Nas Reflects on the History of Rap, His Successful Career, Creative Freedom & More | Billboard Cover

Hip-hop legend Nas reflects on the 50-year history of rap music, how successful his career has been, his recent creative freedom and more.

Nas
Going into the Garden, to do my own show was like, you know, one of the greatest moments of my life, you know, you thought you did shows before you thought you did tours, you did all these great things but being a New Yorker and playing the Garden, and selling it out is a dream. I think it’s every kid from New York’s dream.

I want to confront on what the Bronx has brought to the table earlier, whole New York was doing hip-hop. But no one, I think was doing it on the level of the Bronx, at that time. With this lyric that KRS-One said, “It isn’t even 20 years old. Fifty years down the line, you can start this. ‘Cause we’ll be the Old School artists.” Like he was he saw it, he saw it. And it was like, artists from that era was fighting for hip-hop to live. So to see that we’re here, and it survived. And it’s thriving. Well, I think that’s a beautiful thing. And then for younger artists who are just like 20 years old, to realize the history that comes that was there that was laid down to for them to look at it and go, “Wow, let’s look at this.” This is a long history. This has deep roots. This is a great, beautiful history, they should be proud of. I recently saw an interview with Ice Cube and he was talking about the East Coast, West Coast, you didn’t start with Biggie and Pac, it was kind of before that. It was just normal territorial vibes, this is we represent this, ya represent that. And you know, battle, the essence of hip-hop is also a battle. So everything was competitive. New York was on they bullsh-t and west coast was on they bullsh-t in the South went on and so on. So to have everybody there together is what the birthday of hip-hop should be about. It shouldn’t be just one reason. It shouldn’t be like borough, it shouldn’t just be one city, it shouldn’t be one, everybody should be together.