Nas list his 20 most important// fav songs of his career; gives a break down.

[Jimmy ValenTime]

Stillmattic

"Got Ur Self A..."
Stillmatic (2001)

This one was just so huge to me and my then-manager Steve Stoute. The Sopranos was our favorite thing and we were so happy that HBO gave us that. [The song sampled Alabama 3's "Woke Up This Morning," the show's theme song.] I love Goodfellas, but now it went from the movie theater to your household. I was praying because I wanted to be the first one to use that sample because at that point, everybody was watching The Sopranos. We thought there would be nothing cooler than to have their theme song as my theme song and we were so happy to use it. Some people think that had something to do with the Jay Z beef, but that one had nothing to do with any rapper. It was about who could use that sample first.



2nd childhood

How many grownups do you see every day that still act like children? It’s a shame.In life, with your woman, your man, your family, there’s grownups who you expect so much more from are just really nothing more than a child. They're big kids and these are people with power I’m talking about, so "2nd Childhood" was very important.


I love the 9th wonder remix ...



Stillmattic freestyle or ether should been on that list but jay might felt some kind of way about it ...

and no ONE MIC

 

[Jimmy ValenTime]

THE LOST TAPES

"Poppa Was a Playa"
The Lost Tapes (2002)

I was really just feeding and channeling the Temptations' "Papa Was a Rolling Stone." When I was a kid, I had a friend and his stepdad's name was Papa. This friend is dead now, but he didn’t really like Papa that much because Papa was a dope fiend. When the Temptations song came on, he sang it a little extra. We were kids at this point and that stayed with me forever. My pop was not a dope fiend—my pop was my pop—so I talked about him. This was also one of Kanye’s first production. I didn’t even know him at the time. He just came through via someone else.

the credits have D.dot but ye said he was ghost producing for dot around 98 to 2000 ish ...

 

[prophecypro]

Dope read, saw it earlier today and posted in the Nas thread.

Pretty interesting breakdown at some of the songs in here.

 

[the cac mamba]

cant even cosign this dudes own list

but serioulsy how the fukk is he gonna leave off 'nas is like'

 

[CashmereThoughts]

2nd childhood and what goes around= the zenith of hip hop

 

[Jimmy ValenTime]

God Son

"Last Real N---a Alive"
God's Son (2002)

Yeah, sometimes I tell stories, man, and I’ll use my imagination just for the sake of putting a good rhyme together and a good song. But sometimes, like with this one, the songs are just very literal.

[The song references, in part, Nas' public feud with Jay Z in the early 2000s.]

Tupac and Biggie never lived to see the impact that they were going to have. If [Jay and I] learned anything from that, it was that this had to be different. We owed it—not just for me and him, but to everybody in rap—to those huge, game-changing artists to carry on this thing the right way. It was good that it never got to violence.

Dance"
God's Son (2002)

[Nas' mother, Fannie Ann Jones, passed away before the release of God's Son. The rapper wrote this song as a dedication to her.]

My brother can’t listen to that song to this day. But it was an easy one to write for me. [Pauses] It’s an easy one. [Pauses] I had to get it out.


I HAD TO GET IT OUT

 

[Jimmy ValenTime]

Street's Disciple


"Bridging the Gap"

I recorded this one with my pop [jazz cornetist Olu Dara]. My mom had passed and I was trying to... my pop was always my man so I wanted to make sure we did things while we’re still here. [Producer] Salaam [Remi] was all for a challenge and always up for something different. And Salaam was real cool with my pop, so he just knew which way to go. We wrote this one together.

"Thief's Theme"


We just took a line from "The World is Yours"—You know, "Understandable smooth shyt that murderers move with/The thief’s theme/Play me at night/They won’t act right". That’s the type of music and vibe we were looking for. I wanted to zero in on that and make a thief’s theme. And not for real thieves. I hate thieves. I hate thieves, rapists and pedophiles more than any people in the world. But "Thief’s Theme" is an attitude. It’s not literal. It’s an underworld. It’s not popular. It’s not pop music. It’s music for guys who live in the underworld.

 

[Jimmy ValenTime]

Hip Hop Is Dead
"Hip Hop Is Dead" (2006)

I was surprised no one named their album this before me.Bushwick Bill of Geto Boys had worn it on a T-shirt at one point. Tribe Called Quest talked about it in an interview I read about years ago. Outkast even mentions something in that area at some point. It was a topic within the hip hop community, so there had to be an album about it. And I felt like at the time it was needed.

