Big ups to each of the five thousand people who sent me this video. As We Enter is definitely another dope reason to look forward to Nas & Damien Marley’s upcoming compilation album “Distant Relatives.”

Nas’ latest untitled album has stirred up plenty of its own trouble. Nas originally called the album N—-r, but left it untitled after criticism around the title. Rev. Jesse Jackson and the NAACP both criticized Nas for the album title, while some artists, including Jay-Z, Alicia Keys and Common, supported it. Nas said he eventually changed the title because he didn’t want the negativity to overwhelm his album’s content.

“I don’t like to feel that somebody is trying to pick out one thing about me and make it negative,” Nas said. “Unfortunately, you have a lot of people who are threatened by people like me, whether they rap or not. I don’t give them any power by saying I’m just selling the n—-r word.”

“If the title isn’t there, the album cover becomes even more powerful,” Nas said, referring to the untitled album’s cover. The cover shows Nas shirtless with flagellation scars in the shape of an “N” on his back.

The counter-culture music Nas makes goes along with his life story. He grew up in the Queensbridge housing projects in Queens, N.Y. After dropping out of middle school, Nas educated himself, studying ancient religious texts and early hip-hop music. The irony of college students paying to see a middle-school dropout is not lost on Nas.

“You wonder what your teachers would say now,” Nas said. “You wonder what people — ‘cause they saw me on the corner — I wonder what they think now.”

Even so, Nas said he still appreciates the value of education and hopes to complete his own some day.
“In education, there’s a lot that’s wrong with the way the system works, but at the same time, it’s very important,” Nas said.

“This is a whole new world for me,” he said when asked what he would study. “Literature is one [major]. And of course, history. I like to think of myself as a historian.”

Nas’ interests show through in his music as well. His songs deal with issues in hip hop music, race relations and other controversial topics.

“The stuff that I listen to the most is not the most radio played,” Nas said. “Radio is important too, but you can’t let everything be about the radio. I like to make music where I’m not always working for the charts.”

“I still do have fun, even though it comes out serious,” he added. “The records that I tend to keep on the album are the ones that are not much about fun.”

Even though his music deals with heavy topics, Nas said the music doesn’t have to be contemplative.
“You can be flying down the highway doing 90 [mph], listening to something like ‘Testify.’ It’s all about how you are feeling.”

Source:
The Temple News

Great discussion between two of hip-hop’s most intellectual representatives.

Brilliant, that’s all I can say …

In a statement to media, Nas, ColorOfChange.org and MoveOn.org announced the petition will be delivered to FOX’s Manhattan offices on July 23 at 2 p.m. ET. In joining the protest, Nas cites FOX’s portrayal of the Obamas as outsiders, as well as an on-screen graphic referring to Michelle Obama as “Obama’s baby mama” and the confusing of Obama and Osama by a pundit, who joked that they should both be assassinated. In February, Bill O’Reilly talked about a “lynching party” to deal with Michelle Obama.

“FOX poisons the country with racist propaganda and tries to call it news,” Nas said in the statement.

“When FOX talks about lynching the woman who may soon be our first lady and then refers to this wife and mother as a ‘baby mama,’ they are maligning not only the Obamas, but black women and black people across this country,” said James Rucker, executive director of ColorOfChange.org, said in the statement.

“We have over 600,000 signatures — more than half a million people — saying that we won’t stand for FOX’s racism and hate-mongering.”

Nas came to the attention of ColorOfChange.org, a 450,000-member grassroots organization focusing on issues of importance to African Americans, and MoveOn.org, after the release of the new song, “Sly Fox.” It features such lyrics as, “Watch what you watchin’/ FOX keeps feeding us toxins,” and, “I pledge allegiance to the fair and balanced truth/ Not the biased truth/ Not the liar’s truth/ But the highest truth.”

But Nas stirred controversy last fall when he announced that his 2008 album would be named for the “N word.” The title came under fire from the NAACP, Reverend Jesse Jackson and a Brooklyn, New York, assemblyman. Nas latter scuttled the title, simply calling the new album, which was released July 11, “Untitled.”

