Nas has a way of starting songs. Peep him here: “Straight up shit is real and any day could be your last in the jungle/ Get murdered on a humble, guns’ll blast, ni–as tumble.” This was the Nasty side of him coming out, a much more aggressive rapper than he’d shown previous...
Nas’ masterful stroke of poeticism and the gritty boom-bap loops on songs "It Ain’t Hard to Tell," "The World Is Yours," and "N.Y. State of Mind" still resonate. The album also revived the fleeting dominance of NY rap, and unexpectedly inspired other rappers to release albums with...
Film Review: ‘Time Is Illmatic’ Documentary Pays Homage to Nas’ Seminal 1994 Hip-Hop Classic Your lyrics are very cinematic. Have you thought about writing a screenplay? Yeah, I’m a big story guy. I’ve had people approach me about working on some songs. There’s a few of them...
The producers who championed Nas when he was a small-timer—like L.E.S., DJ Premier, and Large Professor—all feature for around a minute apiece, usually explaining the inciting samples for songs like “Life’s a Bitch” and “NY State of Mind” before disappearing. As the film breaks ...
Some classics come from people well into their careers, but Nas' Illmatic, which still stands as a hip-hop classic, was not one of those. Rather, the
At this point, you should have heardIllmatica thousand times by now, enough to know the lyrics to most of the songs. Even after spinning the classic back mad times across decades, you’ve never heardNaslike this before. Thanks to a PBS documentary and his performance of the effort accompan...
This past weekend at Coachella,Nascelebrated the upcoming 20th anniversary of his album,Illmatic, byperforming it in fulland even bringing outJay ZandPuff Daddy. Today, Nas brings the worldIllmatic XX, which is includes remastered works of all of the songs from his classic debut, as well as ...
Pete Rock is preparing to file a lawsuit against Nas for unpaid royalties for his work on Illmatic. Pete and his team say the legendary producer had a writing
Nas has a way of starting songs. Peep him here: “Straight up shit is real and any day could be your last in the jungle/ Get murdered on a humble, guns’ll blast, ni–as tumble.” This was the Nasty side of him coming out, a much more aggressive rapper than he’d shown previous...
Nas Speaks on Kendrick in New Q&A, Says 'Illmatic,' 'good kid' Comparisons "Not Fair": Directly following the unveiling of their new Kendrick Lamar cover story, Complex have released an