Someone near the front of the stage was waving a loose leaf paper in the air. Getting closer to the end of the set, he asked if any fans in the crowd had requests for him. A party with thousands of people I’d never met and yet felt I had so much in common with. He asked, “Remember when you used to put my cassette tape in and it’d sound a little something like this?” *bass drops* “Check me out y’all… Nasty Nas in your area.” Everybody, and I mean everybody AND their mother at this show, knew the words to “Halftime”. He took a moment to reminisce about his younger days, describing what it was like early in his career, back to when he was still flowing through cassette tapes. It was literally a concert of his greatest hits. State of Mind”, “Got Yourself A…”, “If I Ruled The World”, and “I Can”. He followed with more hits including “Life’s a B*tch”, “Represent”, “N.Y. He joked around a little bit more before he teased the audience by saying, “I got some piano for you!” then proceeded to perform one of my favorite and most motivating tracks of all time, “The World Is Yours”. The women are beautiful… but the weed is so damn goooood.” – Nas After the first song, Nas expressed his love for Los Angeles: There wasn’t an uninterested face in the crowd. Attendees of all ages went wild as he rushed the stage, shouting the lyrics. “The Don” of hip hop opened with “Hate Me Now”, a popular track off “I Am…”. Headlining the final installment of the Sound In Focus Summer concert series, I had the veritable privilege of seeing Nasir Jones p/k/a Nas deliver a performance that matched his legendary status. As a struggling student, getting the chance to see a legend like Nas perform live was, at best, a long shot …. Nas quickly became one of my favorite lyricists, but I always assumed that I would only hear his words from the speakers in my earbuds. Off the top, I remember hitting the replay button on “Purple” from “The Lost Tapes” an awful lot during my high school years. I delved into the rest of his catalog, observing the real issues and raw culture that held an enormous presence in his music, and I think those concepts are what drew me to it the most. With eloquent lyrics of substance that touched on every aspect of the life he lived, I dove into his lyrics, studied them, and tried to wrap my mind around his clever references.
When I discovered “ Illmatic”, I realized this: Nas is a true poet of his time. Born just a year after that album’s release, I wasn’t old enough to comprehend the significance and pure substance of that album until I became a teenager.
In 1994, Nas (a/k/a Nasty Nas a/k/a Nas Escobar a/k/a Nastradamus) released “Illmatic”, a hip hop album that revived the New York rap scene and is deemed by many critics as one of the greatest rap albums of all time.
#Nasty nas nastradamus lyrics series#
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