This is a legendary Jay-Z freestyle that displays his supreme language consciousness and elite word play. A retired Hov delivered the bars during a spontaneous visit to Funkmaster Flex’s Hot 97 show in early-2005, performing over Black Rob and The LOX’s 2000 track “Can I Live.” Many of the bars can be found on his track “Dear Summer,” released on Memphis Bleek’s album 534.

In an interview Just Blaze explained that Hov had the verse in his head for over a year before he let it loose:

First time I heard it was when he did the last S. Carter mixtape. He was rapping to the beat for the tennis shoe commercial Green Lantern did. When he finished the song, Guru went to stop the beat and Jay was like, ’Nah, keep it going.’ He started spitting that rhyme out of nowhere. So it just sat there forever and then he spit it that one day on the radio. The record is so crazy we was going to put it out the day after he went to radio, but Jay was like, ’Nah, chill.’ Then [a few months later] he was like, ’I want to do it as a song, but I have nowhere to put it.’”