Yeah, that very song.
One came up with the song idea, the beat, the hook/cadence, produced the record and had a damn near
full year to basically perfect it etc., and the other did not.

How are these not factors? It's not like they both went in the studio and had minutes to prepare. You trying to tell me you gave Jay months to sit on that beat and he wouldn't have come up with something slightly more impressive?

Are you an Em stan?

,
They were both neck and neck technically speaking around the time, but one had a legit advantage because they'd sat on the song for much longer and basically came up with it and dictated its direction. Are you disputing these as possible reasons for the gap in performance, and especially in the first verses

? Not like Jay came out looking completely washed either, as others have pointed out looking back shyt was a lot more on par than it was probably made out to be due to all that mania surrounding one of said artists at the time.