Yeah, that was a weird situation.
I never understood why he got mad at the label. Def Jam was paying for mad beats that Nas was using with producers, but just letting the songs sit. There was no real direction for them. So the label felt he was just recording for the sake of it but it was costing them mad bread. Dude recorded enough music to put out a few albums, but was just sitting on the music. Then he announced an album was coming without telling Def Jam he was gonna do that. So now people were thinking the label was holding him back, when the truth was, there were no real talks to even put anything out at that time.
He killed his own budget by having producers invoice the label for all that music, without the label being in on what he was doing with any of it. Bro had some of the most expensive producers selling him beats, and then going to Def Jam asking for their money. Some of those tracks were from the Life Is Good sessions too. That was like 9-10 years of random sh*t Nas was recording, with no real plan, but expected Def Jam to pay for it. So the label ended up having the same issues with him that Columbia did.
