Video After The Jump
"The thief's theme, play me at night, they won't act right/The fiend of hip-hop has got me stuck like a crack pipe/The mind activation, react like I'm facin/ time like 'Pappy' Mason with pens I'm embracin" --Nas "The World Is Yours"
Whatever you think about Nas's movements away from the vocal booth, there is no denying he has spit some of the most memorable lines in hip hop history.
From his classic debut album 'Illmatic' to his verbal slaughtering of Jay-Z during their beef, which culminated when Nas delivered the scathing diss "Ether". The man born, Nasir Jones is definitely an all time great.
The UK's Tim Westwood recently caught up with Nas and they addressed all issues from his personal divorce from Kelis to his upcoming solo album.
Nas started things off by talking about how he and Damian Marley came together for their 'Distant Relatives' album.
"I did "World Desire" with Damian on his last album. And I like how he get down. We'd been talking about doing more work. We were supposed to something on the 'Hip Hop Is Dead' album and it never materialized. So we'd been talking back and forth and we just planned to do a EP, but we just kept going and did a album."
It's been three years since Nas dropped a solo album. There was controversy surrounding his last project because Nas put his beef with Jay-Z to bed and essentially went to work for him by putting the album out on Def Jam. At that time Jay-Z was the President of the label.
Some of Nas' longtime fans felt like the rapper sold himself short by doing that.
There was also the drama surrounding the album's title. Nas originally planned to call the album 'N*gger'. He and then wife Kelis famously showed up at the 2008 Grammys with the word 'N*gger' emblazoned on their shirt and jacket. A very bad PR move in retrospect, but so it it has gone for Nas. It's usually hit or miss for the mc. The album ended up coming out untitled.
He's presently working on his next solo album.
"I'm definitely looking at my solo project, it's one of the most important records of my life," he tells Tim. "It's gonna be magice, I feel a magic thing brewing. I keep calling it a magic moment...that's what it's gon' be. I feel it, the stuff I'm writing down, the directions that I'm thinking about going into. It doesn't even matter what producers...if it's Swizz Beatz, if it's [DJ] Premier, if it's Alchemist, Dr Dre, Kanye West. All of these guys are guys that I love and guys that I been talking to about getting on the project. Actually, Kanye hit me up and said I wanna produce the album and RZA. I gotta deliver right now"
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