We Finally Know Who Touches Nas in Famous GIF of Him Performing With The Notorious B.I.G.

If you're an avid hip-hop head, then there's a good chance that you've heard about, or seen the footage of, Nas performing on stage with The Notorious B.I.G. in 1994. The footage has gone on to birth a popular GIF that shows Nas' head getting wiped off by someone's hand, with many questioning who it was and why they decided to rub Esco's dome like that.

Mass Appeal spoke with the legendary “Uncle” Ralph McDaniels, as the footage stems from his Video Music Box television show, and he detailed the moment that appeared in the GIF. Apparently, the performance comes from Miss Jones' birthday party in 1994, where big names in music like Nas, Biggie, Method Man, Fat Joe and even Common were in attendance.

"It was a birthday party for Miss Jones, in 1994. I wanna say it was at the Country Club on 86th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenue," McDaniels says. "You know how we get those little spots that were friendly for us, until we fucked it up. [laughs] O.C. was on stage right before that. Fat Joe was there. Method Man was there. Common was there, I don’t know why. Who else was there? DJ Enuff, and of course Nas and Biggie."

At the time, Illmatic had just been released to the music community, which kept the hype around Nas at an all-time high.

"It was definitely like a Queens house, cause Miss Jones is from Queens. She’s not from Queensbridge, but another one of those projects down there by the water," he continues. "And so it was a lot of Queens people in there. At some point a fight broke out, later on. What I always realize from that was, O.C. was so hot—that “Times Up” was on fire! But then Nas was coming out and people were just forgetting about O.C.  The buzz of Nas was so crazy that was it. This was right around the time of Illmatic, so he was the man."

McDaniels then explains how Nas had champagne spill on him, which is why a hand can be seen rubbing his face. The hand actually belonged to the Life Is Good rapper's hypeman, Killer B, who was wiping off the champagne from Nas' face.

"What happened was, some champagne or somethin’ flew. There was a bottle of champagne kinda floatin’ around amongst, you know, 20 people," McDaniels details. "It probably was Nas who bought that champagne and gave it to these guys when he was getting ready to perform. And whatever happened, the shit spilled and went at Nas. Somebody thought that somebody threw something at Nas at first. And when Nas turned around, he was like, “Nah, that’s my peoples. Fuck that. It’s all love. That hand that comes in is Killer B, one of Nas’ hype men along with Wiz. I guess he saw the drink hit Nas and he was the closest to him when it happened. So he’s wiping the liquid—champagne or water—off of his face."

This is the only performance footage we know of featuring Nas and Biggie on stage together. The two formed a close friendship before B.I.G.'s death in 1997, despite exchanging in some subliminal back-and-forth blows on tracks.

You can catch the iconic Nas moment occur starting around the 0:47 mark in the video below.

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