Source:
Seattle PI

Street Knowledge / Cheap Thrills Productions was in the house to capture Nas live and in rare form at the Hammerstein Ballroom in NYC on Dec. 26th. The show, presented by Live Nation, produced a sold-out crowd eager to see their favorite MC Nas – aka God’s Son.  

After a warm-up performance by DJ Mister Cee and introduction by Funk Master Flex, Nas came out to the sounds blaring through the sound system of Marley Marl and was warmly greeted by his loyal fans. Nas started the show with the classic cut ” New York State of Mind” and continued to run through his catalog from the beginning of his career to his most recent album “Hip Hop is Dead.”

Briefly speaking on his most anticipated album to date, the still-to-be-released “Nigger,” Nas promised the hip hop faithful that the album would be packed with thoughtful and controversial themes and that its title had mainstream Americas’s “panties in a bunch.”

Punk ass O’Reilly needs to get off his high horse and realize how ignorant he is, and if anyone can show him, it’s Nasir Jones homie! Peep Nas’ statement below:

Whenever he wants a debate, I’ll go through it. I know Bill O’Reilly’s test scores. I know what he did, what he’s trying to be … I’m a psycho. I’m an American psycho. [Addressing O'Reilly:] “Come to Queensbridge, [record your show] out there. Come to Jamaica, Queens [New York]. Do a show in Red Hook [Brooklyn, New York].” … I ain’t got no time to talk to a uncivilized savage. This man will go through all kinds of extremes for publicity. I will tell him I’m an American psycho, I’m his worst nightmare. “They Shootin’ ” is just the beginning.

I don’t downplay nothing, that’s who I am. When he wants to come holla at me, be ready for Hannibal Lecter. He don’t deserve an intelligent explanation. I’ll bite his nose off! He wants to talk to me like a animal? I will be — but only to him. With everybody else I’ll be a gentleman, including his wife. That’s right — I’m crazy. That’s how we should be to him. He isn’t here to help us, and we don’t need his help.

If Arnold Schwarzenegger comes to VA Tech, he’s gonna come dressed like the Terminator? [O'Reilly] would never say that about Arnold Schwarzenegger. But he’ll say that to me because he’s ignorant.

Created by Davey D and Breakdown FM, “Hip-Hop Speaks Out: As We Remember 9-11″ gives hip-hop’s perspective of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks with songs, speaches and interviews from hip-hop artists, activists and representatives.

Below is the track listing for “Hip-Hop Speaks Out.” Click the link to listen:
http://odeo.com/audio/16537983/view 

1. Talib Kweli – The Proud (Quality)
2. Michael Franti Speech
3. Immortal Technique f/ Mos Def – Bin Laden
4. Jahi Interview
5. Dilated Peoples – War (Expansion Team)
6. Toni Blackman Interview
7. Nas A Cappella – Rule (Stillmatic)
8. June Jordan Speech
9. Society of Soul – Migratention (Brainchild)
10. M-1 Interview
11. Saul Williams – The Pledge (Not In My Name)
12. Michael Eric Dyson Interview

PEACE

During a recent airing of his Fox News show, “The O’Reilly Factor,” the commentator blasted Nas’ free concert for the students of Virginia Tech as an “abomination” and “atrocity.” O’Reilly referred to Nas — or “Nazz,” as the TV host pronounced it — as a “gangsta rapper” and said his lyrics are as “violent as they come,” citing songs such as “Shoot ‘Em Up,” “One Mic,” Ether” and “Made U Look” as his musical history of violence.  

(The show also displayed some of Nas’ concert footage and videos, plus the scene where Jay-Z gets shot in the video for “99 Problems.”) O’Reilly called Virginia Tech President Charles W. Steger “a villain” for allowing Nas to perform.

“Having a rapper who trades in violence perform at Virginia Tech insults the victims, the university and the entire commonwealth,” O’Reilly declared. The Nas controversy has been the topic of several of his shows.

Nas spoke exclusively to MTV News on Wednesday, dismissing his detractor.

