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ip-Hop’s golden child, Nas, finds himself on the verge of what is one of his career’s most eagerly awaited albums. As if this isn’t enough, Nas boldly proclaims that Hip Hop is Dead with his album title and now must prove that he, in fact, is the one that can resurrect it. Without a video or a radio friendly single to help assist his album release on December 19th, Nas is counting on his lyrical prowess, effortlessly displayed on tracks like the Jay-Z assisted “Black Republicans,” to captivate the masses and drive his Def Jam debut to success. Some people in the South are taking offense to the album title Hip Hop is Dead. The South, East, West, Midwest, all need to feel something because we all love Hip-Hop, it’s our life. If they’ve taken offense to it as if I’m just talking about the South and just singling out a region then they’ve got me mistaken and they need to ask somebody about me, because niggas know I’m deeper than that. If anything the South kept the lights on in rap. The title isn’t limited to the region but that’s not to say that there aren’t whack niggas in the South either. This album is to provoke thought in everybody. The whole thing is that sometimes we forget and don’t care about this shit because it becomes the hustler’s game. You mentioned the South on your earlier records, especially Houston. Did you think that the South would become as big as it has? Hell yeah. I used to go to North Carolina back in the day so I used to be hearing that shit way back. I was hearing a bunch of niggas, so I been seeing that movement. It’s always been there. I think that people saying that the South just started happening but the South been happening for the longest. It’s just that it’s dominating now and people are thinking that it had never been around. That shit been poppin’. On the Bravehearts’ project you worked with Lil Jon a lot. How was it working with him compared to the East Coast producers you usually work with? Lil Jon’s hard. He’s a real producer, he brought me some hard shit for Jungle and Bravehearts. He can do music, he can do whatever you need. He’s not a beatmaker, he’s a producer. When you go in the studio with him you know you’re not coming out with some amateur shit. Tell us the difference between a beatmaker and a producer. A beatmaker can sample some shit and make it sound good but doesn’t know how to put the Quincy Jones, Dr. Dre, or Diddy on it. Producing is a whole different world, you gotta make this shit sound right, add the right musicians, EQ the bitch right, get the right engineer. The producer got the ear and the vision, beatmakers can loop some shit but don’t know sonically what needs to happen to make a record that will stick around forever. You’ve been dabbling in the production a little bit, too. How’s that been? That shit’s another world, I can’t even take the full credit. I can just get niggas to do what I need them to do. I have done some shit where I have programmed the drums and added a little keyboard shit but for the most part I’d rather get a beatmaker or producer to get in there and program what I need exactly how I want it. So you give them your vision and they actually make it happen? Most of the time, sometimes I be punching the drum pads myself. Can we expect you to work with Lil Jon again? Yeah, I’d love to. I tried to get him this time but it was a lot of moving around. You’ve worked with Scarface in the past and earlier this year he had mentioned he hadn’t collected on some of the work he’d done for you monetarily. I never collected money on his, either. So it was a swap agreement? Yeah, I think it was just misinterpreted by him right there. Tell us about the deal between Def Jam and Sony? I wanted to do something interesting. I’ve been in the game for a minute playing with a record company where I’m the only rapper to have made a career there. It’s a funny relationship but it’s gonna be a relationship we have forever since I have so much catalog there. When this album started to come to be I wanted to name it Nasdaq Dow Jones and then I wanted to name it Nigger on Def Jam but a lot of people said it wouldn’t be the right thing to do when I came over to Def Jam. Part of the reason
to come over is because I felt uninspired at one label. Sony/Columbia is so corporate and I was uninspired to record one more so I wanted to come over to a new label. With Def Jam being the legendary label that gave us Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, EPMD, so on and so forth, it was the label I always wanted to see my name on. I felt that this would be perfect for the current title now. This deal took a lot of work on my end because I still have a contract with Sony and so it took work to get them to work with Def Jam. I had to pull a lot of strings and get big lawyers to see what I was seeing. It’s hard to not agree with me on what I wanted to do, so I was happy everyone could see what I was seeing. L.A. Reid wanting it to happen and Jay Z wanting it to happen made it a power play. Right when I got to Def Jam the bigwigs at Sony who I had heard were getting fired got fired and left shit into shambles. The label wasn’t in shambles, the label is a good label, but a lot of shit was in shambles so I had to make a power play and L.A. Reid and Jay helped me with that. How did you and Jay settle your differences? Did he call you, did you call him, or was there a middleman? Actually, my boy Mark Pitts is good friends with L.A. and he was like, “Yo, you shouted out L.A. on the ‘Why’ remix.” Arista Records was shutting down, and at the time L.A. had been killing the industry with people like Usher and Pink and I heard about labels merging and all the executives getting their position but I never heard L.A.’s name and I mentioned that and how I couldn’t hear my man’s name anywhere. When he got at Def Jam and heard the remix, he liked it, and got the word out. Pitts hits me up and says he thinks that maybe L.A. wants me over there but I still had a deal at Sony and L.A. was like, “Fuck it, let’s make it happen.” Then the question was with Jay because that’s when he had started doing his President thing. I told Pitts I wouldn’t mind kicking it with him cause we’re grown ass men and Jay said the same shit and there was a meeting that was set up and that was that. How much influence did Jay have on the project? Initially we wanted to go in there and do so much, but in real time we do our own things so really it was me doing what I do. What kinds of things have been changing about your image with the new deal? You bulked up recently, is that one of the things? [laughing] Naw, I don’t see it like that. I’m just getting my calisthenics on, that’s it. Why aren’t you on Jay’s album? I was gonna do the intro but then maybe it was overkill. One song was enough and that was scheduled to be on my album. Your album has been getting pushed back for awhile now. I can’t front, man, the pressure on this motherfucker been a bitch, it’s been crazy. I wanted to release it on my birthday, September 14th, but I couldn’t decide on the songs. Then there was Halloween and then November 7th. Today we have the December 19th date and they look at me and say, “Yo, you gonna make this date?” This date is perfect because I can’t push it back beyond this or else I’ll be next year and then everything will have to be different. So this has to come out this year and nothing will be better than dropping at the end of the year. What’s changed since the first time you were scheduled to turn in the album til now? Not much. I wanted to work with so many people, but you know what? It’s just rap at the end of the day. I wanted to sit down and work with everybody but I can’t space shit out as well as someone like Dr. Dre. I sat back and thought maybe with the title I bit off more than I could chew and pissed off a few motherfuckers, but that’s what I wanted to do. So I just said fuck it, it’s time to close it up. If you notice my video isn’t even out. I’m three weeks out from my album release and I don’t even have a video yet. I may come out with no video. It’s all good though because I remember when I was a fan of rap as a kid and there were no videos. I said, “Shit, I like this feeling, ain’t nothing wrong with that. I’ll catch them in January.” I’m shooting them now. I was thinking too hard on the “Hip Hop is Dead” video so I had to shoot something just to have something because I’m way behind. We shot something for that and we’re editing now. We’re shooting a video for “Can’t Forget About You” and also the “Shine On” track off the Blood Diamonds soundtrack. How’d the situation with the movie come about? Leonardo DiCaprio got at the movie dudes to get at me and then they flew me in. I sat down with James Newtown Howard who’s a bigwig scoring dude, he done scores for Sixth Sense and King Kong, and we sat down and came up with some of the music for the movie and I came up with a track for the joint called “Shine on ‘Em.” 103