wow.' It was crazy," Nas' A&R man Rich Nice said. "It's always been brewing, it's always been in the air, you know. The jabs have been poked out there. But it was just crazy to hear a real joint that was like, 'This is for you.' It just opened my eyes. ... I ran to the phone and was like, 'I can't believe it.' "

"I spoke to Nas about 'Takeover,' " Funkmaster Flex said. "Personally I didn't think that Nas could come back, because the vibe I got from him when we were talking about it was that he didn't really want to deal with it all. I mean, I'm going to give my personal opinion as Flex from talking to him. I thought that Nas was shook. 'Ether' did surprise me and catch me very much off guard. It turned out that he had the balls to say, 'I'm going to make this record and make it happen.' "

As Jay pointed out during his recent "Unplugged" performance, the battle is the essence of hip-hop — from the Kool Moe Dee and Bizzy Bee battles of the 1970s to the verbal rumbles between KRS-One and MC Shan in the '80s and the sparring between Ice Cube and N.W.A in the '90s. And while it's supposed to stay at a street level, it can affect careers.

The Tupac and Biggie feud wasn't a conventional battle (although Pac put out several dis records, Big never responded), but both saw a leap in their record sales in the wake of their beef. Meanwhile, Canibus never recovered from losing his battle with LL Cool J. He currently doesn't have a record deal with a major label.

"Has it affected his career? Nah," Dash said about Jay's rivalry with Nas. "It's just a battle — it's not really that big."

Nas also concedes that he has bigger fish to fry. When asked what was more pressing when making Stillmatic — making a great album or one-upping Jay — Nas said, "It definitely wasn't the Jay-Z thing. The Jay-Z thing was ... I mean, I knew it was becoming bigger by the day. When he put out the 'Takeover' I didn't realize how many people would be into that. So, it was just a point of putting the record together, saying the right thing, you know. Addressing it right so I could let 'em know it's not happening. It is no takeover.