With the renewed interest in rap beef — thanks to Kendrick Lamar’s verse on “Like That” aiming at Hip Hop’s “big three” — Busta Rhymes had a story about the time he could have imploded the East-West Coast feud in the mid-90s with the release of a single track.

In his “All The Smoke” podcast appearance that was published on Friday (April 12), Busta recalled how his efforts to get Method Man, Nas, The Notorious B.I.G. and himself on a record were foiled by a broken elevator. The Bad Boy emcee suffered a severe leg injury during a 1996 car accident that prevented him from showing up for two back-to-back studio sessions. He said Meth and Nas never recorded their verses, and when the third studio session came around, both men opted out of attending. Coincidentally, the third time was the charm because the elevator situation was resolved and Biggie showed up.

“At the time, I thought it would be brilliant to have these three emcees on a J Dilla beat,” said the Flipmode Squad leader. Instead, what he ended up with is the circulated but unofficially released song “The Ugliest,” which served as a host to the “Big Poppa” artist’s barrage of lyrical jabs at Tupac Shakur.

He raps: “Money-hungriest, Brooklyn Loch Ness/ Nine-millimeter c**k test, wan fittest (Uh)/ And the winner is, not that thinner kid/ Bandanas, tattoos, my fist never bruise (What)/ Land still cruise, Frank White paid his dues/ Ask who’s the raw, bet they say ‘Poppa, very’/ Look forward to me like commissary (Uh).”

“I told Big, ‘I ain’t puttin this out. I ain’t puttin’ this out, man.’ Because Pac was my friend too. Pac choked the sound man out for me at a college show when we was [the] Leaders of the New School because we got there late. The n**ga turned the equipment off and wouldn’t let us get a sound check. This n**ga Pac ran up on this man and just choked him,” said Busta.

Moreover, he added, “I love these n**gas, man. I got to be the mediator; I can’t add fuel to this fire. I ain’t put it out. So, when Big passed, Pac passed, [and] Diddy was working on the Born Again album… Diddy was looking for verses that might’ve been laying around that was never released commercially that Big had recorded. And I told him, Diddy, that I had this verse for a long time. So, when Diddy wanted the verse, I said you gotta give me back the money that I paid Big [then] you can have the verse.’”

He claimed to have paid Big $10,000 for the feature. But before handing over the recording, the “Woo Hah!! Got You All In Check” rapper made sure the late lyricist’s mother gave him her blessing to do so, and he made sure to have creative control over the record. The compilation album was released in December 1999, two years after the New York rap icon passed away at the age of 24.

“In the lines where Biggie might’ve said something to Pac, I muted those lines and I put bars there to cover up those disses, so it sound like me and Big going back and forth,” he explained. “That’s one of the gems that [the] world finally got to hear about."

Hear the full story in detail in the clip below.