Will.i.am produced this and I thought, "What’s better than to say hip-hop is dead than with will.i.am, who’s a genius but not necessarily known as a 'real' hip-hop guy, even though he is a hip-hop guy." To hip-hop people, will.i.am is over there somewhere, so to get him to re-do the "Thief’s Theme" beat, where—I don’t know if he knew when he played it for me—but I thought it was funny to have "Thief’s Theme" as a single on the last album and then to do the same track with the same beat. Because shyt is dead, so it doesn’t even matter what beat you use. So yeah, it was big-time funny to me. I was loving the criticism.


"Who Killed It?"

Hip Hop Is Dead (2006)

It was all about James Cagney. I got caught up in all his movies—The Roaring Twenties, really all of his gangster movies—and he’s one of my favorite characters of all time, ever. When he did the gangster movies is just the best shyt. So I would play around and talk like him in the studio just for fun. We didn't plan on doing it as a song, but we just did.

"Not Going Back"
Hip Hop Is Dead (2006)

You know in The Godfather 3—and forgive me for making so many movie references—there’s a scene when Michael Corleone says, "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in." And that’s a moment I think a lot of people deal with. People are always trying to focus on moving forward. That scene resonated with me big time, so "Not Going Back" is that scene. I didn’t get it from that movie, but it’s the same thing. I was just using the movie as a way to see what I’m saying. You’re struck with those moments in your life where you don’t want to be pulled backwards, and you feel that you're being pulled from all different directions, so "Not Going Back" was that kind of thing

 

[Jimmy ValenTime]

UNTITLED

"Untitled"

Untitled (2008)

I feel like revolutionaries should be rewarded. I don’t think they feel that way because they’re fighting, but I think that us, the ones they’re fighting for... Say, for example, some revolutionary that died like a martyr, Che, was wounded instead of died. Say JFK was wounded instead of dying. I feel like these were people for the people, even though JFK was a president and you don’t really know what’s going on behind the doors in the White House. I just feel like they deserve some type of pension from the people. I wish I could bring them back here and raise money to put them in a beach house and say, "Man, you did everything. You earned it, man." There’s people who live and then people who really live and those people deserve it.

 

[Jimmy ValenTime]

Life Is Good

"No Introduction"

Life Is Good (2012)

A lot of times, when you do a record or a new album, you’re kind of re-introducing yourself to the rap world or the music world, so the first song had to be reminding people like, let’s go through a story with me on who I am, you know? I wanted to lay it all out. The self-censoring stuff were lines that fell on the editing floor. I’d think some things, then go, "Nah, can’t reveal that." I exaggerated a little bit. Say, for example, "syrup sandwiches and sugar water" was a thing that a lot of kids in my neighborhood ate. I didn’t grow up needing sugar water. There were days when there was nothing there and groceries are on their way and we remembered a story: some of our poorer friends had syrup sandwiches and we tried it and I hated it. But I remember kids swearing by these terrible, makeshift meals, and it was memories like that that wound up in the music.

 

[Jimmy ValenTime]

this is a bonus beat .... nas did the same thing seven years ago for greatest hits...

Nas' "Greatest Hits": A Track-By-Track Journey

Nas
James Devaney/WireImage

Today, the pride of Queens, Nas, drops a Greatest Hits album that spans from 1994's Illmatic — probably the best debut in hip-hop history — to 2004's Street Disciple. No tracks from his most recent album, Hip Hop Is Dead, were included (his last label, Columbia, put out the Hits package), but Nasir says not to worry. "I think it's better to start off slow," he explains in an exclusive RS track-by-track analysis. "I'm thinking about doing it again and taking it to another level with a box set. I don't think there's a box set in hip-hop. Maybe mine will be the first." Also missing is "Ether," the MC's brutal takedown of Jay-Z. " 'Ether' is a battle record that was not really appropriate right now," he explains. "That's not where my head is. I was in a different place. The Greatest Hits was about a career, and that's just one piece, so I didn't want to mess it up with that song."

The microphone fiend took us through each track on Hits, from the only new song, "Surviving the Times," on which he recounts the notable people and moments of his career, to "Bridging the Gap," a collaboration with his jazz musician father, Olu Dara.

"Surviving the Times"
"Actually, I had it done a good while ago. I forgot I had the record. It was just perfect to go with the Greatest Hits. It just came from a conversation. I needed people around to remind me of certain things that happened, so I got a lot of information from somebody that was hanging around while I was in the studio. It's crazy, because when I talk about people from a whole other rap era, I don't know if people understand how much that meant to me, just coming up around legends like Kool G Rap and Eric B and Large Professor and people like Akinyele who was around in the early stages that I met through Large Professor from a rap group named Main Source that most cats today never even heard of."

"Less Than an Hour" from Rush Hour 3
"I thought that Rush Hour 3 was dope, and there was no soundtrack — that was a track in the movie, and there was no way for people to get it other than the DVD when they watch it, so I felt like giving that record a home."

