fame: "Your ass went from Jaz to hangin' with Kane, to Irv to Big/ And, Eminem murdered you on your own shit." Not only does he criticize the usage of other rappers' influence for increased fame, he mentions that Eminem outshined him on his song, "Renegade". Finally, Nas insults Jay-Z's biting of Big's lyrics claiming that Jay-Z stole his rhyming skills off Biggie, "How much of Biggie's rhymes gonna come out your fat lips?". The intro of Ether starts with gunshots from Notorious B.I.G.'s "Who Shot Ya?", immediately followed by a screwed voice of 2Pac saying "Fuck Jay-Z", originally taken from the song "Fuck Friendz". In the outro of "Ether", Nas mocks the chorus of "Takeover", which Jay-Z raps "R-O-C, we runnin' this rap shit", Nas changes it to "R-O-C, get gunned up and clapped quick" and so on. The backing track of "Ether", produced by a then relatively unknown Ron Browz, found its way to Nas after Browz's manager, who worked at the Def Jam Recordings offices, bumped into Nas' travel agent and pleaded with her to give the production to Nas. Browz was unaware of how his production would be used until Nas invited him to the studio to play him the completed song for the first time. Browz had previously offered the production to Kyambo "Hip-Hop" Joshua, Jay-Z's A&R manager at the time, who turned it down. In an 2012 interview with hip-hop website ThisIs50, fellow rapper Large Professor claimed that an earlier version of "Ether" was produced by Swizz Beatz and featured even more offensive lyrics, including a line where Nas allegedly raps "It should've been you in that plane crash", a reference to the 2001 plane crash that caused the death of American singer Aaliyah, which occurred during the early stages of the Jay-Z–Nas feud. Large Professor expanded on this in a further interview with DJ Vlad in 2019, stating that the full lyric reads "Sorry Aaliyah / I’m sorry it was you in the plane crash / It should’ve been Jay... Dame Dash [Jay-Z's fellow Roc-A-Fella Records co-founder]." Release and aftermath On the day "Ether" was released, Jay-Z and Dame Dash visited a New York City club where the DJ started to play the song. Both men told the DJ not to do so, but he refused the request and played it anyway. Fellow rapper Ras Kass, also present in the club that night,