Official Nas Thread

[Big Mark]

I did not like this album at all when it came out. I liked a lot of the bootleg.

But if you go in order were Illmatic, iww, and the firm plus mixtapes.. I heard this and sounded like nas just reading words off a paper. Not much flow plus Nas over those keyboard beats was tough to hear, TO ME. It's also the first time he really used outside producers and starting making songs to sell outside of more than just NY.

I still remember getting the bootleg on the internet the day it came out. It took forever. In general it was an odd time if you like earlier 90's rap. Time were changing fast. I see how you could like it more if you like a lot of the beats. I still think some of the rapping isn't great.

There was an acapella version i remember that came out on vinyl. I remember doing some blend with the verses I liked.

I had copped Illmatic, and IWW when they first came out so I was a fan. I Am came out but I was on something else at the time. My brother had the Cd so I swiped it because the CD cover had the photo progression and I thought that was cool. I had heard Nas is Like and Hate Me Now but when I played the first 5 tracks, I was like DAMN. NY State of Mind II was the sequel to the original classic and We will Survive touched on BIG, PAC and dissed Jay. My man's Scarface was on there so I was pleased. Another cool thing was that the inside of the album announced the released Date of another album, which we all know was Nastradamus. I was hyped for that and I coped that right away. I will, however, admit that I got to BIG TIME fan level when I heard the bootleg and then discovered audiogalaxy and got deep into all of his unreleased music. After that, revisiting I am, especially after knowing about the scrapped double album made it even better.

 

[Big Mark]

Nas is the goat off of all these songs alone. Truthfully its not close either.

Ok, I may get some get heat here but I remember seeing these 4 songs on an original list. It was a photo of a cd sleeve or something. Some of you older cats who were on the old Sony boards may recall and dude called Vampire xtc or something like that. He always bragged about having the full Curse track and the Get Up track. I don't know if he did actually have them but I do know that he was the one who leaked the CDQ version of Curse that we all have now. There used to be a really shytty low-quality version out there until he leaked the better one. Well, he shared the pic of the I Am... The Autobiography list and below are 4 tracks that I am certain was on there. They could have been planned for the priginal tracklist

Triple Threat
Sometimes I wonder
Curse
The Hardest Thing To Do

 

[Stuckinthe90s]

There was an acapella version i remember that came out on vinyl. I remember doing some blend with the verses I liked.

There is some great remixes out there.



Hate Me Now, We Will Survive, You Won't See Me Tonight are better than the OG's.

There was a great blend using Godfather Don and 45 King beats as well, somebody link that shyt.

Here's two of the tracks off it...

 

[morris]

Beet Approved

• morris
• Sep 16, 2018

Beet Approved

 

[waynep]

Not to gossip, but I bet you Nas not speaking to him for madd years while with Kelis had something to do with Jungle talking foul about Kelis and Nas not wanting to hear it, . Dudes get crazy for they woman...I understand love but you can't leave your brother in the hood still movin shyt around and risking his life/freedom.

I guess that explains why we don't see Wiz around him anymore. G-Wiz use to be everywhere with him and then he just disappeared. Nas must of fell out with his crew during that time.

 

[CHAIN]

nikkas need that Jungle Drink Champs like yesterday!

Nas is probably blocking it cause it's gonna be the foulest episode ever and a lot of it might hurt his business ventures. But fukk that, we need that!

 

[spliz]

Not to gossip, but I bet you Nas not speaking to him for madd years while with Kelis had something to do with Jungle talking foul about Kelis and Nas not wanting to hear it, . Dudes get crazy for they woman...I understand love but you can't leave your brother in the hood still movin shyt around and risking his life/freedom.

I think Jungle didnt like Nas’ wife and has a lot to say and to avoid being around her and watching her shyt on Nas he separated himself from the situation. On Nas’ end that was his actual wife and in reality u not supposed to put no one ahead of ur wife. He had to realize she wasnt shyt on his own after a person gives u warning.

 

[prophecypro]

The trailer to that Netflx movie hes in that he produced as well looks good

 

[JustCKing]

I think Jungle didnt like Nas’ wife and has a lot to say and to avoid being around her and watching her shyt on Nas he separated himself from the situation. On Nas’ end that was his actual wife and in reality u not supposed to put no one ahead of ur wife. He had to realize she wasnt shyt on his own after a person gives u warning.

This.

