My five cents on the latest Nas fuckery…
There has been a lot of feelings getting caught in Rap Twitter on the subject of Nas having tracks from the ‘Untitled’ album ghostwritten for him. Both the Nas Defense Force and the ‘Nas Lost’ Gang have bared their fangs, sharpened their bayonets and started bucking shots like Tony Montana after a face-full of Yayo (no Tony). No one battered an eyelid when Mad Skillz revealed the names of the ‘shiny suit’ era artists he had sold rhymes to on ‘Ghost Writer’ (Puffy, Mase, Foxy, Will Smith etc.), but the very thought of QB’s ‘Thug Poet’ buying verses from the latest victim of Baduizm is the rap equivalent of telling your four year-old daughter that you’ve just boiled the Easter Bunny in a huge pot for dinner (word to Glenn Close).
Now I’ve thrown more than my fair share of shots at Nas over the years (my most recent musings leading up to the release of ‘Life Is Good’ even resulted in his mentor Large Professor un-following me on Twitter in disgust), and I was eagerly anticipating the opportunity to pen another suitably ignorant and inflammatory post on Monday. Instead, I thought I’d try something previously unheard of on the internets and actually wait until some facts on this case had come to light.
VIBE magazine spoke to stic.man from dead prez directly on the issue, which cleared-up any misconceptions regarding their involvement. “Take ‘We’re Not Alone.’ That was a beat and hook that I already had for dead prez’ Information Age album. He happened to like ‘We’re Not Alone’ and he wrote verses from his own point of view of what that song was about.’ dream hampton mentioned having heard, ‘Whole bars you’d written and performed…spit verbatim by Nas’ in the comments section of stic.man’s original Facebook post, but stic’s squashed that: ‘Wow. I don’t know what they played you…I’d love to hear what song u are referring to’.
The Jay Electronica situation is a little more open to interpretation, since FWMJ’s original post http://www.rappersiknow.com/2012/08/13/nas-lost-ghostwriters/ stated that Jay had called him and specifically informed him that he was ‘ghostwriting’ for the album (specifically ‘Queens Get The Money’). Was this a case of Nas using a track that Jay had recorded and writing his own interpretation of it as he did with dead prez? Or did he flat-out recite rhymes Jay had penned for him specifically? His ‘official’ statement on the matter was rather vague, stating that ‘Nas is one of the Greatest Ever. Never has and never will need a ghostwriter. That man’s pen and legacy is without question’. I don’t ‘need’ to get drunk tonight, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to…
I don’t care whether he did or not. That album was still fresh, unlike hiphop is dead which was fried doo doo.
Ok so Shawn Carter is a Capitalist Pig…LikNutz would’ve been tha bang out 15yrs ago…Everybody likes StonesThrow but aint nannbody got a purchased copy of StrongArmSteady/Statik-Sterotype (excluding the kid here)….So we tear Nasir from his perch ASAPRocky….and then what mothatfuckas!?!? ……Fuck All Y’all (period.)
I NEED A PU$$Y RIOT YO!
bboy, what up!!
For real, the person responsible for airing this out needs to be dumped headfirst in a 50 gallon drum of staircase piss. A ghostwriting accusation for any mere mortal MC is a lose/lose situation ’cause if you’re innocent, you’ll deny it, if you’re guilty, you’ll deny it and if you say nothing, heads will just assume you’re guilty. If this was, say Waka Flocka, the only thing we’d be shocked at is the fact that he actually needed help to come up with that trash. Now, aim that dart at the cat who’s arguably the greatest MC ever and, coincidentally, arguably the most polarizing figure in Hip-Hop and this resulting War of the Worlds is what you get. My take: I really can’t see Nas really taking it there and spittin’ someone else’s bars. I don’t think his pride would let him, for one thing. One other thing: question the source of all this mess and I think we can all chalk this up to being a lot of noise over nothing.
I don’t care about the accusations. I never ate pork again after bust a talking about trachea worms and shit on untitled. That stuck in my gullet.
Nice article, but I’m still waiting for the Unkut Mobb Deep break up break down. Much more juicy meat in that story.
If Nas has a ghostwriter, who freakin cares? This isn’t 1988… all those old school rules like “don’t bite” and “don’t sellout by going mainstream” hasn’t applied to anyone anymore in decades. So why would “don’t have a ghostwriter” mean jack shit? Big Daddy Kane was ghostwriting for Biz Markie at the height of the “no ghostwriters allowed” era and they got passes. Snoop even re-did ladi dadi in front of everyone like “yeah…and what??”!!!!
If theres anything about Nas you should be questioning way more than some bullshit ghostwriting.. question why he gave an official “N-Word pass” to Gwyneth Paltrow.
Get your priorities & Nas concerns in their proper order.