I don't think it was so cut and dry. The east west beef began in the 80s when east coast stations began ghosting west artists. It escalated when Tim Dog made a track called Fuck Compton dissing the whole LA hip hop scene. When Dr released the Chronic, he responded to Tim and tbh, the whole East Coast was low key put on notice that a new sheriff was in town. When the Quad studio stuff happened with Pac, Puff and Suge were apparently already at odds cause Puffs bodyguard shot and killed suges friends outside of a club. From that point, it was essentially on. The squabbles between Pac and BIG could have been averted had Biggie simply visited him in the hospital and squared things out. From sources close to Biggie however, Puff talked him out of it and told him to stay away. Rumors escalated and didn;t really hit a fever pitch until Puff dropped Who Shot Ya when Pac was still in prison. That was proverbial nail in the coffin. Puff was the master at bad timing. You see how a mans mind can get twisted here? You have politicians, cops , street thugs and industry types all throwing shots in your direction. The craziest tid bit is that before Pac even recorded Hit Em Up, Dogg Pound recorded Ney York New York which pissed off a lot of Eastcoast heads. Biggie was the first to incite violence by making a call to arms on an NY radio station to go get these "westcoast" artists making a mockery of their town. Their trailer got shot up with Snoop and the Dogg Pound inside. Rumors again flew that Biggie thought Pac was with them. Even before any of this, LL Cool J released "I Shot Ya", further taking shots at westcoast emcees. Probably one of the reasons Pac dissed LL. Also before Hit Em Up was that famous line by Chino XL on his track called Riiot, dissing Pac.
So when you really break it down, the Eastcoast had a bigger part to play in this east/west feud than anyone. Puff and Biggie could have figured the situation out with Pac but made zero effort to. Probably more Puffs fault than Biggies by all accounts. After 2pac realesed Hit Em Up, the East went mute aside from Mobb Deep who stepped up and responded with Drop A Gem on Em which is a great diss track on its own. 2pac was actually trying to mend wounds with reaching out to Eastcoast artists, insisting from the start that it was an issue between himself and Biggie. The media, radio stations, other artists egged it on and helped turn it into the all out "war" it eventually became. Ice Cube and the Westside connection takes zero responsibility for their role as well. When others were now trying to bring tensions down, the released a whole album entitled Bow Down, lol.
Hip Hop history, primarily beef between artists is actually quite the deep dive. Most people see things from surface level, but there are multiple layers behind every story.
