Before Tupac died Nas and him made peace after the MTV awards. Tupac said me and you are brothers, were never supposed to go at it but I heared you dissed me on one of your mixtapes. For instance both have been described as poetic, afrocentric themes and both made songs for women. Tupac “Keep Ya Head Up”, Nas: “Black Girl Lost” etc. It was people around at the time turning them against him – Tupac had thought he had been dissed by Nas. The story is told a little bit different by people:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_eTV744zqM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avONGkgtofY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCCBzQ-mM_w

When asked if It Was Written was influenced by Only Built For Cuban Linx…

No my point with that was… It was the otherway around, I was forced to avoid sounding like my influence due to other rappers and thats why I did “If I Ruled The World”, “Street Dreams” and work with Trackmasters was to get away from what I was already starting to rap. With Mobb Deep saying Escobar, calling each other names like that. Nobody was doing that. That was my thing so on my second album I´m watching all the arist coming up all of which are nice on the mic. You got Jay Z, members of Wu, Daz and Kurupt and im hearing everything. from my man Kurupt saying “Verbl assissin”. That was my thing at the time. I´m like wow with all due respect to my man Kurupt. I´m Nas Esco on the Mobb Deep shit and on my mixtapes I´m talking gangster shit. I´m starting to hear it in Biggies music and Wu music. So when the second album comes around it´s obvious that we all had collectively me, Rae, Jay, B.I.G, brought our ganster mentality to the rap game. so I feelt we all couldn´t do this at the same time. so my thing had to open all the cells in Atticica, send them to Africa. It had more of a global approach musically.

This is Kenny Loggins singing. It is sampled from “This Is It”.

Even though Tupacs and B.I.G is dead, we will get through it and prosper.

Living in the low-income Queensbridge projects where you have to wear a bullet proof vest when you walk down the street is bound to cause stress. And this stress contributes to Nas snapping into his villain persona.

In a interview with Sverigesradio he talked about the album and indirectly about the song:

Well Hip Hop Is Dead is definietly one the pieces that [laugh] that was like oh shit. It was a career risk. I was like what career? Risk? Well fuck it, to me this is hip hop music. You can tell by so many people, so many people in the south was upset i was talking about them. I kinda said wow, I wonder if southerners, you guys didnt create hip hop. It is in the west coast in new toyk, midewest. But i think that south was catching so much heat for being on top.

That they thought they were hip-hip period, I think thats were they got a ittle besides themselfs as far as that term hip hop is dead. They got confused, cause they were so hot, they felt that they were the only ones. So I had to be talking about them. No, im talking about the cribs, New York, dudes who were really church guys, but now putting on bandandas saying they were gangster, I´m talking about guys who had opporunties in the rap busniess by people who were rappers that came before them and now when they are stars because of this other rapper. They flip out on the rapper that helped them. That to me is the worst thing ever. I just saw it as one of the biggest moments of my career. To put out that record. Because to me it has done nothing but broading imagination of alot of rap artists. If I may be so bold to say so.

In a interview with Sverigesradio he talked about this song:

I´ve done with rnb sounds, but at that point when “I Made you look” came out it was very RNB. I feel like I made you look helped bring rap music back to the streets period at that time. I remeber the producer Salaam Remi laughing “wait til they hear this”

Everbody was doing rnb singles and stuff like that, it changed it for good, it neverwent back to rnb after that.

And that gave you the confident to do Hip Hop Is Dead?

Yeah, Yes sir.

“The realest shit I ever wrote” is a line on “Against All Odds” by Tupac where he disses Nas.

I’m hopin my true motherfuckers know
This be the realest shit I ever wrote
Against all odds, up in the studio, gettin blowed
To the truest shit I ever spoke

In the song Tupac namedropped and took shots at Nas:

This little nigga named Nas thinks he live like me
Talkin bout he left the hospital took five like me
You living fantasies, nigga I reject your deposit

And

God don’t like ugly, It Was Written
(ey yo Nas) Nas, your whole damn style is bitten
You heard My Melody, read about my life in the papers
All my run-ins with authorities, felonious capers
Now you wanna live my life, so what’s a Hausa Nas?
Niggas that don’t rhyme right, you’ve seen too many movies
Load em up against the wall, close his eyes
Since you lie you die, GOODBYE

In an interview with the the swedish radio station P3 at 15:20. Nas talks about how excited they were (his brother and a few others) hearing his name on his song that they went to the club and started fights with 5 different people out of excitement, emotion, over how good the music was and Tupac was dead and he couldn´t answer.