“It’s what he’s supposed to do. He has an image to uphold,” Nas said initially, laughing it off.

But the conversation took a more serious turn when Nas described O’Reilly’s stance against him — and previous outbursts against peers such as Snoop Dogg and Ludacris — as being prejudiced and outdated.

“He’s a racist,” Nas said. “Everybody has a marketing plan; his marketing plan is racism.

“He doesn’t understand the younger generation. He deals with the past,” Nas continued. “The people he represents are Republican, older, a generation that has nothing to do with the reality of what’s happening now with my generation. … He’s not really on my radar. People like him are supposed to be taught and people like me are supposed to let n—as like him know. I don’t take him serious. His sh– is all about getting ratings or whatever. I wouldn’t honor anything Bill O’Reilly has to say. It just shows you what bloodsuckers do: They abuse something like the Virginia Tech [tragedy] for show ratings. You can’t talk to a person like that.”

Nas maintained that some of his harsher lyrics are no more rigid than the reality that inspired them.

“Here’s somebody that speaks about America in his music, and the community that I come from has the same kind of violence as Virginia Tech,” the legendary rapper said about himself. “It’s unnecessary, stupid violence. Hip-hop is a part of the generation of [Virginia Tech] as well as alternative and pop and rock. Hip-hop is a part of that. That’s why I’m [performing at the concert]. With Bill O’Reilly, it doesn’t raise an eyebrow to me because it’s garbage, its bullsh–. He has nothing to do with the real people who go to school or the parents who had to endure that tragedy.”

The New York MC also opined that O’Reilly should be exploring the inspiration for music’s depictions of violence instead of making blanket statements about the content itself.

“Let him ask why I made the songs I made,” Nas said. “It didn’t come from nowhere. It came from this country. I’m not talking about Russia in my music. I’ve never been to Russia. I’m not talking about Africa, Switzerland, China. I’m talking about me being American and growing up in a crazy world and helping to reflect all different sides of life. I got songs also about totally different things — ‘Black Girl Lost,’ you feel what I’m saying?”

Besides O’Reilly, seven families of the victims of the Virginia Tech tragedy have spoken out against Nas performing, and there was an editorial in the school newspaper saying it would be a poor choice for the rapper to perform some of his songs where he talks about guns.

University officials responded by saying the announcement of the concert has been getting overwhelmingly positive feedback and that the lineup would not be changed.

Despite the controversy, Nas says he was asked by the school to perform and there are many people who would be disappointed if he did not come.

“I’m still coming,” he reiterated. “Unfortunately, man, a lot of places in America have to deal with unnecessary violence. Somebody like me who knows it firsthand and could relate, … I had a best friend killed, plenty other friends killed. I been through it. I seen it. My music reflects reality. I think that’s what makes it important that I come through and show love to those people [at Virginia Tech]. They deserve it.”

Source:
MTV

Nas “Hip-Hop Is Dead” Album Review
Alright, alright … enough already fellas. If I have to listen to one more critic use Nas’ “Hip Hop is Dead” as some misguided reason to discuss the apparently failing current state of hip-hop based solely on dropping record sales for Top 40 charts, I’m just gonna start bumping country music or something. “Damn homie - if Nas says it, it gotta be true,” they say. “Yeah dogg – those Billboard sales are way down yo.” “Hip-Hop is dead dude.” Man, Nas is playing you fools by giving you a question that you couldn’t possibly answer. And in the process, he’s making you run around looking like some damn jabberjaws.

Hip-Hop Nihilists
While Nas obviously wanted to create dialogue with such a title, something that would undoubtedly lead to higher record sales, he is not proclaiming that hip-hop is literally dead, even if he wants you to think that he is. Instead, I think he is somewhat-sarcastically criticizing those who believe hip-hop is dead; those who think hip-hop no longer has a comprehensible meaning, definition, or truth; those who think it only exists in negative forms: I like to refer to these people as hip-hop nihilists.

