Nas - Nas Is Like

"A baby's being born the same time a man is murdered the beginning and end."

Album: I Am... [3rd album]
Recorded: New York
Genre: Hip Hop, East Coast Hip Hop
Album Release: April 6th 1999
Single Release: March 2nd 1999 [lead single]
Length: 3:57
Producer: DJ Premier
Vocalist: Nas [age 25]
Label: Columbia

Music Video


Live in 2012

Charts, Streams & Sales

Canada (albums): #2
USA (albums): #1 [x2 platinum]
Spotify: 126,000,000 +
YouTube Music: 130,000,000 +

Credits

Details

• After the phenomenal critical reaction heaped upon 'Illmatic' and the commercial success of his follow up, 'It Was Written', which reached #1 on the US album charts, Nas saw himself as on top of the world. He started likening himself to Jesus and for the cover of his third album, 'I Am', he portrayed himself as the famed Egyptian pharoah Tutankhamun. Only, in his hubris, Nas fell victim to the curse of the forbidden tomb when he almost suffocated while making a clay mould of his face for the album cover. There weren't enough air holes in the mask!
  
  
• Even though 'I Am...' topped the US album charts it would always have the misfortune of been compared to 'Illmatic' and despite containing a couple of great tracks it didn't come close to replicating the glory of Nas' debut. The resulting state of affairs left Nas feeling persecuted and disrespected by an industry that had elevated him to greatest rapper of all time status only a few years before.
  
  It can be hard for people who have success early in their careers to navigate hard times. Young people internalise the outer praise and believe it to be a core part of their identity. When it's taken away, they feel like they're losing a part of themselves, but the truth is 'I Am...' and it's follow up 'Nastradamus', which were both released in 1999, weren't good albums.
  
  Bootleggers released an early version of 'I Am...' on mp3 and Nas had to redo the record at the last minute. It shows. Many of the finished tracks were shelved only to be released years later as a part of the notable 'The Lost Tapes'.
  
  It's a shame we never got to see the intended version of 'I Am...' because if you combine the best tracks, such as 'Nas Is Like', 'NY State of Mind Part 2' and 'Hate Me Now', with some of the better songs on 'The Lost Tapes', like 'Purple' and 'Doo Rags,' another classic could have been in the making. Nas' career would have taken a different trajectory but then we might never have had the righteous indignation that made 'Stillmatic' so great.
  
  
• On 'Nas Is Like' the rapper wastes no time in telling the listener how good he is on the mic while also displaying the necessary rhythmical expertise to make the claims credible. Nas begins with religious iconography "a baby's being born the same time a man is murdered the beginning and end." The beginning and end is how Jesus describes himself.
  
  
  "Behold, I am coming soon, and My reward is with Me, to give to each one according to what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End." [taken from the Book of Revelations 22:13]
  
  
  Nas keeps the allusion going in his second verse when he says "before the christ, after the death" referring to the the entirety of time, both B.C. and A.D., as if he's a metaphysical figure that strides both epochs. Inbetween the religious grandiosities, Nas raps about street life and how he turned himself from a poor man into a rich man, "I'm a poor man's dream" and he celebrates the money earned through his hard work in the rap game. The beat compliments the lyricism and is an absolute banger that bounces from the first second to the last. 'Nas Is Like' is a classic nineties hip hop track that shows two of the best who ever did it, Nas and DJ Premier, on top of their game.
  
  
• In the music video for 'Hate Me Now', the second single from 'I Am...' Nas represents himself as Jesus. The still below's taken from the video that also featured P. Diddy. Both he and Nas put in some time on the cross. Diddy later regretted his decision and insisted his scenes be cut. When they inevitably aired on MTV Diddy barged into the offices of Nas's manager, Steve Stoute, and attacked him with a champagne bottle resulting in a court case that cost Diddy a cool half a million dollars.
  
  The point of me retelling this story is to highlight that even the raging fevered ego P. Diddy objected to his personification as Christ. It took him a while, but he objected. Who hasn't accidentally stripped down to a loincloth and posed as Christ for a music video? Nas had no such qualms. From the age of 20 he had been told he'd made the best album of all time. Not the best hip hop album of all time, but the best album. The claim was plausible. He started recording it when he was 17.
  
  Nas perceives what happened to him in the period following 'Illmatic' as similar to what happened to Jesus, he was at first worshipped and then betrayed. His albums, 'It Was Written' (1996), 'I Am' (1999) and 'Nastradamus' (1999) received only a luke-warm reception from hip hop fans. The rapper felt persecuted by the criticism and expresses these feelings in his artistry.
  
  
• When Nas isn't comparing himself to Jesus, he's comparing himself to Pharoah, The cover for his album "I Am" features Nas replete with ancient Egyptian headdress. In the same way as Canibus uses scientific references in his rhymes to give his sentences a unique flavour, Nas uses the historical. On 'Rule', which was the first single from 'Stillmatic', he references "ancient kings from Egypt upto Julius Caesar" and in 'I Can', from 2002, he says
  
  "There was empires in Africa called Kush, Timbuktu, where every race came to get books to learn from black teachers, who taught Greeks and Romans, Asian, Arabs and gave them gold"
  
  On the same song he also claims that a disgruntled Alexander the Great shot the nose off the sphinx as a way of destroying black history, which is completely untrue. Gunpowder didn't exist at the time of Alexander the Great and it was Napoleon who is blamed for the shooting despite all evidence showing the nose was chiselled off centuries before his birth.  But this is pedantry. To check the veracity of the history is to miss the point.
  
  Nas is looking at the past of black people as a way to inspire pride in his present black audience, to take the onus away from slavery and put it on the heroic, mythical figures of old. All cultures have heroes whose glorification elevates them to a point beyond that of mere mortals, whether it be Alfred the Great, Joan of Arc, Nefertiti or Gilgamesh. History is itself a story told and retold until it becomes mistaken for truth. What is the harm in embellishment for artistic purposes if it inspires positive change in the present?
  
  When I first listened to Nas' music and he started talking about history it came across as a wise old sage imparting his wisdom to a younger generation. As if he had secret knowledge I didn't and he was taking time to share it with me. Now I know better, but there is still truth in the music. He tells young women they should watch out for olden men who want to use them. He tells them to use protection and that they don't need peroxide and make-up to be beautiful. He shows awareness of the social issues that affect poor, inner city areas and expresses them both intelligently and poetically.
  
  

Artwork