"It Ain't Hard to Tell" from Illmatic
"That was one of the records that jump-started the commercial success for me on my first album, the Michael Jackson sample ['Human Nature']. That was my introduction to the world, my first official single, so I had to do that."

"Life's a bytch" featuring AZ and Olu Dara, from Illmatic
"I asked my dad to play on the end of it — I told him to play whatever comes to mind when he thinks of me as a kid. I think he's really proud to see me coming up and really taking my life serious and doing what I want."

"N.Y. State of Mind" from Illmatic
"That one right there is one of my favorites, because that one painted a picture of the City like nobody else at that time. I'm about eighteen when I'm saying that rhyme. I worked on that first album all my life, up until I was twenty, when it came out. I was a very young cat talking about it like a Vietnam veteran, talking like I've been through it all. That's just how I felt around that time, and the track does that for me."

"One Love" featuring Q-Tip, from Illmatic
"Q-Tip used to come and hang out with me in my projects from time to time. I remember him coming out there and hanging out, and I remember him letting me hang out at his session when he was working on Midnight Marauders. I thought he was just the most incredible, so to have him producing my album, for him to even do the chorus for me is a blessing. The song just came from life, it's a song about letters to prison inmates, friends of mine, shout-outs to childhood friends and their uncles and people who were like family to me. I was, again, too young to be going through all of that. That's what I think about when I hear that album. I was too young to be going through all of that."

"If I Ruled the World"featuring Lauryn Hill, from It Was Written
"That was my second album. Obviously, if you have a strong impact, you get a lot of people sounding like you, so it made me feel like, 'Man, I'm just a grain of sand on the beach now.' I used to stand out on the first album, but now everyone was talking about the same thing in the same kind of way, coming out of New York, so how could I change it, how could I be a million miles away from everything that was coming out so you could know who the originator is? 'If I Ruled the World,' that's when I teamed up with Trackmaster, and I figured I needed a change, so I teamed up with the best at the time, and they cut the track together and just needed someone to sing the chorus. When Lauryn Hill came to mind, it was just right on time. It's funny, because when we released the record, people didn't know it was Lauryn Hill, because I guess we just white-labeled it at first and didn't want anybody to know — anticipation for my second album was so great, we didn't want any distractions from people to keep them from listening to me. At that point, the Fugees album had just come out and blew up, so we left her name off of it, and for about two to three weeks, by the time we let people know who was on the record, it was already taking off. So when they found out it was her, forget about it, man. Forget about it."

"Street Dreams" remix with R. Kelly
"That never made an album, that only made the single. That was mostly the label who reached for that one, so I'll just leave it at that. I think maybe I was the first rapper from New York to rap with R. Kelly. I used to call him the R&B thug, and we used to see who had the most chains every night when I went on tour with him. There's some history there, so we just threw that on there."

"Hate Me Now" featuring Diddy, from I Am…
"It was a track for Foxy Brown, and she didn't want the record, she didn't like it. It fit with my album, I Am…, so I did the track and it sounded perfect for Puff to be on, so I gave it to him, went to the studio, and he rocked it, knocked it out. I wanted him to talk that shyt on there, because that 'Victory' record was my favorite record, with him and B.I.G., and I just wanted him to talk some of his shyt on there. I had him screaming a whole bunch of wild shyt on here, and cats were slam-dancing to it in New York. It was really crazy, out of this world. At that point, I started wearing a huge chain, and I think me and Puff at that point started that bling shyt and took it to the next level, and we did the video, and it was out of this world. There's a play in New York City where a black man played Jesus, and caught a lot of flak. I think, even the mayor at the time, Giuliani, was against it. So my thing was I wanted to be crucified like Jesus in the video, to get back at all those people that don't want to see a black man doing his thing. Me and Puff got hammered to the cross, but after Puff expressed his religious beliefs and speaking to his pastor, he wasn't ready to take that stance, so it was really my idea anyway, so we took his part out. For some reason, I think [my former manager] Steve Stoute let it fly with Puffy still being crucified to the cross, so there was that fight at the office, where Puff jumped on Steve or some shyt like that. Both of them were friends of mine, so I kind of stepped in and squashed the whole thing, and it's all in the past. Just growing pains. We were all growing up. That brings back a lot of memories. Even when I throw it on now onstage, it still kills."

