Hip-hop may be dead, but Nas is alive!
By Lauren Carter
Nas, the guy who proclaimed the death of hip-hop, has come to terms with its passing.
The Queens rapper, known in hip-hop circles as the genre’s premier poet, landed on the scene in 1994 with his exalted debut, “Illmatic.” The album has remained untouchable, even by Nas himself. The rapper squashed Jay-Z in a well-publicized, multiyear battle, then made nice with his former enemy when he signed to Def Jam in 2006, pronouncing rap’s flatline with his incendiary single, “Hip Hop Is Dead.”
Three years later, Nas (real name: Nasir Jones) isn’t backpedaling on his gloomy diagnosis.
“It died - we’re just picking up the bones in the graveyard and banging drums with the bones and re-creating what was there,” Nas said from a tour bus traveling through Maryland. He performs at the Comcast Center on Saturday with Ice Cube, the Roots, Common, Busta Rhymes and a host of others on this year’s Rock the Bells tour.
“It’s definitely died, but that doesn’t mean that records can’t be made, that that thing can’t happen to get the world in a frenzy again,” he said. “The difference is I don’t know who these people are, I don’t know what their intentions are and I don’t think they care. It’s just about money. And that’s cool, I like money. But it’s dead, you know, basically.
“I’m glad it became a business because that’s the way of life and that’s the way it happens. But before it was the thing to do, it was the most scariest, most beautiful, the most genius you ever witnessed. Now it’s just a ghost of what it was. Artists get signed all over the place. They get told to make music like this or that, tattoo themselves up and they think they’re gangstas and that’s rap.”
While he says rap is dead, Nas, 35, continues to go to work.
He’s currently wrapping up “Distant Relatives,” a collaboration album with reggae singer Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley that began to take shape when Nas appeared on Marley’s last record, “Welcome to Jamrock,” in 2005.
“When we started to talk about this, we started to feel like it would be something special, something different,” Nas said. “We have the opportunity to do something totally interesting and take it to a different place than before, so each song always turns out to be something new for me.”
Nas said he has yet to determine the direction of his next solo album and doesn’t know if the drama of his pending divorce from singer Kelis will influence his music. But he’s sure of one thing: He won’t be employing Auto-Tune on what will be his 10th album.
“It’s not my thing,” he said of the vocal distortion plug-in. “It’s hot, but it’s not what I do. It’s not what I really listen to either.”
But while Nas the rapper has no need for Auto-Tune, Nas the rap documentarian believes its popularity is a necessary phenomenon. “Auto-Tune’s gonna be the (expletive) like 10 years from now,” he said. “We’re gonna all remember that time when Auto-Tune was what everyone was doing. And you need moments like that. It’s like, ‘Wow, remember when everybody had synthesizer beats? Or remember when everybody used to do cuts in their choruses? Or use this kind of sample or use that kind of drum machine? It’s just another moment in music.
“Everything comes to an end and goes to a new phase. So records like ‘D.O.A.’ have to be made right now. That’s why I did ‘Hip Hop Is Dead.’ These records have to be made. It’s rappers making records that resemble what the real rap sounds like to shake up all this other (stuff).”
Nas doesn’t aspire to be an executive with a corner office or a mogul with a clothing line and a brand of energy drinks. So if being the second coming of Jay-Z isn’t part of his future, what is?
“A farm with horses and (stuff) like that,” he said. “Good life, fresh food and fresh air. Good times, just that. Life is a business. You pay a doctor to deliver babies, you pay a funeral parlor to embalm you and put you in the ground. You can’t get in no lane without paying a toll. Everything’s all about business.
“You can’t escape business. So I’m trying to escape it as much as possible. You know, that’s what I do. The total opposite.”
No comments:
Post a Comment