God is dead
In the late 1800′s a prominent philosopher named Friedrich Nietzsche created quite a stir by proclaiming “God is dead,” or that the idea of God was no longer specific or ordered enough to serve as a basis for any moral code or purpose. Nietzsche felt that this so-called death of God would lead to a breakdown of human values and morals, a re-evaluation of the foundations of religion, and the eventual widespread acceptance of the philosophical position of nihilism, which basically states that the world is without purpose or value. Around 100 years later, another prominent scholar and philosopher named Cornel West described this nihilism as the “lived experience of coping with a life of horrifying meaninglessness, hopelessness, and (most important) lovelessness.”

So maybe Nas is saying that hip-hop is without purpose or value; that it represents the meaninglessness that may be spreading throughout the youth of our uninspired country. Regardless of how far from the truth, or perhaps from my truth, this statement is, that position might make sense if your only knowledge of hip-hop is based on what you hear on the radio or see on TV.

My brother, for example, recently told me that he seldom listens to hip-hop anymore. “The stuff on the radio is just horrible,” he stated. I guess I haven’t listened to the radio in so long that I didn’t know. Likewise, my parents have a completely different perception of hip-hop than I do, with their perception revolving around the television’s bling-thug-gangster shit. And even I occasionally find myself shaking the old dome at the nihilistic attitudes present in mainstream hip-hop, which is more often than not characterized by lack of originality, respect, thought, or purpose.

Still, Nas is and always has been one of those artists that is original; is intelligent; does have purpose. He himself is one of seemingly countless examples that disprove the belief that “hip hop is dead.” Why would he proclaim the death of hip-hop, when his very career as an MC has proven the opposite? This question confused me; until I heard Nas state his philosophy on the album. Over an angelic chorus of “Live hip-hop live. Live hip-hop live. Give hip-hop give. Give hip-hop give. Stay hip-hop stay. Stay hip-hop stay. I pray hip-hop pray. I pray hip-hop stay,” Nas says:

So I say what I say. And I say what I say and I mean it. Y’all take it how you wanna take it. Cause if you asking, ‘why is hip-hop dead?’ there’s a pretty good chance you’re the reason why it died man. There’s a pretty good chance your lame ass, corny ass is the reason it died man. Cause you don’t give a fuck about it, you don’t know nothing about it. You want this paper, be a hustler? You a hustler, you ain’t a rapper? Get your paper, man. You know what I’m saying? But this rap shit is real. Bitch. This shit is real bitch.

This made me think about my man Nietzsche and his belief that “God is dead.” I once heard a religious cat battle it out with an atheist by using one simple and almost undeniable statement: “I believe, therefore I am,” meaning that his belief in God is what makes God exist. In believing, he said, people allow themselves to experience the mystery and selflessness associated with a relationship with God. And since that experience is very much real, that would have to make God real.

“You’re the reason it died man …”
In the similarly-fashioned words of Nas, “if you’re asking ‘why is hip-hop dead?’ then there’s a pretty good chance you’re the reason why it died man.” Maybe as hip-hop spreads from its urban roots to new communities and countries all over the world, it no longer contains some universal law or set of beliefs that binds all hip-hoppers. Maybe what we see in the videos is simply the beginning of the resulting moral crisis which will leave all of hip-hop, and those influenced by its imprint on American culture, nihilistic.

Or maybe the only thing preventing that is us. Perhaps just believing in hip-hop makes it exist. Perhaps just trying to make something positive out of it will therein make it positive. Perhaps by giving it life, we ensure that it will never die. If we believe, therefore we are.

So don’t make statements about the current condition of hip-hop based solely on Clear Channel playlists; based on MTV or BET’s videos; or based on who’s selling the Top 40 records in the nation, because that’s a small and over-exaggerated representation of hip-hop culture. If you’ve lost faith in this type of hip-hop, check out your local underground artists. Try out a couple independently-owned record stores. Read a different hip-hop magazine once in a while. And for God’s sake put a block on your cable motherfuckers! There are children present. But don’t tell us that hip-hop is dead, because if you think that is true, you obviously don’t know real hip-hop.