 

[Jimmy ValenTime]

"One Mic" from Stillmatic
"I'm a huge fan of Phil Collins and I just wanted to take the vibe from 'In the Air Tonight.' 'One Mic' is just about the power. It's almost like Hip Hop is Dead in its infant stages, saying how much this is a blessing to be out here, speaking about what's happening in my neighborhood, having the whole world understand and relate. I can't understand how Bill O'Reilly can be angry at a song called 'Shoot 'Em Up.' If I didn't have a microphone, I could never talk about 'Shoot 'Em Up,' and I was talking about Queens, New York, being shot up. What do I have to do to get somebody to turn around and hear what I'm saying and take it serious? I'm not here just to be in your face talking nonsense, we're talking about reality. For him to be upset or people like him to be upset is insane to me. It just shows how ignorant people are. 'One Mic' just gives me the ability, no matter how much ignorant people are mad that I'm exposing or talking about our country, no matter what the language is, I'm talking in a language that the people can hear, I'm not sugar-coating it. So if it scares people and people feel guilty, people feel like they've got to make up excuses to why the world's this way, no matter what they say, like they've got their mic, I've got mine, and that's what that song's about."


"Made You Look" from God's Son
"Coming after the success of Stillmatic, I just had so much more in me to get out, so I just wanted to come back with some more shyt, and I came back with Lost Tapes, and a month or two later, God's Son. So I had a lot to get out around that time, a lot of energy."

"I Can" from God's Son
"That was a groundbreaking period for me. That was my biggest radio record I ever had, and like 'If I Ruled the World,' it was used by tons of schools for their graduation. A song like that helped me because I have a daughter, and because I make so much music that when she was younger I didn't want her to listen to, I owed her and other kids something, something real, something real that's up their alley, to show that I cared, that I'm a human being, that I'm not just about giving you a tune about what happens in the 'hood and all that every day. I've got to be a real human being, and that was one of my real human being records right there, for my daughter. So yeah, that's one of the most important records I ever made."

"Bridging the Gap" featuring Olu Dara, from Street's Disciple
"I got to know [my father] more in that whole period, I got to learn more about him and his life and his career and why he made certain decisions, things that I never asked before. It brought me closer to him, and also just made me look at life different, just watching him and how he'd come up, and the musical decisions that he chose to be where he is. Most kids in the 'hood don't have their fathers around or didn't have their fathers around. The ones I grew up with had dope fiend fathers and shyt like that, crackhead fathers, convict fathers that stayed in jail, like the story goes. Treach had this rap, 'Never knew my dad / motherfukk the faq.' If you played that in the club back in the days, all you had to do was turn down the music from 'Never knew my dad,' and the whole crowd would scream, 'Motherfukk the faq,' because everybody can relate to that, even me. Not with my father, but with my friends. I thought it was important to put a record with my pops is just, out there. It was just important to me."

"Got Ur Self A Gun" from Stillmatic
"It was Steve Stoute's idea [to sample Alabama 3's 'Woke Up This Morning,' The Sopranos' theme music]. When he told me, I thought it was the craziest thing ever. What's more gangster than The Sopranos? At the time, that was the shyt, and for us to have that hook, and then find out it was some black choir who came up with the song, that whole thing worked out great."

 

[FreshAIG]

Most rappers have terrible taste in their own music....Nas is no different

 

[The_Third_Man]

If "popa was a player" was so important to Nas, how come it didn't make any of his official studio albums?

This is interesting:

"Nastradamus"
Nastradamus (1999)

The song was a EPMD sample and I just freestyled it. I was riding high off multi-platinum sales off I Am…, and just didn’t want to do anything but freestyle that single and put it out. We had a concept to make the video 3D, but we didn’t figure out how to get all the glasses to people and time was against us. Glasses were made, but obviously not enough for every household, so we fukked that one up a little bit. On that album, there’s a couple of songs that have a certain sound to it that doesn’t sound like anything else I’ve done. And it was a gray area in my life and that album represents that gray area. It was personal stuff that I'd rather not elaborate on. But I have nothing against that album.

I Am…, [released earlier that year], was originally supposed to be a double album, but the songs leaked and that killed it for me. I didn’t want to touch it. I hated that because no one’s supposed to hear a song before it’s time, so if that happens, I didn't fukk with the record. It’s over. The record never existed. So I went and started brand new music. At the time, my brother Jungle was managing Noriega and Nature and he was getting a lot of beats from guys that were just blasting in the business, like Dame Grease and Swizz Beatz, and those beats was ahead of their time and I didn’t understand them that well. Then DMX and Nori really made them happen and I was able to go grab Dame Grease, [who produced four songs from Nastradamus] and be like, "Yo, work with me." The Nostradamus thing was about the end of the world being the year 2000, so my record would be dropping right toward the end of the world.

[DOUBLEPOST=1397678554][/DOUBLEPOST]

Most rappers have terrible taste in their own music....Nas is no different

Because we, as fans, only care about the quality of the record.

Rappers usually consider the personal significance, circumstances, the process and time period of the record when they choose their favourites.

 

[The War Report]

Sometimes you gotta give Nas the benefit of the doubt because sometimes it seems like he's not always there mentally. He did put a lot of songs that really stood out in his career. I'm mad Nas is Like is not on there. No rewind?