Hailed as the second coming of Rakim, his rhyming skills attracted a significant amount of attention within the hip-hop community. However, many were concerned that Columbia, being a major label, would try to dilute his New York based style. Critically acclaimed and widely regarded as one of the premier rap albums ever created, Illmatic featured lyrics that portrayed stunning visual imagery and production courtesy of several producers.
However, due in part to extensive bootlegging, the record sales fell below expectations. Columbia began to press Nas to work towards more commercial topics like the rapper The Notorious B. It Was Written, chiefly produced by Poke and Tone of Trackmasters Entertainment, was released during the summer of Kelly were instant hits. These songs were promoted by big-budget music videos directed by Hype Williams, making Nas a common name among mainstream hip-hop.
The Firm signed to Dr. Halfway through the production of the album, Cormega was fired from the group by Steve Stoute, who had unsuccessfully attempted to force Cormega to sign a deal with his management company. At about this time, Nas became a spokesperson for the Willie Esco urban clothing line, but had no other connection with the clothing line.
In , Nas began work on a double album to be entitled I Am…The Autobiography, which he intended as the middle ground between the extremes of Illmatic and It Was Written. However, much of the LP was leaked in MP3 format onto the Internet, and Nas and Stoute quickly recorded enough substitute material to constitute a single-disc release. Hype Williams shot an allegorical video for the single, which featured Nas and Puffy being crucified in a manner similar to Jesus; After the video was completed, Combs, a Catholic, requested his crucifixion scene be edited out of the video.
He also joined the short-lived supergroup The Firm, teaming up with Dr. He also created the persona of Nas Escobar for his more gangster and crime-rhyme influenced verses. First up was "I Am … ," which hit No. Later that year, Nas released Nastradamus , which peaked at No.
With success came conflict. He became embroiled in a feud with Jay Z , each claiming the throne in the New York rap scene following the death of Biggie Smalls in All the while, Nas kept the albums coming, God's Son was hailed as his one of his best yet. The Salaam Remi-produced single "Made You Look" became a hardcore hip hop smash that still packs club dancefloors today.
Top Articles. By Paul Cantor. Copied to clipboard. Click to copy. Artists Mentioned. Watch Now. When Columbia finally released the album in April , it faced high expectations. Regardless, Illmatic proved just as astounding as it had been billed.
It sold very well, spawned three charting hits, and earned unanimous acclaim, followed soon after by gold and platinum certifications and classic status.
The two years leading up to Nas ' follow-up, It Was Written , brought another wave of enormous anticipation.
The ambitious rapper, who had begun working closely with industry heavyweight Steve Stoute , responded with a significantly different approach than he had taken with Illmatic : where that album had been a straightforward hip-hop record with few pop concessions, the largely Trackmaster -produced It Was Written made numerous concessions to the pop-crossover market, most notably on the two hit singles, "Street Dreams" and "If I Ruled the World Imagine That.
The latter earned the rapper his first Grammy nomination. This same crossover success undermined some of his hip-hop credibility, however, and a minor backlash by purists resulted. The effort had originally been planned as a double-disc concept album comprising autobiographical material, but when some of the tracks were leaked, I Am was scaled down and released as a single disc, with the DJ Premier -produced "Nas Is Like" chosen as the lead single.
Originally scheduled by Columbia as a follow-up album comprising the pirated material from the I Am sessions, Nastradamus -- released in time for the holiday shopping season, roughly six months after its predecessor -- instead featured almost entirely new material, recorded quickly to meet the late-November release date.
The album still peaked at number seven and spawned two charting singles, "Nastradamus" and "You Owe Me. In the late-'90s wake of the Notorious B. Dre and the Trackmasters and assembled a broad coalition of fellow Queensbridge rappers for the QB Finest compilation A series of incidents in provided a key turning point in Nas ' career.
The rapper's personal life was becoming increasingly complicated, and longtime rival Jay-Z pointedly dissed him on "Takeover," the much-discussed leadoff song from the acclaimed Blueprint album Nas responded strikingly in December with Stillmatic , the title a reference to his classic Illmatic album, which had been released nearly a decade earlier.
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