"Ether" is the second track on hip hop artist Nas' 2001 album Stillmatic. The song was a response to Jay-Z's "Takeover", a diss track directed towards Nas and Mobb Deep which appears on Jay-Z's album The Blueprint, during the Jay-Z vs. Nas feud. Nas named the song Ether because "I was told a long time ago, ghosts and spirits don't like the fumes from ether, and I just wanted to affect him with my weapon and get to his soul".
Jay-Z, who had surpassed Nas in commercial success since 1998, dismissed him as a has-been on the diss track "Takeover." Nas responds to Jay's claims by rapping, "I got this, locked since Nine-One (1991), I am the truest/ Name a rapper that I ain't influenced." The song contains numerous slurs directed at Jay-Z: "When these streets keep calling, heard it when I was sleep/ That this Gay-Z and Cock-A-Fella Records wanted beef", "Then you got the nerve to say that you're better than Big/ Dick-suckin' lips, why don't you let the late great veteran live", "You a dick-ridin' faggot, you love the attention/ Queens niggas run you niggas, ask Russell Simmons" and "Put it together/ I rock hos; y'all rock fellas."
Ether Song is the second album by thje British rock band Turin Brakes. Following the band's first album The Optimist LP (2001), this was a bit of a departure, relying on more electric instruments. Despite the change in sound, the album was received well by critics and reached #4 on the United Kingdom album charts.
All songs written and composed by Olly Knights and Gale Paridjanian.
In some regions and versions, the album was sold with bonus discs. The album was later released with the single "5 Mile (These Are the Days)" as a bonus CD, but initial pressings with bonus discs came with the following track list:
In the ether, in the ether's air
Would you be there? Would you be my friend?
In the morning, in the morning rain
In the binary, of a data stream
On an airplane
On a radio
All around me
In the Ether's flow
Under an orange sun, under the sweet spell
Running from what I've become oh...
What am I running from
Oh what am I running from...?
You can't take a photograph of it at night
It lives in the code of a firefly buzzing
It vibrates through brickwalls, keeping their time
It cuddles the creeping chaos coming
I see it more clearly than ever before
I'm in it's invisible river aflowing
Thought everything I've ever been through before