Nas Details Why His 'Nasir' Collaboration With Kanye West Didn't Go as Planned
“We really did that album the week it was supposed to come out.”
Nas returned last week with his 13th studio album King’s Disease, a collaboration that was produced in its entirety by Hit-Boy. The project is expected to debut in the top five on the Billboard 200. The 13-track album followed up 2018’s Nasir, and while his new effort has already come with praise throughout the music world, that wasn’t necessarily the case with his collaboration with Kanye West.
Nas joined The Breakfast Club to talk about his new album, but also addressed lingering questions about the creation of Nasir and fans’ lukewarm reception. “I don’t know what went wrong. I would say I did want to work more with [Kanye]. We spent some time but I was working on ideas and he’d give me a few loops but they weren’t finished,” Nas said in the interview. “He was working on a lot. He had Cudi, he had Teyana Taylor, he had his album and I was the only one coming in starting fresh so I had less time with him. We really did that album the week it was supposed to come out.”
Nas also agreed with DJ Envy’s sentiment that everything sounded rushed, especially the track “Cops Shot The Kid” in regards to the Slick Rick sample used and the layers of the loops throughout. “I definitely wanted to work with [Kanye] a lot more than we did.” Overall though, Nas does not regret the album, attributing the work done on “Adam and Eve” and “Cops Shot The Kid” as memorable moments. He reiterated the fact that the album was shorter than he liked and he didn’t get enough time to perfect it mainly because of Kanye’s ambitious undertaking from executive producing Kids See Ghosts, ye and KTSE.
Watch the full interview above. In more music updates, revisit the latest installment of our HYPEBEAST SOUNDS playlist featuring Travis Scott, DUCKWRTH, Chief Keef, EARTHGANG and more.
