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"I'm that stone in your shoe sometimes. I just can't be walked on." ...
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— by Joseph Patel
The blue of Miami's skies is slowly being overtaken by a dark, billowing gray mass erupting from the city's northern skyline. The menacing cloud has already eclipsed the afternoon sun, casting a shadowy pall over the backyard of Circle Studios, where rapper Nas sits regally on a poolside chair.
As bits of white ash drift in from above, peppering the MC with remnants of the burning Everglades 60 miles away, Nas stirs up a fire of his own. He's admonishing his fellow music icons, but not in a game of lyrical comeuppance, as he did in past rhyming duels with Jay-Z and Mobb Deep. No, Nas is working an altogether different program.
"We need to educate ourselves about what is happening out there in politics so that we can start leading the kids in the right way," he proclaims. "People don't know what kind of sickness these [presidential] candidates have been into. They're the worst people you can imagine."
Nas has escaped the crisp, familiar air of New York's spring for the warmth of Miami to record a new album, Streets Disciple, which he'll release in September. The new, burning tropical surroundings provide the backdrop for the personal revolution Nas has undergone in recent years, one that finds him channeling the razor-sharp tongue and youthful vigor of his early rap career.
Except now that he's older and wiser, it's not the survivalist streets of Queensbridge in Nas' viewfinder, but hip-hop at large — the music, the culture, the business and the youth who fuel it all. It's a lively circus of art, commerce and politics and Nas wants to be the ringleader. With his rap rival Jay-Z now "retired," Nas finds himself in the perfect position to play that role.
So he speaks out, knowing that after 12 years in hip-hop, his voice will be heard. Nas looks around at the current state of the music business and doesn't just see the tumult, he sees the opportunity — just as when he looked at the dilapidated projects described on his debut album, Illmatic, and saw the humanity.
"Everyone is affected by these mergers in the music industry. Thousands of people getting fired. Companies are going out of business. Everything is changing," he says. "Who will be those new controllers and owners of the industry? Is it going to be us? Is it going to be some 80-year-old? We have to take control of [the industry], because too many people are making millions and billions off of us and they are not giving anything back to our communities. We have the power, it's up to us to take control."
The persona Nas will present on Streets Disciple is part mysterious sage, part ribald street poet and part outspoken social critic. It's an identity two years in the making, first spawned when he called out New York's two biggest radio stations — media outlets on which he depends to play his records — for being corporate pawns that brainwash the youth. Months later, in his infamous XXL magazine cover story, he took hip-hop magazines to task for the same offense.
"I saw a lot of castrated MCs walking around just obeying the rules," Nas explains now. His behavior back then illuminates his motivation for his current work, he says. "I'm that stone in your shoe sometimes. I just can't be walked on. I put my blood, sweat and tears in my music and someone else dictates to me if it's gonna be a hit or not?
"At the time, it was really just me giving the finger to everybody," he continues. "F--- radio, f--- your magazines, f--- everybody. None of y'all got love for the street n---as coming up out of the 'hood into this billion-dollar industry with poetry that's influencing kids. None of y'all really got love for us."
Those who know Nas understand that Streets Disciple will not conform to a prescribed archetype. That's never been Nas' style; during the course of his career he's always steered away from people's expectations. Right now, he says, the same is true.
"People are dying for something original now," he states. "When I made my last album [God's Son], everybody was doing the sing-songy thing and I brought it back to the streets with 'Made You Look.' That was really risky but that's what it's about — taking risks. It's about doing something to inspire the next musician to be creative and original. It's artist time."
Nas is almost apologetic when asked about the fan demand for his new album, which is also an unspoken demand for a style of hip-hop that puts a premium on the realism he's cultivated from his career's inception. "That was never the plan. It was the plan to be real with it and put my emotion in it so people could relate. I didn't realize how much of my work was personal until recently," he says.
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Photo: WireImage
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