I got the impression that Kelis was kind of a toxic person or at least stand offish. She had incredible chemistry with The Neptunes, but she had an interview where she said that they hated her. This was on the heels of her having "Milkshake", her biggest hit and Tasty being her biggest album. It just never made sense that they would create three albums with her and actually hate her. After that interview, I wasn't surprised that she was no longer with Star Trak.

 

[Ziggiy]

The way he talking I expect a fire album

He’s talking about the museum he’s helping create

 

[T.he I.nformant]

He’s talking about the museum he’s helping create

Oh shyt, that’s cool. I wonder, though, if they would also release music to go along with the opening of the museum.

 

[spliz]

22 Years. Wow. People love to try and hate on "I Am" but in real time it was well received. It remains NaS's biggest 1st week sales and it outsold "Vol 3" first week that year. Only Biggie, Dr. Dre and DMX had higher first week sales than NaS. Plus it got 4 1/2 Mics in the Source. This was also NaS's 3rd #1 LP in a row after "It Was Written" and "The Firm" so he was really moving up commercially. "NaS is Like" and "NYSOM II" still bang to this day. "Hate Me Now" is a staple in NaS's catalog. I always loved "Life is what you make it" with X. Man this album is my sh!t. Sad it was the first album to suffered from digital bootlegging but I will always love this LP. The cover was flames too. "The Lost Tapes" was a gift to us who loved the bootleg so much because we never thought we gets those songs CDQ.

I try to tell people this. It’s funny because I know for a FACT in real time a few people I knew had this as their fav Nas album. I had this album on release and I had to dub it for so many nikkas I knew I can’t even count.

 

[Soymuscle Mike]

I try to tell people this. It’s funny because I know for a FACT in real time a few people I knew had this as their fav Nas album. I had this album on release and I had to dub it for so many nikkas I knew I can’t even count.

Rza once called it his favorite Nas album yeeaaars ago when asked who was his top 5 (from what I remember: 1. Gza, 2. Rakim, 3. Nas, 4. Ghostface, 5 I forgot).

Edit: couldn't find the shyt I saw or heard, you'll just have to trust me. Did find this one with a different ranking. Gza still at 1.

Jadakiss: “Jadakiss rhymes…like his catch phrases even from years ago with the LOX, he rhymes like he has the experience of a father, like a grown man nah mean? He remind me of somebody that got all the wisdom from all the older cats while he was young and everything he is spitting is like it has the older cat mentality, like a Grand Puba or something, but at a young age. Jadakiss, he doesn’t play with that mic yo.”


Nas: “The early Nas, the first three albums of Nas yo, nah mean. I don’t think too many solo MCs will ever surpass the creativity, ideas and individualization that he put inside his lyrics and songs. Two of the best rhymes I thought written was when he wrote the song ‘One Love’ to his man in jail. You look at Eminem’s ‘Stan,’ that’s ‘One Love.’ That was the inspiration of a man sitting here writing a letter to his man in jail.


Then you take a look at him writing his song [about the gun] ‘I Gave You Power’; describing the tech feeling this way, the rusty gun…taking the individualization of a gun describing. The only other MC doing that was the GZA where he took on the labels and made one meaning a whole ‘nother meaning.”


Big Daddy Kane: “Big Daddy Kane was the one of the first MCs with swagger. In the old days you always used to argue who was better Big Daddy Kane, Rakim or Kool G Rap. But the reason why Big Daddy Kane I think you know was even in that category and some people would say was because his swagger was an MCs swagger. This fukkin ese had the Brooklyn aggressiveness, and yet he still has all the girls on him and he still had hardcore styles. You know his first rhyme when he came out like, “It’s the Kane in the flesh of course I’m fresh, You thought I was rotten, beg your pardon,” when he came with that [‘Just Rhymin’ With Biz’] that shocked almost every MC in New York.

Even to this day when I worked with him, he still is a ice cold ass muthafukker. I always felt like Slick Rick and Snoop Dogg are two of the ice coldest MCs ever because of their voices, they styles. But when I was hanging with Kane, I was like, ‘Naw, you up in there not only as being a dope lyricist and dope MC, but as also one of the ice coldest muthafukker G,’ he really is a unique individual.”


