S. Samuel
New York rap veteran Nas' catalog has been paid homage to over the course of this year; however, the "God's Son" claims he has yet to listen to any of the tributes.
According to Nas, he has yet found the time to kick back and peep tribute projects like rapper Fashawn’s Ode to Illmatic and eLZhi’s Elmatic.
“I wanna get a chance to sit down and vibe to those sh*ts ’cause those are not records that I just wanna play,” Nas, who said he’s flattered whenever MCs pay homage to Illmatic, told XXL. “Those are records I wanna sit down and really get into and see what the h*ll they about on the sh*t. That’s some cool sh*t, though. Real cool sh*t. I love that they did it.” (XXL Mag)
In May, Detroit’s eLZhi hit up SOHH and talked about gaining a few Elmatic co-signs courtesy of people involved with 1994’s Illmatic.
“We gave the [elmatic] music out to Nas’ camp,” eLZhi told SOHH. “Large Professor, I’m hearing, was trying to reach out to me. We finally got a connection and we’re about to sit down and kick it. He heard about it and he’s feeling it. You know what I’m saying? So that’s a blessing right there. Me and Pete Rock go way back, so you know, just to get those stamps of approval from those people, that’s just a blessing right there.” (SOHH)
A few months ago, rapper Rah Digga named eLzhi SOHH Underrated solely off his Illmatic tribute.
“I think eLZhi, formerly of Slum Village, is very underrated. He just recently did a live version of Nas’ Illmatic and it is the best hip-hop album that I’ve heard in a really, really, really long time. It just moves me that [the project] didn’t get more notoriety. It moves me that it didn’t get more notoriety being that Illmatic was such a classic album. You know it ain’t too many people that can really compare to Nas.” (SOHH Underrated)
Nasty Nas is currently gearing up for an upcoming solo album tentaviely titled Life Is Good.
“I’m knee-deep into the album now. I definitely have some spaces for some guests,” he continued. “It just has to be right for the track, or whatever. It just got to sound right. So whatever happens, it’ll be for the best. I have some pretty good ideas as to who I want to put on certain songs. So we just have to see if some of these dudes will be with it, if they have time to do it, or whatever. We’ll see what happens.” (Huffington Post)
Check out some recent Nas footage below:
