He would have been a lot more famous and sell a lot more records. Might have been as known as Jay Z. This is a reason Nas and his former manager Steve Stout went seperate ways. Stout wanted to get more money, do more deals and more commercially appealing music. Steve however has claimed that he isn´t dissapointed in Nas because he´s a “real” artists, only in it for the music and Nas have so much history.

At 28:30
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EECTPi8Zj9g

Right before his beef with Jay-Z really erupted, Nas dropped this verse with a couple subliminals aimed at the Roc-A-Fella camp.

#Nas can’t trust anyone!

Not his bitch, not his gun which might jam up when he’s trying to shoot.

This a subliminal shot at his baby mama/Jay Z who had an affair. This would later escolate into perhaps the most well known feud in Hip Hop over who is King of NY.

The second line could be reference to his classic “Ny State Of Mind” where a famous line goes:

Gave another squeeze, heard it click, “yo, my shit is stuck”
Try to cock it, it wouldn’t shoot, now I’m in danger
Finally pulled it back and saw 3 bullets caught up in the chamber

CNN = Capone N-Noreaga, Nas and CNN is the best in the busniess.

The album this song is featured on the duos second LP.

No one is safe near Nas and his goons, they are crazy blowing away faces with their .44 Magnum.

#Make It Rain!

Got so much money he can do whatever he wants with it, even throw it around. Possible ties with the next line that Jay Z stole the concept of having the projects in the background of his video, for instance Where I´m From which he mentions here.

Flip it as in making a profit out of something, in this case drugs, ties to the next line about being the true thugs.

Even though he thinks and daydream about getting out of this life. He knows he will always be the same hustler and are bound to clash with others over either territory or customers.

Double Entendre…

• When you get money (stacks) you have to count (do the math) it, but you have to do it.
• We get money so figure out what that leads to or how they got the money… probably beating the shit out of the others like in the next line.

Prodigy explained in an interview with Planetill how Yambo and Killa Black, Havoc´s brother died:

He [Killa Black] wasn’t that type of person to do something like that. He was a wild boy, he was busting his guns and all that, but he wasn’t the type of nigga to kill himself so that hit niggas hard and it was confusing and ‘til this day it affects all us and it’s just hard to understand why certain things happen in life. That’s how life is man, it’s real crazy. And right after Killa [B], my man Yammy got killed out of town. He was doing some work out of town and somebody ran up behind him with a bat and hit him in the head with a bat and killed him. Yammy was one of the strongest niggas that I knew.

That was our man; he gave us the name Infamous ‘cause that was his name. He had it tatted on his arm, “Infamous Yambo.” So when Yammy got killed that fucked us up man ‘cause he would come to every show; that was like our strength and even Twin that was our strength that was the wild twin that died. The twins got different personalities, Scarface he was the wild one like anything that go down, before me and Hav even notice it they on it; it’s not going down like that. So we lost a lot of strength, Killa, Yammy, Scarface. It was devastating to ni***

Ill Will was Nas best friend and DJ who died getting shot. You can read more about it here.