Nas penned an open letter for Black History month and we would all agree that we should celebrate black history every month.
While we patiently wait on Nas to drop that new album, we can sit and reminisce on his artistry with this homage to Black History Month. Last year, DJ Khaled told us that Nas album is done and we believed him but we’ve yet to see the project. Still, that won’t take away from the New York rapper’s legendary status in music, we will just wait and hope he gives us his next body of work this year.
On Wednesday, Nas partnered with Google to write a powerful piece for Black History Month celebration. “We had oodles of instruments at the family crib, many of them with origins in the Motherland,” he wrote. “It was through the blues and jazz and folk music that my father played that I learned the importance of our history – our African ancestry, our struggles here as black Americans and ultimately, our great triumphs too. Black culture was an everyday thing in our household and in the streets that flowed through the great maze of our beloved Queensbridge: the housing projects that taught me and my comrades a plethora of lessons that were harsh, harrowing and humble.”
In his letter, the rap icon pays homage to hip hop pioneers like Slick Rick and Rakim’s whose contribution to modern hip hop is unmatched. “I heard reverberating off of the rust-bricked buildings that protected us like the illest castles in Scotland,” he continues. “That whistle part of Eric B and Rakim’s “My Melody” would bounce from building to building as cars and people jamming boomboxes out their windows pumped the tune in unison; and those radical harmonics lead you to the park where DJ Marley Marl would be spinning that same song (which was easy for him to do since Marley produced said cut and more in his apartment just up the block).”
“I was raised to understand that every month was Black History Month,” Nas added. “That every day, my ancestors, contemporaries and everyday dreamers like myself can, shall, and continue to make history.”
