Nas and Cam’ron are reported to have broken bread in an a Delta Airlines airport lounge on the way home from Las Vegas after years of bad blood and shots fired in radio interviews and whatnot. This incident has predictably setoff the rap rumour mill with talk of them possibly recording a song together, which could either be the greatest idea of the past five years or a recipe for the most underwhelming, over-hyped collaboration since The Firm album. Considering that Killa is one of rap’s most amusing characters and the fact that Nas appears to have been born without even a hint of a sense of humour, a musical duet from these two New York icons would require some kind of buddy comedy magic along the lines of a musical Lethal Weapon or 48 Hours in order to work.

The odds are very much stacked against them, since history has shown us that songs recorded after rappers have shared the proverbial peace pipe have trended towards either being complete garbage, or at best only having one participant sounding like they put some effort into it. Most recently we had Rick Ross and Young Jeezy deciding to bury the hatchet after T.I. got involved on some rap game Henry Kissinger shit, resulting in an otherwise forgettable track, only saved from irrelevance by a typically spirited Jeezy performance. Nas was also involved with a couple Jay Z records, years after their highly publicised war of words, although Jay seemed to shuffle the cards in his favour by picking a track that suited his flow and made Nas sound almost offbeat on ‘Success’. He also managed to outshine Nasir on the ‘Black Republicans’ song, with superior gusto and content, indicating that Nas made the mistake of letting his guard down or had just smoked too many trees that day.

DJ Kayslay also played peacekeeper when he united former foes 50 Cent and Fat Joe for ‘Free Again’ in January, which finds Joey Crack sounding relieved to have completed his tax evasion bid, while Curtis is typically uninterested and phones in some cheap shots at Kanye’s kilt. Considering that there’s been bad blood between these two since 2004, both of them rapping on the same song a decade later didn’t exactly set the world on fire. The same can be said of the KRS-One and X-Clan dispute, which was serious as a heart attack in 1994 and required Zulu Nation head honcho Afrika Bambaataa to broker a sit-down before somebody got shot after some theological differences resulted in a number of verbal assaults being recorded against each other. It wasn’t until 2008 that Brother J invited KRS to appear on the song ‘Speak The Truth’, but by this stage only a handful of diehards fans even noticed.

The best rap battles never required any of these token acts of unity anyway, which is why there aren’t any Kool Moe Dee songs featuring Busy Bee or LL Cool J, nor an Ice-T/LL duet. KRS-One did eventually do a song with Marley Marl and Blaq Poet, but without MC Shan it doesn’t really count (unless that Sprite re-enactment is considered canon). Roxanne Shante never felt the need to make a song with The Real Roxanne, Roxanne’s Doctor or any of her fake relatives who recorded answer records (I’m ignoring the stage Sparky-D stuff), and nor did Common and Ice Cube make nice in the studio. Does anybody in their right mind want to hear Eminem, Ja Rule and 50 Cent record a song this year with Ashanti? Nah, right?

I’m all for people squashing their differences and making nice once they’ve tired of hitting each other with bar stools and talking greasy on Hot 97, but it’s pretty clear at this point that the act of burying the hatchet has yet to result in any incredible musical unions, unless there’s some kind of amazing Fu-Gees song featuring Jeru The Damaja hiding in the vaults over at Ruffhouse Records. So if Nas and Cam’ron do decide to hit the booth in an attempt to meet public demand, we can only hope that Nastradamus plays the Hardy to Killa’s Laurel in some form of updated vaudeville-style rap verses. Obviously I’m living in a bizarre dream world to even imagine anything that great happening – we all know that it will be some kind of unholy combination of ‘Hey Ma’ meets ‘Oochie Wally’ over a Swizz Beatz track that will make everyone wish they still hated each other.

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