Kool G Rap: “G Rap is the father of drug Rap yo. Off course you know I think Raekwon and Ghostface bought it to our generation and took it to a hands on thing cause that’s where we came from. But G Rap’s Road to the Riches, Wanted Dead or Alive, when he had that lyric, “Crack head searching a dead man’s pocket,” they put you right on the block with that one. Or take his lyrics off ‘The Symphony’ which at that time Kane was the hottest rapper but G Rap stole that song.:


Wu-Tang Clan (GZA, Raekwon & Ghostface): “Well to me, and this is just my personal opinion, no other MC is better than GZA. Two reasons; first of all look at what he spawned. He spawned some of the other best MCs in the world. So that shows his talent was so strong that he taught all of us. Some people put Method Man in their top 50 emcees and he’s a product of the GZA. If you take that song “Fame” where he says, ‘Police Sean Comb through the evidence and Robert Diggs the beat,’ nahmean, if you take that lyric alone where he takes all the names of different celebrities and [makes a] whole story out of it. He did it with ‘Labels,’ it’s a little trademark he does on every album.

Back in the days he was signed to Cold Chillin’ and Kane was like he thought I was GZA, cause he didn’t know my face or whatever, and was looking to battle this nikka cause he knew that the nikka was one of the dope MCs out there and this is what Kane said when we was in the studio. But the GZA yo, his words, his ideas and poetry of his sentences to me makes him one of the best. I am going to give you an example from “Killa Hils 10304” from the Liquid Swords album. “Restaurants on a stake-out so order the food to take out, chaos outside a spark steakhouse, Maintain the power, I feel the deal’s gone sour, N***a Mr. Wedding, late a fukkin half hour and his man who bought land from Tony Starks, while he was contractin bricklayin jobs in city parks, he’s a loan shark, bytches raise a grand to a finger, in a garment that’s stretched, got it sewn like Singer.” Some artist rap four rhymes or four lines most just right lyrics cause they are looking for punch lines.

Raekwon; s**t it took years to figure out what Raekwon was saying. He bought the most slang to the Rap game out of anybody. He is like a slang therapist and if you listen to his lyrics it’s like slang on top of slang. First “politic ditto” that not a catch phrase, it is now. “Africans robbing n****s up in yellow cabs, waving their arms musty like Arabs.” [laughs] It’s like this n***a is crazy; you know the back of a cab be funky… He made it make sense. Back then people was making all there rhymes with “like,” “like,” “like,” but he wasn’t using “like.”

Then if you go to Ghost; to me I just quote what Quentin Tarrentino said to me. He said there are two favorite writers in music from all the writers he listens to , Bob Dylan and Ghostface Killah. Ghost, one of the lines I be using is, “I got to f**k something tonight if not I’m f**king my girl.” He got lines after lines I think he described the street like Nas did it one way that was crazy but Ghost you could tell was not talking from third party experience. Like a lot of MCs tell from they man’s experience, nah, Ghost was the man that did it, saw and could write about it in a way that make you feel like you are doing it.

People didn’t even think Ghost was good at first cause he didn’t get a chance to shine on 36 Chambers, but once he did Cuban Linx… he never turned back. Ghost used to have a lot of headaches and s**t and once he finished the Cuban Linx… album the headaches kinda went away—of course he had a few medical things he had to deal with but I remember Dirty said, “Yo G, you f**king was busting your brain God. In one to two years you developed ten years of talent.” Cause at one point Ghost looked at Dirty as being iller. But [Ghost] was going so hard to make the rhymes to tell his life and tell his story through these rhymes. He used a lot of “likes,” but his “likes” was unorthodox; naming foods and all that s**t. [“Apollo Kids”]”


That’s my top five right there, not to mention Inspector Deck. Inspector Deck is one of the most under rated MCs out of all MCs if you take his verse from “Triumph” alone G. That’s got to be in the top twenty verses ever written!

 

[spliz]

Rza once called it his favorite Nas album yeeaaars ago when asked who was his top 5 (from what I remember: 1. Gza, 2. Rakim, 3. Nas, 4. Ghostface, 5 I forgot).

The hate I Am gets is pure retroactive bullshyt. If nikkas wanna know how history can be rewritten for an artist. Check this album right here. Cause the narrative switched crazy every since Takeover came out.

 

[kej718]

I try to tell people this. It’s funny because I know for a FACT in real time a few people I knew had this as their fav Nas album. I had this album on release and I had to dub it for so many nikkas I knew I can’t even count.

I think it has to do with the songs that didn't make the album (That is what made the Lost Tapes so good). If it weren't for bootlegging and that original album came out .


Dude probably got classic songs he forgot about.

He needs to get his flowers while he is still here.