In honor of Esco’s 39th Birthday, we reflect on 39 random facts you possibly didn’t know about Nas
39. Although Nas was recently falsely accused of using a ghostwriter, he has been credited for writing rhymes for others in the past, most notably Will Smith for the huge hits “Gettin Jiggy with It and “Miami”
38. Nas reps QB, but he was born in Crown Heights Brooklyn.
37. In an interview with XXL Magazine back in 2003, Nas admitted that he cried when he heard Tupac dissing him on ‘Against All Odds’, in which Tupac raps “This little nigga name Nas think he live like me?”.
36. 2pac mistakenly believed Nas’ song ‘The Message’ was aimed at him. Nas has continuously denied those allegations, in-fact Nas has claimed some of the shots were directed at Biggie Smalls, not 2pac. Example: “There’s only one life, one love, so there can only be 1 King”
35. Legendary producer ‘Larger Professor’ helped Nas edit some songs off Illmatic. “He helped me because I only knew half of what was going on,” said Nas, to Mass Appeal back in 2002. “I knew about the pen touching the paper. Paul knew that too, but he also knew to tell me, ‘Don’t say this. Take that out. Why would you say this? That makes you look crazy! This word don’t make no sense.’” He taught me everything.”
34. Nas originally wanted 15 tracks on Illmatic, but once Columbia Records found over 60,000 bootleg copies of the album on the streets, they were forced to release Illmatic in April of 1994 with only 9 full songs and 1 Intro.
33. Nas first rap moniker was “Kid Wave’ before adopting his more commonly known alias of Nasty Nas.
32. The original cover of Illmatic was an artwork of Nas holding Jesus in a choke-hold, but for obvious reasons Columbia Records scrapped that idea and Nas went with a childhood picture for the album cover.
31. On the 2002 track “I Can” Nas was taking shots at Whitney Houston when he rapped ” I met a woman who’s becoming a star, She was very beautiful, leaving people in awe,Singing songs, Lena Horne, but the younger version, Hung with the wrong person, Got her strung off the heroin, Cocaine, sniffing up drugs, all in her nose Could’ve die So young, no, looks ugly and old”
30. When 2pac and Death Row were rumored to be in New York City at the 1996 MTV Awards, Nas called his childhood friend ‘Lakey The Kid’ for protection and over 100 people from Queensbridge accompanied Nas during his infamous showdown with Tupac at Bryant Park in NYC.
29. Nas was originally slated to release a double album in 1999 titled “I AM The Autobiography”, but the songs were heavily bootlegged and the album was sliced in half to form a solo album called “I Am”. Some tracks were on an album he released months later called “Nastradamus”. A few others were released in 2002 as part of the “Lost Tapes” album.
28. Nas Wanted To Sample “Juicy Fruit” Before Biggie, but his producer L.E.S. didn’t have that song at the time so he brought The Gap Band’s “Yearning for Your Love” and looped that up instead. That tracked turned out to be “Life’s a Bitch”
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