Queens, NY · hip-hop

Nas

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Illmatic. That's it, that's the blurb — QB's finest in career-renaissance form, with a late-era run most rappers would kill for as a peak.

Nas, born Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones on September 14, 1973, grew up in the Queensbridge Houses in Long Island City, the son of jazz and blues musician Olu Dara. He made his name as a teenager with a guest verse on Main Source's Live at the Barbeque, recording early demos under the mentorship of that group's producer, Large Professor.

His 1994 debut Illmatic, built with producers including DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Q-Tip and Large Professor, is routinely ranked among the most influential rap albums ever made and has been inducted into the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry; its dense, novelistic writing set a template for East Coast lyricism.

The commercial follow-up It Was Written topped the Billboard 200 in 1996 and pushed Nas toward mainstream success, though the two albums that followed, I Am and Nastradamus, drew criticism for inconsistency. The Jay-Z rivalry that produced the diss track Ether, along with Stillmatic, God's Son and the double album Street's Disciple, restored his standing through the early 2000s.

In the 2020s he began a sustained run of albums produced entirely by Hit-Boy, starting with King's Disease, which won his first Grammy for Best Rap Album after thirteen prior nominations. Outside recording, Nas serves as associate publisher of Mass Appeal magazine and co-founded its label, Mass Appeal Records, home to artists including Run the Jewels and Dave East.

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