Wrong again. How old were you in 2001?
Old enough to remember that Nas dropped a weak album in Nastradamus, but still had some of the biggest features of his career, took his normal almost two years between albums. In the midst of that, what was a subliminal battle became direct when Jay called him out. I loved Nas's first response in "Stillmatic Freestyle" and it sounded like a return to form. When "Takeover" dropped in full, a lot of people really wrote Nas off. And that would've been a death blow to a lesser MC.
Nas responded with "Ether" months later. Legendary diss, but it was songs like "One Mic", "2nd Childhood", "What Goes Around", "Rewind", and "You're Da Man" that really marked a revival and made fans of people who may have been casual fans of Nas before.